Vlingo, the voice-powered interface technology we’ve wrote about before, is launching a program for developers to allow them to use Vlingo’s tools and APIs.
With other active players in the speech-to-text field, the idea is obvious — to make mobile companies use Vlingo’s technology rather than some else’s. In addition, this is certainly one move that could help bringing the technology to the wider audience, and even produce new innovative services. That being said, I could easily imagine some mashup that would allow Facebook users to interact with their buddies via speech using only their mobile phone.
Anyway, initial program members include ROAM Data, Hollowire and 4DK Technologies… and we guess more are coming soon… Full release after the jump.
PRESS RELEASE – Vlingo Corporation today announced the industry’s first developer program for mobile application providers that offers a way to integrate a voice user interface into their applications with no up-front costs. Designed to provide an economical and easy way to combine a highly-accurate voice-powered user interface with mobile applications, the vlingo voice program will provide developers with a means to enhance the usability of their mobile applications and increase consumer usage and revenue. Initial program members include ROAM Data, Hollowire and 4DK Technologies.
“Mobile applications are increasing at a dizzying pace, but consumer adoption has yet to catch up due the tremendous limitations imposed by traditional twelve-button keypads,” said Dave Grannan, president and CEO, vlingo. “We created the vlingo voice program to give all mobile application developers access to a simple and cost-effective solution to unlock their full revenue potential. Our offering completely alters the landscape of the speech recognition industry by making speech recognition universally available to all mobile developers.”
Vlingo is a voice-powered interface that lets users say what they want, without limitations and scripted grammars and in a consistent way across all the applications on their mobile phones. Based on adaptive HLMs (hierarchical language models), vlingo allows application developers to quickly and inexpensively voice-enable their application, giving consumers quick and easy access to the mobile Internet, with accuracy rates that exceed those of expensive manually tuned systems.
“As a part of continuing efforts to improve usability, a key barrier to mobile application adoption, InfoSpace is evaluating user interface technologies such as voice recognition. Vlingo’s technological advancements are a major step forward in removing that barrier and enhancing usability,” said Dr. Reed Thorkildsen, vice president of technology and R&D, InfoSpace and noted industry technical expert. “Typically, voice-enabling applications requires a lot of heavy lifting for the application developer. Vlingo has made speech as an interface much easier to implement and therefore economically feasible for just about any application provider in the marketplace.”
Vlingo voice provides developers with voice recognition technologies that eliminate up-front costs, long development lead times, and the need for costly speech engineering expertise. Vlingo voice is launching its developer program and is accepting applications for Pioneer Developers. Between now and November 23 all developers who qualify will be given the Pioneer Status that provides early access to all vlingo APIs, a chance to help shape the developer program, and most notably, their first one million speech-recognition utterances free of charge for the first year. Standard pricing will include “pay-as-you-go” options that can cost as low as a few cents per user per month, based on the application.
“Vlingo’s voice-enabled interface would allow us to deliver mobile applications to end-users in a simplified and effective way,” said Will Wang Graylin, Chairman and CEO, ROAM Data. “By combining vlingo with ROAM’s development platform and hosted services, we are taking important steps toward increasing usability for our customers.”
In addition to early access being granted to Pioneer Developers, the vlingo voice Developer Program will be available to all developers as part of an open Beta program in December, and will be generally available in Q1 2008. Vlingo supports all major mobile platforms and is an approved BREW Extension Developer. For more details on vlingo’s developer program, please visit http://www.vlingo.com/developer.