Google’s Conversational Voice Search Comes to Chrome
The latest release of Chrome (27), now available for download, adds Google's conversational voice search for Star Trek-style voice searching.
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Burner Brings Disposable Phone Numbers to Android for Private Calls, Texts, and More
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Holler wants to be the voice layer of your apps
OneTok, the voice recognition software platform founded by the people behind Vapps, has pivoted to Holler, a consumer-facing voice message app. The app facilitates short voice messages between contacts. But behind the scenes, the company will use the technology powering Holler to help app developers and telecom companies integrate voice messaging into their offerings. Just a few weeks after the pivot, several customers have already signed on to use the service, founder Ben Lilienthal says.
OneTok originally launched to allow app developers to integrate speech recognition. It turned out that problem was too difficult for a startup to tackle, says Lilienthal. The company acknowledged that it was good at doing audio on the web, and that people wanted to talk to each other asynchronously. “The art of the phone call is slowly dying, but there is this concept of sending instant short voice messages,” Lilienthal says. He noticed the success of data-delivered voice messaging apps like Voxer and HeyTel and realized that a consumer-facing app with those functions could also be beneficial. Thus, Holler.
The app, like Voxer and HeyTel, allows users to send a quick voice message to anyone or any group in your contacts with a simple “press and record” function. Holler’s app is already generating revenue through premium services.
But the ultimate plan is to license the software to corporations looking to replace their “push to talk” functions. That service is being phased out by the carriers, and soon, short, data-delivered voice messages will be common built-in services on phones, Lilienthal says. Holler wants to be the company to provide it. It won’t ever be as big as text messaging, he notes, because it is mostly just a derivative of text messaging. But there are plenty of use cases. Why not speak your Yelp review instead of typing it? Why not leave voice notes to yourself that become written notes?
Google Keep has a solid voice functionality; the problem is that Google doesn’t share that solid voice functionality. The point of Holler is to make that widely available to more app developers beyond Google.
“There is a real opportunity for telephony and carriers,” Lilienthal says. “In a year or two, you’ll be able to push a button and send a voice message to everyone in your contact list.”
OneTok spent a year on voice recognition and audio transport, Lilienthal says, meaning it has all the pieces to put together a useful voice tool. The company also has the money to do so: last year, as we first reported, OneTok raised $1.5 million in seed funding from RRE Ventures and friends and family to launch the company. The raise came easy on the back of the success of Vapps, Lilienthal’s VoIP conferencing technology company which sold to Citrix in 2008 for $26.6 million. The technology is now a part of the GoToMeeting suite of products.
I expressed to Lilienthal the fact that some of us that view voicemails as a form of hate crime. Surprisingly, he agreed. “The absolute best implementation is that you speak the message and that a transcription of it gets sent to the person on the other end,” he says. “That is the home run slam dunk kind of thing.” So there’s hope for us all.
[Image courtesy Mr. Beaverhousen]
Erin Griffith
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Oh, Winston? Read me the news, today’s weather forecast, and my friend’s status updates
Let’s go ahead and get all of the robot clichés out of the way before we begin: “Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto!” I, Robot. HAL 9000. Skynet. Terminator. Cortana. C3P0. R2D2. “These are not the droids you’re looking for.” And so on and so forth. Now we can talk about Winston, a robotic personal assistant launching today to will read you your daily news, updates from Twitter and Facebook, and tomorrow’s weather.
Winston, which is backed by ENIAC Ventures and Comcast Ventures and graduated from DreamIt New York in August, is similar to Umano, another “please, sir, allow me to read you your news” app we covered in November. As I wrote from the DreamIt New York demo day:
Winston is a digital assistant that picks up where Siri left off. Siri is great for getting something done – when it works – but doesn’t tie into the aspects of life that users actually enjoy. Winston connects to users’ social networks and select news feeds to create morning “Briefings”, snippets of news that the app reads to the user while they go about their business.
The service takes “takes “lean-forward content and create a lean-back experience,” as CEO Aaron Ting told me in August. Users are able to select a number of “Channels” to listen to, with options such as Technology, Business, Sports, Politics, and publisher-specific channels, including those for the Guardian, The Verge, and ESPN. Channels start playing immediately after they’re tapped, with Winston making its way through stories fairly quickly, depending on how you quickly you’ve set “him” to speak.
