Rob's Rhapsody : Tellme

Microsoft sponsors the 2009-2010 AVIOS Speech Application Programming Contest

robch — Mon, 11 May 2009 17:52:54 GMT

One of the cooler parts of my jobs is interacting with customers and partners. One such opportunity I have is being on the board of AVIOS, The Applied Voice Input and Output Society. As a member of AVIOS, I've also been involved behind the scenes in the annual Speech Programming Competition.

This year Microsoft is back on the scene as a sponsor, as we have been for the 2 years before. I just posted over on the speech team blog about the contest. You should check it out.

Do you have what it takes to win a free XBOX360, Visual Studio Professional, or a fancy new Zune?

TellMe Rolls Out Better Speech Recognition And An Almost-Sexy New Voice Called Zira

robch — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:19:17 GMT

Last night, as 12:01am, Tellme announced their Spring 09 upgrades to their underlying speech platform. You can read all about it here on Tellme.com.

There have been a ton of news articles about it since the announcement, but I liked what Tech Crunch said about the new Zira voice. They said it’s “almost sexy”. I never really thought about TTS voices sounding sexy, but … It made for a good article title anyway. :-)

And … BTW … My team here at Microsoft is really excited about this announcement, too, because our underlying speech technology is powering the new “better speech recognition” and the “almost-sexy new voice called Zira”.

It’s been a real pleasure working with Tellme since the acquisition. I’ve had the good fortune of going down to the Tellme offices in Mountain View regularly working with them on a variety of projects for a while now, and I’m super impressed with all the people I’ve interacted with.

In fact, I’m sitting inside Tellme’s main building typing this right now wondering where I’ll go eat lunch on Castro Street in Mountain View. Will it be Amici’s pizza, or someplace else today?

Getting to know Tellme

robch — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 16:05:00 GMT

As you probably know by now, Microsoft announced our intentions on acquiring Tellme Networks a couple of days ago. I was up late the night before checking to see if any news broke early; nothing did. I was up early the next morning, again checking the net to see what I could find out, if anything... Again... Nothing.

Wednesday and Thursday were really fun days at Microsoft. Wednesday there was a lot of anticipation, enthusiasm, and excitement in the air. Then Thursday we had an all-hands meeting in the speech group to debrief on Fil Alleva's and Kirt Dibique's experiences and thoughts about the acquisition and their trip down to Tellme in Mountain View. The whole team was there and the room was alive with excitement and questions. Lots of questions.

At times like these, it's easy to get the cart before the horse and have a bunch of people wanting to start talking together about the past, the present, and the future of the two merging companies and groups. But ... As with all big acquisitions, now's the official time to wait. Wait until the deal closes. It won't be a long time, but it's sure going to feel like a long time.

In the all-hands meeting several people (including myself) were really excited and basically wanted to just hop on a plane and fly down to Tellme headquarters and start getting to know our potential new brothers and sisters that have done so much to push the same ideals we are striving to push from here in Redmond.

And, there's still the regulatory review. The acquisition isn't a done deal yet. I don't know much about this aspect of the acquisition because I'm not a lawyer, but apparently, the deal is subject to Hart-Scott-Rodino Act review, so there are limits on what kinds of interactions can actually go on at this stage.

This morning, though, I found an email in my inbox that pointed me to the results of an employeed-based "Film Festival" that showed Tellme employee created videos about their new Tellme by Mobile application. They're pretty funny. You should check them out if you haven't already. My favorite so far is this one. Being a dad to four little kids, I also rather liked this one.

It was great to see such passion in each of the videos. They clearly love what they're working on, and it shows. Both in the videos, but more importantly, in the software that they've already built and deployed.

I can't wait to learn more...