Search Briefs: Google’s Speech Recognition Guru Speaks During 15 Minute Podcast Interview
Podcast: Interview with Google’s Person in Charge of Speech Recognition
Google has been getting a bit of attention of late (what else is new) with talk (no pun intended) of voice fingerprinting and just this weekend with our post (Garett’s too) about AdSense for TV. It’s likely that some form of speech recognition technology would be used for these endeavors.
Here’s a link to a new 15-minute interview (MP3) with Mike Cohen, head of Google’s speech recog efforts. Also, remember that at one time Google Labs offered a voice recognition search tool (speak your search). Its been offline for several years, although the site is still live.
From the intro:
Although Google remains relatively mum about its ambitions in the area of speech recognition, Mike Cohen, head of the company’s efforts in this area and a co-founder of Nuance Communications, says that speech recognition will increasingly play a bigger role in all Web-based applications going forward. But for developers to be successful in this space, they will need to get in touch with their inner persons more than ever if they hope to create applications that ordinary people will actually use.
If voice/speech recognition is of interest, here’s a short list (very short, we could have gone on for pages) of many companies doing work in this and related areas
+ Nexidia
Long time player in the contact center and government marketplaces. Originally developed at Georgia St. University. What makes their technology different is that they break language down to phonetic sounds or phonemes (about 400 of them in all of spoken speech and about 40 in English). More here. All of this allows for faster and more accurate indexing and searching. Cool stuff.
+ Nuance
The company Cohen came from.
+More Players
+ TellMe Networks
Around for many years and still offering some cool freebies. Works with any phone. 1-800-555-Tell
+ Technology from Autonomy’s Virage. Used by Blinkx (for some content) and others.
September 14th, 2006 at 10:05 pm
[...] + Where’s Nexidia Mention in WSJ Article We are big fans and users of TVEyes here at RS so great to see the mention. However, we were very surprised to see several companies not mentioned including Nexidia that takes an entirely different approach to indexing. They break any language down into phonetic sounds (phonemes) for faster and more accurate indexing. Earlier this week we listed several other (of many players in this space). Direct links to all of them here. [...]
September 16th, 2006 at 8:13 pm
[...] + Since earlier this week we posted a bit on voice/speech recognition, we noted onseveral legal blogs and AP that Rutgers University is suing General Motors over the technology used with their OnStar system. Here’s the patent. We will post the actual legal complain ASAP. Looking for a search industry angle? Hmm. Well, one of the co-inventors listed on this patent, Tomasz Imielinski, is currently Vice President, Relevance and OnLine Systems at Ask.com. [...]
January 12th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
[...] Also, Microsoft recently had a patent application published titled: “Searching for content using voice search queries” In this RS post from September 2006, we link to an interview with Google’s voice search guru and list of some voice search players. [...]
January 26th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
[...] See Also: Google’s Speech Recognition Guru Speaks During 15 Minute Podcast Interview Remember, Google once offered a speech recognition search tool. Site is still live but service not available. If/when will it be coming back is TBD. This post lists seveal other voice search players like Tell-Me Networks, SimonSays, and Promptu. [...]
January 30th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
[...] See Also: Google’s Speech Recognition Guru Speaks During 15 Minute Podcast Interview Also links to SimonSays, Promptu and MobileVoice. [...]