Microsoft’s Office Communicator evolved into Lync and has gained traction in competing against other UC products. Considering that Microsoft is a software company and not a communications firm, it’s quite an impressive feat. Lync was one of the most anticipated UC products at Enterprise Connect 2011, and the keynote presentation was one of the most well received.

At my workplace a group of us are Lync users. I love it. It has a clean interface and not excessively featured (ahem, Office), it does a great job with chat and VOIP communications. I also enjoy the ability to easily set up multi-endpoint ringing, transferring to another device mid-conversation, and simple drag-and-drop for conferencing. What a great business tool.

Back then, in March 2011, Microsoft semi-promised a Lync client for all the major mobile platforms: iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone 7, and Symbian. The plan was to release them before the end of the year.

Well, it’s almost December. Will Microsoft make good on this promise?

Yes, according to a tweet by Microsoft Australia. Within “the next four weeks.” (The tweet has since been removed.)

Most consumers probably won’t care about the release of mobile Lync clients, but for a lot of businesses that deployed Lync and have a workforce tethered to the various smartphones out there, this is welcomed news and could certainly boost productivity. More importantly, it’d truly demonstrate Microsoft’s commitment to unified communication.

(h/t BGR)

Is it game over for other speech tech companies?

Nuance is truly the dominating force in this area and with a partner like Apple, it’s reminiscent of the famed Wintel alliance that still exists today…

Today the company announced its NDEV Mobile program which offers its popular Dragon SDK to multiple platforms: Web-based, iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 7. Even the lowest tiered NDEV Silver membership will give a developer plenty of access to Nuance’s popular speech technologies.

And NDEV Silver is free. Yup, get ready to see many, many occurrences of people talking to their phones in the coming months…

See Nuance’s press release:

Burlington, Mass. – September 27, 2011 – Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) today announced that its Nuance Mobile Developer Program, now NDEV Mobile, features new services that make it easier than ever for developers to voice-enable apps with Nuance’s industry leading speech technology. NDEV Mobile now features three new service tiers – Silver, Gold, and Emerald – that give developers more choice and flexibility in how they bring Dragon-powered innovations to market. The Dragon Mobile SDK made available through the NDEV Mobile program now also supports Windows Phone 7 in addition to Android and iOS, as well as an HTTP web services interface, and, brings developers eight new languages for voice recognition.

NDEV Mobile has already experienced great success since its launch in January, 2011, with more than 4,000 iOS and Android developers signing on to access the Dragon Mobile SDK across the US, Europe, Asia, and Australia. This success has led to demand for even more flexibility and support in bringing voice-enabled applications to market. As such, NDEV Mobile now features three new tiers of service to better meet the diverse needs of the broader mobile developer community:

• NDEV Silver: NDEV Silver Services provide Android, Windows Phone 7 and iOS app developers with the ability to deploy their apps for free with the accuracy and reliability that only Nuance can provide. Developers will also have free access to Nuance’s connected text-to-speech (TTS) capabilities in over 30 languages, bringing natural sounding read back of text in the cloud. Further, NDEV Silver members get access to Bluetooth use cases and hands-free voice applications.NDEV Silver Services members have access to the world’s highest quality speech recognition technology for both general dictation and search. Additionally, the Dragon Mobile Developer Center provides a centralized resource for speech information and expertise including on-line forums, code samples, and full documentation.
• NDEV Gold: NDEV Gold Services offer access to SSL data encryption, more deployment flexibility and enhanced support. In addition to iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 7, Gold Services members can take advantage of Nuance’s HTTP web service interface, which extends the power of Dragon to any mobile device while giving developers greater control over the user interface.NDEV Gold Services members’ applications can take advantage of SSL for encrypted data transmission, as well as open access to analytics tools that will help them maximize the impact and effectiveness of the voice experience their app delivers. Further, Gold Services members have access to one-on-one Nuance assistance in addition to the NDEV Mobile online community resources.
• NDEV Emerald: NDEV Emerald Services are designed to meet the unique needs of NDEV Mobile community members looking for a truly differentiated speech experience on their apps. NDEV Emerald members have an array of customization and service options that bring Nuance’s extensive speech expertise and service capabilities to a diverse developer base – ranging from start-ups to wireless carriers, OEMs, and large enterprises. Emerald Services include custom vocabularies and grammars, user experience consulting, speech integration, advanced text-to-speech, high-availability deployment, and unmatched Nuance support – pre and post deployment, including dedicated account management resources.

