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> Just SMS the name of the business to 46645 (googl) with your non-smart
> phone and get similar results messaged back

Google SMS is not as good as it once was! I used it constantly in 2006 and 2007, perhpas early 2008 for all sorts of useful, accurate, fuzzy searches, the stuff you can do with Google Maps but fast. To wit:

* lowes in 10038
* starbucks in 07310
* old navy in 07020
* ducati dealer near metuchen nj

and I immediately received 2, 3 invariably USEFUL texts that I could peruse for proximity, preference. This was prior to smartphone wide adoption. It could have well have been or be for renegade, anti-materialist, unemployed, frugality reasons. However, Google's results began to go absent, un-fuzzy, useless. I was standing on Eight Avenue near Garfield Street in Park Slope, Brooklyn when I once again needed home supplies and tried the above first search. No results! I wasted ten minutes on the street, eight to ten texts to see why I could not get useful results that I knew Google had; it was a regular search for me then. I was so frsutrated as I needed the information, my Garmin unit's DB was incompltete on this topic, I already knew, and Google's results were always fresh AND proximitous if I used a zip code. It turned out that if I used the local Lowe's (home supply) mailing zip code I would get a result! I had to know of its existence and location to receive Goog's result. Unreal! Mind you even searching for Brooklyn, NY gave no results---they have one, as I should have already made concrete.

Emblematically this state of affairs was typical for the next two years and I gave up on Google SMS to their detriment.

Google411 in my experience was like speaking to a dense human, I would shout at it in despair. It would not understand a spoken zip code location, you would have to type it upon its bork. Then would have to repeat search object. Then it would launch into results, which upon selection would dash to dial unwantedly, which upon the command of "next result" would bail to a new search, etc. *sigh* You had to learn its dense syntax, fine, but its frequent aborts, forced repetition, forced repetition, was is grating. Hasta la vista! That's as far as I have wanted to get to it in years, line-of-sight only..

Anyway, use the MS alternative it is less grating, just as (more) useful and Google's loss is the monopolist's gain. Whatevers.

1-800-555-TELL

http://www.tellme.com/you

Tell Me still offers similar free services, including (AFAICT) the basic directory lookups and dialing that GOOG-411 offered.

1-800-555-TELL

That said, I used to use GOOG-411 quite a lot before I got a Droid, but even now I still occasionally refer to it because it is both easy and hands-free.

'Twill be missed.

Microsoft bought Tell Me which predated GOOG 411

Ha-hah-hah! ohh...

http://www.tellme.com/you/faqs

"Yes! 1-800-555-TELL is a toll-free number you can call from any phone."

They [Tellme] are in the same league as Zango, and 180 solutions.

1. advertising all over the place (to pay for everything else)
2. some significant voice-recognition processing power somewhere. (They also mention "VoiceXML", whatever that is. Sounds very SemanticWeb-ish.)
3. Tellme (and hence MS) know all about what you're interested in at this moment in time, and are probably going to target the most attention-grabbing (read : distracting) adverts they can find at you
4. the extremely slow-loading Flash (?) advert at http://www.tellme.com/ talks about some one who's interested in sports, but not interested enough to be doing his sport himself, someone who can't find a cup of coffee with his eyeballs in a city, someone who's stupid enough to not be at the airport in plenty of time, and someone who doesn't know how to manage her finances. All people to avoid, I think.

Are you talking about http://www.tellme.com/ ?

They seem to have started in 1998 which is well after Windows 3.1.

I had never heard of this $800 million company, so I immediately visited their website http://www.tellme.com/.

Actually, that's a lie, after watching Flash load their site for about 30 seconds (on a 4 Meg broadband connection) I gave up.

Can someone please tell me what this Tellme thing is please.

Tellme now has what they call "Business Search" which is basically directory assistance for local businesses (not just 800 numbers). They even have a feature where you can listen to reviews of the business from other users or leave your own review.

However, I find the most usefull feature is their driving directions. It's gotten me out of a jam many times. Only downside is that if you're lost, you need to find out what city you're in (which can be a bit hard on a country road in the middle of nowhere) and you need either an intersection or address (again, which can be hard in the middle of nowhere).