As with any service that requires careful listening, Winston’s usage depends on the quality of its “voice.” He definitely speaks more clearly when set to “normal” speed — selecting “fast” caused words to be jumbled and made a noticeable difference in overall quality. Winston doesn’t sound as good as, say, the Google Now voice, but he sounds about as good as Siri.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the service is the “Briefing,” which reads the current time, the day’s weather forecast, and top news from users’ channels. If the Briefing is launched at night — as it was while I was writing this post — it will read the next day’s weather, a nice touch that makes Winston feel less like a one-trick robot and more prescient than one might expect.
I tried to compare Winston to Umano, another app that reads the news aloud, but I couldn’t get Umano to actually “play” an article. Everything about Winston seems to respond faster than Umano — the app asks “How can I help you today” on launch, launches and reads articles quickly (though the fact that it played articles at all meant that it beat Umano by default), and grabs weather data without so much as a hiccup. Winston’s interface isn’t as appealing as Umano’s, but in the end that doesn’t make much of a difference. The whole point of using one of these services is so you don’t have to look at your phone.
Anyone looking for an app that will read the news, their friends’ status updates, or provide contextual information, like the weather, will find Winston capable enough. The voice isn’t my favorite (that “honor” belongs to Google Now, which is the most human-like voice I’ve come across) and sometimes Winston’s ever-present “How can I help you” becomes more annoying than an obnoxious blue fairy squeaking “Hey, listen!” every two feet, but those are small complaints that may not bother other users.
[Image Source: Media Musings]
Nathaniel Mott
Oh, Winston? Read me the news, today’s weather forecast, and my friend’s status updates
Let’s go ahead and get all of the robot clichés out of the way before we begin: “Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto!” I, Robot. HAL 9000. Skynet. Terminator. Cortana. C3P0. R2D2. “These are not the droids you’re looking for.” And so on and so forth. Now we can talk about Winston, a robotic personal assistant launching today to will read you your daily news, updates from Twitter and Facebook, and tomorrow’s weather.
Winston, which is backed by ENIAC Ventures and Comcast Ventures and graduated from DreamIt New York in August, is similar to Umano, another “please, sir, allow me to read you your news” app we covered in November. As I wrote from the DreamIt New York demo day:
Winston is a digital assistant that picks up where Siri left off. Siri is great for getting something done – when it works – but doesn’t tie into the aspects of life that users actually enjoy. Winston connects to users’ social networks and select news feeds to create morning “Briefings”, snippets of news that the app reads to the user while they go about their business.
The service takes “takes “lean-forward content and create a lean-back experience,” as CEO Aaron Ting told me in August. Users are able to select a number of “Channels” to listen to, with options such as Technology, Business, Sports, Politics, and publisher-specific channels, including those for the Guardian, The Verge, and ESPN. Channels start playing immediately after they’re tapped, with Winston making its way through stories fairly quickly, depending on how you quickly you’ve set “him” to speak.
As with any service that requires careful listening, Winston’s usage depends on the quality of its “voice.” He definitely speaks more clearly when set to “normal” speed — selecting “fast” caused words to be jumbled and made a noticeable difference in overall quality. Winston doesn’t sound as good as, say, the Google Now voice, but he sounds about as good as Siri.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the service is the “Briefing,” which reads the current time, the day’s weather forecast, and top news from users’ channels. If the Briefing is launched at night — as it was while I was writing this post — it will read the next day’s weather, a nice touch that makes Winston feel less like a one-trick robot and more prescient than one might expect.
I tried to compare Winston to Umano, another app that reads the news aloud, but I couldn’t get Umano to actually “play” an article. Everything about Winston seems to respond faster than Umano — the app asks “How can I help you today” on launch, launches and reads articles quickly (though the fact that it played articles at all meant that it beat Umano by default), and grabs weather data without so much as a hiccup. Winston’s interface isn’t as appealing as Umano’s, but in the end that doesn’t make much of a difference. The whole point of using one of these services is so you don’t have to look at your phone.
Anyone looking for an app that will read the news, their friends’ status updates, or provide contextual information, like the weather, will find Winston capable enough. The voice isn’t my favorite (that “honor” belongs to Google Now, which is the most human-like voice I’ve come across) and sometimes Winston’s ever-present “How can I help you” becomes more annoying than an obnoxious blue fairy squeaking “Hey, listen!” every two feet, but those are small complaints that may not bother other users.
[Image Source: Media Musings]
Nathaniel Mott