Available to all NDEV Silver, Gold, and Emerald members, are eight new speech-to-text languages supported by the Dragon Mobile SDK – Canadian French, Americas Spanish, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Korean, Taiwan Mandarin, and Cantonese – in addition to already supporting US, Australian and UK English, European Spanish, European French, German, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, and Japanese for dictation and search. Additional languages will continue to be added through the end of the year, offering developers broader geographic expansion and availability of their innovative voice-enabled apps across the globe.

“The success of our NDEV Mobile developer program has proven that our market-leading voice capabilities drive incredible value for developers across a variety of markets,” said Michael Thompson, senior vice president and general manager, Nuance Mobile. “Our new multi-tiered services options deliver developers the options and services they’ve been asking for. It’s never been easier to deliver the power of voice-enabled apps to the market, tailored and customized to meet the needs of each app’s unique consumer base.”

NDEV Mobile has voice-enabled some of the market’s most popular apps, including Siri, Price Check by Amazon, Ask for iPhone, Merriam-Webster, Dictionary.com, RemoteLink from OnStar, SpeechTrans, Yellow Pages and AirYell from Avantar, iTranslate, Taskmind, SayHi Translate, Vocre, Bon’App, and many others.

 The Dragon Mobile SDK is available for iOS 4.0 (iPhone/iPad/iPod touch), Android 2.1 and higher, Windows Phone 7.1 and via an HTTP web services interface. For more information about the NDEV Silver, Gold, and Emerald Services, please visit the NDEV Mobile developer portal at dragonmobile.nuancemobiledeveloper.com

Dragon has long been a leading speech recognition application on the desktop, used by millions of people around the world. Nuance has launched an array of Dragon applications across a variety of mobile platforms including iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone 7, and more.

To learn more, visit www.nuancemobilelife.com.

Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) is a leading provider of voice and language solutions for businesses and consumers around the world.  Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with devices and systems. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications.  For more information, please visitwww.nuance.com.

Nuance and the Nuance logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States of America and/or other countries. All other company names or product names may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

The statements in this press release relating to future plans, events or services, are forward-looking statements which are subject to specific risks and uncertainties. There are a number of factors which could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those indicated in such forward looking statements, including fluctuations in demand for the Nuance products, and the continued development of Nuance products. The reader is warned not to rely on these forward-looking statements without reservation, since these are simply reflections of the current situation. Nuance disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of developments occurring after the date of this document.

Firefox developer Jennifer Boriss went to a local mall to find test subjects for field research into browser usage, especially in hopes of improving Mozilla Firefox.

Then she stumbled upon “Joe,” a 60-year-old gentleman with no knowledge of how to use a computer, let a lone a Web browser. She opened a browser and asked Joe to perform tasks with the goal of “finding a local restaurant to eat at.”

First, Microsoft Internet Explorer. Disastrous results:

Joe: “I don’t know what anything means.”

(Joe reads the text on IE and clicks on “Suggested Sites”)

Me: “Why did you click on that?”

Joe: “I don’t really know what to do, so I thought this would suggest something to me.”

Next, Firefox. No better, except the Help pull-down menu attracted Joe’s attention which, of course, was no help to the task at hand:

“Help, that’s what I need!” says Joe. He clicks on Help, but looks disappointed at what he sees in the menu.

“None of these can help me,” he says.

Last, Google Chrome. Score! — but only because of luck:

He proceeds to read all of the words on Chrome’s new tab page, looking for any that may offer guidance. Luckily for Joe, he spies a link to Yelp which is marked San Francisco in Chrome’s new tab page. He clicks it, and, seeing restaurants, declares he’s won.