You can also send directory searches through SMS to TELLM (83556) in the same way you would to GOOGL (46645). However, TELLM also sends you a map of the location, so if your provider charges the same for SMS and MMS it has a big advantage. More info at http://beta.tellme.com/TELLM/

Try TellMe. Call 1-800-555-TELL. It's a voice portal. Buy movie tickets. Get driving directions. News, weather, stock quotes, and sports. All without looking at the phone. So what's the problem?

SIP/VOIP is something I have researched a lot about. Basically, this guy set up a server has a just enough bandwidth to do the directory lookup and is selling the phones. Yippie. Thats it. No VoiceMail or advanced Unified Messaging services. He doesn't even have a way to get back to POTS. Here is how it should be done. Like Vonage but make it free from device to device over SIP, then minimal cost back to POTS. Then we want advanced services like TellMe. Oh and use the Cisco ATA 186. Like Vonage, because the thing supports 2 lines and ANY phone.

I am more interested in Google search via phone, as done by Google voice search. In theory, someone could set up a VoiceXML 2.0 service outside China's borders on a network such as Tellme Studio, avoiding the complexity of the Internet. Too bad the Chinese government has a monopoly on telco (which is why they block Net2Phone).

(Full disclosure: I have worked with most of these companies).

Telephony-based voice-recognition is going to be the Next Great Thing (tm). The main companies that are involved in this stuff are SpeechWorks, Nuance (both work on the main speech recognition/software stuff), HeyAnita (which works with Sprint), and TellMe.

Ay, 'tis the grand convergence of TuVox and Tellme Networks and all these other speech technologies leading us inexorably onwards towards the Technological Singularity.

Speech technology for Open Source Artificial Intelligence is now at a critical point, because the free Open Source Robot AI Mind has become capable of immortally self-rejuvenating perpetual mentation and therefore any Linux maven with speech-tech know-how may vie for the distinction of hosting the longest-running Artificial Mind and of equipping the AI with truly phonemic speech recognition and generation.

Checkout Tellme Studio. You can create a free account that allows users to dial in. You can dynamic menus and all that--you just point it to a CGI on your own box. I don't know if you could record a message over the phone, but you could setup a CGI where users post message online, and then callers can hear them over the phone.

IMO, Voice "Web" and "Portals" will never take off the way the article says. Portals have already been proven to suck in the normal web.

Where voice shines (and where Tellme is going) is in replacing the crappy IVR (touch tone) phone systems in which we are all so familiar. Imagine, instead of "Press 1 for this, press 2 for that, ..., press 9 for the other thing", you have, "Please say what you want, or help for a list of choices."

I've been designing voice systems like that for 2 years, and let me tell you that, although "dictation" recognition has a long way to go, recognition with a fixed set of a few phrases already works very well, even over the phone. Well designed grammars with even 100 or 200 possible phrases get very good recognition, no training required.

It's just a voice-response system, basically, with their own customized back end.

It is not designed to be anything more. It seems to me that everyone hopes that we'll all be able to surf the web with our voice, but the truth is it is really not practical. If you really want it, go buy a screen reader like JAWS (which is designed for the blind). VUI (Voice User Interface) and web site/GUI design are incapable of converging completely, simply because web sites are designed to use things like color and layout to ease navigation, and VUI's have to use a very linear interface. Technologies like SALT hope to combine the two, but it will never magically convert the web to voice without having some kind of backend conversion.

Have you tried the voice portal - tellme?

Pretty cool stuff IMHO.I think the voice technology may have been around a long time, but it has been making a lot of strides in very recent times...

VoiceGenie, Telera, and TellMe.

Browsing the web using speech for both input and output is stupid because of the limitations of human memory and the serial nature of how we perceive sound. Better alternatives are to speech enable processes, such as buying things or finding out information.

I could see controlling a web page by voice. With a VXML enabled web site, you could conceivable make each link a voice command, which would then control the browser GUI. I mean, imaging having ./ read back to you!

On a slightly different angle, it'd be great to have a system at home that did something like Wildfire.

Todd

And if you scroll to the bottom of the TellMe Extensions site, you'll see their slogan: "Hack the Phone". I'm waiting until someone creates an interface to a Kevin Mitnick site. *g* There's something wonderfully self-referential about that....

And if you scroll to the bottom of the TellMe Extensions site, you'll see their slogan: "Hack the Phone". I'm waiting until someone creates an interface to a Kevin Mitnick site. *g* There's something wonderfully self-referential about that....

