Nuance, the company behind Dragon Naturally Speaking, is developing a new mobile product called Open Voice Search. Similar to Vlingo and Microsoft’s TellMe, Open Voice Search allows users to interact with their phone through voice commands. This isn’t the archaic “Say a Command” voice commands that we know and love. In one application of the technology, Open Voice Search allows users to search the Internet by speaking into their phone. The Open Voice Search program transmits the spoken phrase to Nuance’s voice recognition servers which, in turn, translate the voice signal into text. The text string is submitted to an unnamed search engine (Google?) and the search results are then sent back to the handset as a list of web results. Excellent! Nuance recently demoed its new technology with two unreleased handsets, one for T-Mobile and one for Verizon Wireless. In the T-Mobile demonstration, a Samsung handset was used to access Madonna ringtones via voice commands while the Verizon Wireless handset utilized spoken commands to retrieve driving directions from VZ Navigator. Nuance would not confirm contracts with either carrier but it probably wouldn’t be demoing technology on a carrier-branded handset if there wasn’t some type of agreement at least in the works. Consider the demo an indirect announcement of some slick new handsets that will, in some shape and form, integrate this Open Voice Search technology.
[via RCR Wireless]