Joe had absolutely no idea on even the very basics of computer usage… Mouse navigation, clicking, UI elements (e.g. text input field, scroll bar, etc.), but he knew that the computer was capable of finding information.

This is a good example of why speech technology will thrive in the years to come. For tech savvy folks speech tech may offer an alternative input method — a speedy one at that — but for many others speech recognition is the difference between being computer literate or not.

I have always favored Skype over other instant messaging apps because of one thing: its proclaimed strong encryption behind the scenes. I know of companies that’ll summon the IT SWAT team to your cubicle if you’re found to have disabled the anti-virus software on your PC, yet nobody cares if you’re chatting away (possible company secrets?) on Yahoo or MSN instant messager. With trojans, malware, and “spim” (spam on IM) on the rise constantly trying to infiltrate your PC, it’s unbelievable that a company wouldn’t consider security measures on the IM front.

But now a researcher, Efim Bushmanov, has reverse engineered Skype’s protocol and encryption mechanism. Moreover, he’s made all his research material available online — free of charge. In summary with words that’ll pique the interest of any serious hacker (black and whitehats alike):

You will see what it uses strong AES and RSA encryption with public key infrastructure.

Bushmanov may have a noble intent of open sourcing Skype with this freelance research project, but it’s doubtful that Microsoft (Skype’s new owner) shares the same sentiment. In fact, Skype is also the preferred communication tool among worldwide dissidents and activists, so the impact of this very public research will definitely make waves throughout regions such as China and the Arab world.

Although this research is evidence that my future Skype sessions won’t be as safe as previously implied, perhaps it’s a good thing that this illusion of secure communications is being exposed. After all, if one person was able to reverse engineer it, what’s to say that it hasn’t already been done in some top secret government agency with much more resources at its disposal?

It’ll be very interesting to see how this story develops, not only from the technical perspective, but also the legal and geopolitical issues surrounding it.

What if a machine can tell whether a human is angry, sad, happy, or indifferent? Facial recognition research has also enabled studies on facial sentiment analysis, determining the emotion of a human by analyzing the dynamics of facial muscles. But video and image analysis take a lot more horsepower and dollars to be effective, and facial recognition applications are still mainly affordable only to research institutions, law enforcement agencies, military facilities, and large casinos (according to Hollywood).

But there’s a good chance that voice sentiment analysis becomes mainstream before its facial counterpart. After all, in many instances where we cannot see each other during a communication, voice is still the next best thing. Voice sentiment analysis is a branch of speech analytics, and some speech tech vendors may already claim their software’s sentiment analysis capabilities. However, a lot of the claim is based on searching for words or phrases from a person’s speech input (for example, looking for curse words).

Obviously this isn’t the ideal approach. As we all know, these four-letter words can also be dropped into expressing excitement and positive sentiment. You and I know clearly that “I’m gonna f–king cancel the service” and “I’m so f–king happy with this product” have completely opposite sentiments. But to a machine analyzing based on keywords — both could be flagged as negative responses.

A somewhat advanced algorithm would also take into account other words in the response. For example, scoring the “cancel” as negative and “happy” as positive following the f-word.

Even better is to factor in the voice acoustics. The pitch, speed, intensity, etc. of a vocal response could offer insight into the sentiment. Pay attention to your own voice next time when you’re happy or upset, and you may notice the difference.

The benefits of good voice sentiment analysis is apparent in the contact center environment. And there appears to be traction in this niche space…

Recently, startup Saygent received $1 million in funding to take voice sentiment analysis to the cloud. The founders/makers of Saygent also operate SayHired, an automated phone screening service with some high-profile customers like Hertz, esurance, and Great Clips. Saygent would be the new kid on the block to compete with some of the more established speech analytics vendors like Autonomy, CallMiner, Nexidia, NICE, and Verint.