I've been looking for uses of TellMe's VoiceXML stuff for a while, and now I have found it. It has superb audio quality for over-the-phone content, plus it can handle as many files as you want to stream, and it takes VOICE commands, no more dialing what song you want! Anyhow, I've already submitted this solution to them, and now its just a game of waiting and seeing what they think. I think its great, because it goes onto a 1800 number, its FREE, and can handle any number of simultaneous calls you would need. PLUS, you don't have to have the phone lines dedicated for a dial-a-song machine, you don't have to worry about equipment upkeep, and you don't have to worry about your last machine dying. Can't get any better. At any rate, hope they go that route, it's a good service.

This functionality would be trivial with Tellme (800-555-TELL; www.tellme.com). See http://studio.tellme.com/mys tud io/showdirectory.cgi and check out the GRAFF extension (extension 47233). Something like that, or the Tellme Announcements (audio, phone-based BBS, basically) would be perfect.

Tell Me has a product called Studio that might do the trick. You are given an extension. Users call 800-555-Tell and say "Extensions" and then your extension, like "12345". It uses VoiceXML and is very cool. TMBG might get too much usage to qualify for the free version though.
T. Bradley Dean

Tell Me has a product called Studio that might do the trick. You are given an extension. Users call 800-555-Tell and say "Extensions" and then your extension, like "12345". It uses VoiceXML and is very cool. TMBG might get too much usage to qualify for the free version though.
T. Bradley Dean

Well, I see a lot of people talking about VUIs being good for people with disabilities, etc. This however is NOT the breadth of the voice interface application possibilities. The fact is, there are approximately 1000 times as many phones in this world as there are personal computers. THAT is where the speech recognition comes in. If you have not, go to tellmeor to Carnegie Mellon's site and try out the applications there. The potential is incredible when you think about it. Nuance software is capable, for instance, of voice verification with less than 2% false accept rates, and .02% false reject. That is adjustable, and these numbers only represent the accept/reject rates where in the actual caller is unauthorized or authorized respectively.

http://studio.tellme.c om/home/documentation/example-111.html

It's a company that produces a "VXML" platform that let's you program a phone voice system. Sample code #111 is a rock-paper-scissors game. Basically, you call up and play against a whiny, simulated kid voice. You can even "say" your commands...

In order to view the source, etc. you need to get a free login of their "developer studio" - but if you don't want to do that, here's how to play:

1. Call Tellme Studio: (1-877-461-3597)
2. Enter T-R-Y-I-T (87948) as the Developer ID
3. Enter T-R-Y-I (8794) as the Pin
4. Enter the code example's 3-digit Code Reference ID (in this case, 111)

Enjoy!

Why not try Tellme ? You can get all of that info and more simply by speaking, from any telephone, all for the cost of a toll-free call (Read: nothing). You don't even need to go out and buy a new wireless device, install any software, replace batteries, add another belt loop, etc. :-)

> minimal Web surfing (stock quotes, weather,
> traffic, movie showtimes, driving directions?).

No need for a browser! I use my normal (CellOne SF) cell phone and one of the new "voice portals". I'm hooked on Quack.com, but there are others (e.g. TellMe ). A great thing about these is that I don't have to take my hands off the wheel (and my eyes off the road) to get the info while I'm in the car.

> wireless email

OK, until somebody does a good phone-based Text To Speech and voice recognition service, you're back to some other device.

In addition to my CellOne service, I also have WAP through SprintPCS (currently $75 for 2000 minutes/mo). I got the TouchPoint phone which has a larger screen than my Nokia CellOne phone, and is very easy to use. It's my data phone. I also got the connector kit so I can use the phone as a wireless modem. This morning I was using Yahoo Messenger on my Palm III. Works fine.

> Since it seems WAP is a ways off

I disagree. While many web sites don't yet support WML, everything you are asking for is already in place. Visto and Yahoo! already support WAP very well, if you want to do email from there.

One thing I have seen but haven't tried yet - let's say you are standing in the Good Fried Circuit store about to buy some new widget. You think to yourself, "is this a good deal? I should go home and surf the web for prices." Instead, while you're standing in the store, WAP into DealTime Mobile and do some comparison shopping.

There are more interesting WAP services springing up all the time.

Of course now I am travelling around with two cell phones (I like the CellOne service, I just wish they would add WAP), a Palm III and cables. But that's nothing compared to lugging around my laptop and the bulky ricochet modem, which I had to return because my house is outside their service area.