IVR

 

A few months ago, Mobui Corporation founder and Chief Executive Officer John Burry said that to me during an interview. It’s hard to argue with Burry – whose Redmond, Washington-based mobile application development company creates iPhone, mobile Web and downloadable applications for major consumer brands – especially in retrospect.

 

Industry analysts are predicting that mobility will weather this recession well, that the number of mobile voice connections will grow at more than 8 percent annually for the next four years, from 3.32 billon at the end of 2008 to 4.57 billion by the end of 2012.

 

With the launch of the Apple iPhone 3G last summer and its attendant application “store” through iTunes – a business strategy later largely mimicked, by Research In Motion with its increasingly popular BlackBerry smartphones, and by the Google Android (News - Alert) phone – much of the communications technology space now is dedicated to app development.

 

What’s going to be a hit?

 

If we follow Burry’s logic, social networking will have something to say about that. And that also makes sense – think of how often you see updates in your Facebook account about one of your friends downloading the “Facebook mobile” application.

 

Even our own company, TMCnet is getting in on the action, launching a new feature on its Web site, TMCnet, that helps visitors connect to their individual Facebook accounts.

 

Now, think of voice-powered applications.

 

We’ve reported here in the past on applications such as vlingo – a speech recognition program that’s available for many mobile devices, including the iPhone and BlackBerrys – from a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company of the same name. With their voices alone, cell phone users can update their statuses on social networking sites, search the Web and even send text messages and e-mails.

 

Today, a Mountain View, California-based company is bringing a new twist to that kind of functionality.

 

Keeping business users in mind, especially, Ditech Networks is unveiling “toktok,” a voice-enabled service that connects people with popular Web productivity tools through one word spoke during a phone call.

 

With toktok, users can integrate Gmail, Google (News - Alert) calendar and Google contacts applications – allowing them to do things such as access and schedule appointments and create new tasks, while talking on the phone.

 

Unveiled today at an event in San Francisco, toktok will also include a Facebook application, “Voice Poke” (pictured right), which will show users which members of their online social networks are on the phone, and allowing them to send so-called “whisper” messages directly into their calls.

 

In advance of today’s unveiling, TMCnet got to a chance to put some questions to Todd Simpson, president and chief executive officer of Ditech Networks (News - Alert).

 

We learned that toktok will work with pretty much any phone – including a VoIP client on a PC – and though we don’t yet have a handle on pricing levels, Simpson paints a vivid picture of the technology’s future.

 

Our exchange follows. Take a look.

 

 

Todd Simpson (News - Alert) (pictured left): It was more that we heard what the challenges in adoption for voice applications were and developed toktok to address those. First – discoverablilty of voice features, meaning it is a failed model to require a consumer to scroll through a menu and potentially even go “off deck” to access a voice service. The difficulty in finding the application will lower utilization and additionally the consumer is now in a data entry modality rather than voice so that is counterproductive to getting people to use their voice.

 

Second – cost of service. Sophisticated voice processing is expensive. The software is complex and it requires a fair bit of horsepower. The traditional way of offering “always on” voice processing was to have a full speech processing system waiting to be used on the whole call. The result was a cost point that is either unprofitable or far in excess of the price consumers are willing to pay. toktok takes a different approach to the technology, which dramatically lowers the cost. This in turn enables a price point that is attractive to the consumer.

 

 

TS: Mobility is a primary need for consumers. Studies have shown that people will give up their home phone before their mobile phone. This is reasonable for many reasons. What good is a home phone when you are broke down on the side of the road? Or at a mall trying to connect with a friend? Throw in free long distance and it is clear why mobile continues to move forward at the expense of other communications services.

 

 

TS: The human voice is the most natural form of communication possible. The technology challenges being addressed by the voice industry as a whole are making it possible to use your voice as the logical method to connect with applications as well as people. As an example consider attempting to create an ad hoc conference call while driving or walking.

 

Today you have to successfully navigate multiple menus, manually place calls on hold and ultimately reconnect. All while not bumping into some one or something and not hanging up the original call. Now picture saying “toktok! conference in Bob” and it’s done. And what’s more it will work the same way across any device you have. I’m in telecom and still couldn’t tell you how to perform a conference call on all the different devices I use to make calls, and I doubt I am alone.

 

 

TS: Toktok will provide an open API to allow the same level of innovation currently seen in the Web environment to exist in telecom and in fact truly integrate Web and telecom. There are many examples of where this could go. Imagine you and a friend are planning to meet up to go out to eat, you agreed to meet at a time and a general area but not a specific restaurant. On your way you call your friend from the car and decide that you want sushi but can’t remember the name or location of the sushi restaurant. You invoke toktok and access Yelp to find the sushi restaurant.

 

Once found toktok asks if you want directions. You respond yes and toktok works with Google latitude to find you and your friend, marks your destination and then “whispers” independently to each of you turn by turn direction to get to the sushi restaurant while you continue your conversation or not if you decide to hang up with your friend toktok will continue to guide you in.

 

 

TS: Toktok works on the voice channel. For that reason it will work with any phone, from a VoIP client on a PC to a rotary phone in your grandmother’s basement. This is also of tremendous value to the developer community, write the application once and it will work on all phones. Not the 400-plus versions required for mobile phone applications today. We aren’t prepared to announce pricing levels just yet but it is a service model and will have a monthly fee structure.

 

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