Recently there’s quite a buzz — and new evidence — about a close partnership between Apple and Nuance. Speech technology is not new and neither is the fact that computer operating systems have incorporated it to a certain extent (mainly text-to-speech, or TTS). Remember when Steve Jobs introduced the first ever Mac on January 24, 1984? He actually allowed Mac to greet the audience (see 3:30 mark):

The robotic TTS doesn’t sound as sexy as Mac OS X’s Agnes, Kathy, Vicki, or Victoria, but the crowd went wild nonetheless. Back then it was pretty impressive for such a tiny computer to be able to speak. Even until today, Apple stayed true to its core philosophy of delivering the best user-friendly products, and part of that means adopting I/O interfaces that are natural to a human: speech, handwriting, and gestures.

The Mac introduction footage showed speech in Mac OS. It also exists in Mac OS X and iOS (as Voice Control, to a limited extent).

Handwriting recognition (or, as some may ridicule, the lack thereof) was one of the highlighted features of the Apple Newton, the grandfather of PDAs introduced in 1993. The technology is present in Mac OS X and iOS as well — for example, I’m able to input Chinese characters by writing on the trackpad or iPhone screen.

Starting with the iPhone came the prevalence of gesture input. We’re all quite familiar with the tapping, swiping, and pinching gestures in using the iPhone and other smartphones as well. Apple even made this available on devices with trackpads. This input method is by far the most natural — even toddlers “get it.”

But I digressed. This article is about how the Apple-Nuance partnership could impact customer service technologies.

So, what really caught my attention was a piece from TechCrunch:

In digging into the information about the relationship between the two companies, we had heard that Apple might actually already be using Nuance technology in their new (but yet to be officially opened) massive data center in North Carolina. Since then, we’ve gotten multiple independent confirmations that this is indeed the case. And yes, this is said to be the keystone of a partnership that Apple is likely to announce with Nuance at WWDC next month.

More specifically, we’re hearing that Apple is running Nuance software — and possibly some of their hardware — in this new data center. Why? A few reasons. First, Apple will be able to process this voice information for iOS users faster. Second, it will prevent this data from going through third-party servers. And third, by running it on their own stack, Apple can build on top of the technology, and improve upon it as they see fit.

We already know Apple’s interested in better speech tech. It bought Siri and has been soliciting speech-related engineers. If TechCrunch is right, it would be Apple’s foray into cloud-based speech tech. The company certainly has the money and know-how to grow another massive online service besides iTunes, App Stores, and MobileMe.

Proven Nuance speech technology hosted on Apple’s massive infrastructure? That’s a dream come true for a customer service app developer!

A company with a speech-enabled IVR can look into developing an iOS app that’s also speech-enabled, without having to burden the company’s speech servers. If the app can deliver on a better user experience with speech capabilities, can you imagine the number of calls reduced to the IVR? Phone calls and speech licenses are expensive, so divert these interactions to the app and through the user’s own monthly data subscription and Apple’s servers in N.C.

Plenty of companies already have their own iOS apps, but not many are focused on customer service. It’s time they think about the next version of their Company App — with speech.

Of course, this all hinges on Apple making the speech services unrestricted to developers. More reason to keep an eye on this year’s WWDC announcements. That is, if you’re passionate about better customer service, speech tech, and mobile apps.

Some folks have half-jokingly said that Skype is a good fit for Microsoft because both companies like proprietary technologies. There’s certainly some truth to that. Even though both of these companies enjoy great numbers of users, they are far from being proponents of open standards and technologies.

That’s why it’s important to spread the gospel of an open source project such as GNU Telephony:

GNU Telephony is a project to enable anyone to use free as in freedom software for telephony, and with the freedom to do so on any platform they choose to use. We also wish to make it easy to use the Internet for real-time voice and video communication, and in fact for all forms of real-time collaboration. Finally we wish to make it possible to communicate securely and in complete privacy by applying distributed cryptographic solutions. Our goal is to enable secure and private real-time communication worldwide over the Internet that is free as in freedom, and is also free as in no cost too!

Over the weekend the project released GNU SIP Witch 1.0, the first stable release of GNU SIP protocol provisioning and peer-to-peer call server. It’ll also be used in the “anti-Skype” open source project, GNU Free Call (covered here previously).

The acquisition of Skype by Microsoft has made some people nervous about the future of the popular VOIP service. This is exactly why open source projects are important and deserve our support.

The official announcement:

May 14, 2011 (Bayonne, NJ). We are distributing today a 1.0 release of the GNU SIP protocol provisioning and peer-to-peer call server, GNU SIP Witch. GNU SIP Witch is developed within GNU Telephony and has been selected for use in the GNU Free Call project. This will provide a stable release that we will support for existing applications while we actively develop GNU Free Call services.

GNU SIP Witch is available as part of the GNU project. Stable releases will also power a web site later this summer to provide initial worldwide secure calling services for free directly to the general public for use in conjunction with any ZRTP enabled standards compliant softphone applications and SIP devices. GNU SIP Witch can be used to deploy private secure calling networks, whether stand-alone or in conjunction with existing VoIP infrastructure, for private institutions and national governments.

GNU SIP Witch is distributed as free software, that is, it is licensed using the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3 (or later), explicitly to provide others the freedom to use, modify, learn from, redistribute, and participate in it’s continued development, and can be obtained in source directly fromhttp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/sipwitch. A number of GNU/Linux distributions already distribute GNU SIP Witch in binary form for easy installation. GNU SIP Witch is cross-platform and can also be built on Apple OS/X, BSD systems, and for Microsoft Windows. Future releases will also support Android devices for use in GNU Free Call. Our services and applications are intended to offer the benefits of software freedom on all common computing platforms.

GNU SIP Witch is a free software project and is being developed by volunteers from around the world. The Free Software Foundation and the GNU project provides technical, infrastructure, and organizational support for GNU SIP Witch development. Future work will focus on delivering GNU Free Call services such as self-organizing peer-to-peer calling networks directly to the desktop and mobile devices of users worldwide.

In conjunction with this release, the GNU Free Call project is distributing an initial release of our technological assistance package for common computing platforms by providing our switchview desktop client for use with GNU SIP Witch on your local machine. In the future TAP will enable multi-platform personal encryption, include further support for desktop and mobile secure calling, and provide other basic and common computing services missing on some platforms.

About the Free Software Foundation:
The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting computer users’ right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as in freedom) software—particularly the GNU operating system (used widely today in its GNU/Linux variant)— and free documentation. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of freedom in the use of software. Their web site, located at http://www.gnu.org/, is an important source of information about GNU/Linux.

About GNU Free Call:
GNU Free Call is a project to develop and deploy secure self-organized communication services worldwide for private use and for public administration. We use the open standard SIP protocol and GNU SIP Witch to create secured peer-to-peer mesh calling networks, and we welcome all participation in our effort.

Contact Information:
Haakon Eriksen – Project Coordinator – haakon.eriksen at far.no
David Sugar – Project Architect – dyfet at gnu.org
Mailing List – Participation – sipwitch-devel at gnu.org

 

There’s a reason the word “app” became the American Dialect Society’s 2010 word of the year. Abbreviated from “application,” the terminology has entered the common vernacular thanks to the explosive growth of smartphone users. It sort of interesting to find myself saying the whole word “application” in the context of desktop and laptop programs, yet I use the short-form “app” when I talk about programs on my iPhone and iPad.

But we all love the apps on our mobile devices. From our fingertips we can instantly experience the joy of being entertained, to stay connected with friends and coworkers, and be productive with our work.

Companies have realized the power of apps to create another channel for customers to interact with. Users can buy products, share the experience, and easily lodge complaints — but still via emails or toll-free numbers. Others have gone farther to improve the interactive experience — Groupama’s app is a pioneering example.

Independent developers have realized the power of apps with novel ways to help consumers deal with companies. This is evident with apps such as Fonolo, LucyPhone, and FastCustomer. The value of these apps is they address the top complaint among users when dealing with companies: hold time.

Obviously, having an app wait for you is still far from ideal. Once connected to an agent, you’re still speaking with a representative who has no idea that you’re a loyal customer, a new customer, or what you want to discuss. In other words, the app can know a lot about you, but how come that information isn’t passed along?

The missing link is CTI, and Exodus Software’s HERA wants to bridge that gap, starting with support of Genesys, the leader in CTI.

I’d whetted your appetite about this recently. According to Wyn Owen, owner of Exodus Software and lead developer of HERA, the software opens enterprise-grade Genesys technologies to the smartphone app market. Data gathered by an app can be passed along securely with 128-bit encryption back and forth between the app and HERA server, which can reside as a cloud service (using Amazon’s highly reliable infrastructure) or as a premise-based solution. Other media types such as WAVs, JPEGs, and videos are also supported. These interactions originating from apps end up in the Genesys environment like any others, completely transparent to the end users.

For example, an airline can now build an app for its customers to buy tickets from an iPhone (Android or BlackBerry also supported) app by entering parameters such as destination, dates, and so forth. And if the customer has a question before purchasing, s/he can tap the “Contact Travel Agent” button and get connected to a representative who will already have the customer’s frequent flyer account, name, address, and other relevant information.

This would be an exceptional user experience originating from a smartphone. After all, we never like to be asked more than once about our account number, and shouldn’t have to suffer again just because we decide to use a smartphone app.

I love Skype. It’s no secret that I’m a fan of this communications tool. The software evolved from desktop-only to an app that also resides on your smartphone. Recent feature enhancements include desktop sharing and group video. The company has grown tremendously to a point that it hired a Cisco exec as CEO and plans to IPO this year.

But I also realize that it uses proprietary technology. It is voice-over-IP but it is not an open standard. Now a new open source project dubbed GNU Free Call will attempt to offer everything Skype has and then some: SIP adoption.

That’s a big “and then some”… An excerpt of its goal:

What
Our goal is to make GNU Free Call ubiquitous in a manner and level of usability similar to Skype, that is, usable on all platforms, and directly by the general public for all manner of secure communication between known and anonymous parties, but without requiring a central service provider to register with, without using insecure source secret binary protocols that may have back-doors, and without having network control points of any kind that can be exploited or abused by external parties. By doing so as a self organizing meshed calling network, we further eliminate potential service control points such as through explicit routing peers even if networks are isolated in civil emergencies.

That is quite ambitious, but I have faith in the open source community and will be tracking the project’s progress regularly.

The call center reached its awkward adolescence years when it became known as the contact center. People would still say “call center,” but you try to correct them with “contact center.” It’s the time when there’s sort of an identity problem, when it wants to grow out of its call center shell and be treated like a contact center adult because there’s so much more it can do now. It’s no longer just calls. It can now deal with faxes, emails, and even tweets.

Or to use the catchphrase, multichannel interactions.

Many in the industry have observed this evolution. Many more are starting to realize the role of mobile devices during this time. The American Dialect Society deemed “app” the 2010 Word of the Year. Customers are interacting with companies through mobile apps on their smartphones and tablets. Just take a look at how many apps out there which are essentially iconized companies residing on the iPhone or Android screen.

So it was intriguing when I saw this on Tony Tillyer’s LinkedIn update:

After a period of study; having a direct CRM interface on any Smartphone App to provide access to Channels including Service Support, Ordering, Marketing and other Customer/Business specific tasks is something which appears to be missing, currently… Watch this space…. :)

In an IM chat later, he summed it up more concisely:

it’s more the ability for any App provider to have the ability to tie-in their App as an interaction Channel

Like any blogger in search of a good story, I probed for details. He didn’t give away much more except that he’s working with a partner and that a prototype has already been developed.

I may be completely off track in my understanding of his secret project, but now I can blame him because of our enigmatic encounter. In any case, I look forward to the debut…