Charlotte-based CLT Blog connected the dots and found that Amazon has purchased a speech recognition startup called Yap, according to an SEC filing. While neither company has made a formal announcement - and the filing doesn't even mention Amazon by name - it says that Yap merged with a company called "Dion Acquisition Sub," which has the same address as an Amazon building.
With the Kindle Fire about to hit stores, it's tempting to compare this acquisition to Apple's purchase of Siri. But is that a fair comparison? Yap transcribed voicemail. Siri was based on a DARPA-funded military artificial intelligence project. With some consumers hesitating between the iPad and the Kindle Fire, there's bound to be a feature race. But speech-to-text input is one thing. The AI-powered future of search is another.
Once a communication device for futuristic Sci Fi, now it seems as though video calling is ubiquitous. On the heels of the video conferencing component of the new Google Plus comes the announcement today from Facebook headquarters that video calling will now be available on the social networking site as well. Google Plus Hangouts and the new video chat in Facebook join a plethora of other offerings, most notably perhaps Apple Facetime, the video calling feature introduced as part of the iPhone 4 last summer.
As Apple, Google, and now Facebook scramble to offer their users video chat options, it's clear that these companies are looking to meet a huge perceived demand for the functionality. We all want to bypass simple voice messaging for a face-to-face video conversation, right?
Well, maybe.
I think I could live quite happily without the "phone" part of my mobile phone. Other than taking press briefings and calling my parents, I rarely use my iPhone for actual calls. I'd rather text or IM. But according to survey results released today, it looks like my preferred methods of communication don't match most Americans'.
A survey of 2300 adults, conducted by Harris Interactive and sponsored by the VOIP service Rebtel, found that Americans still overwhelmingly prefer to communicate by voice. 74% of respondents said that the phone was how they keep in touch with friends and 81% said it's their preferred method of communicating with family members.
The video and voice calling service Skype is coming to a TV near you, thanks to a new partnership with Comcast, a leading provider of cable TV services here in the U.S. This morning, the two companies formally announced a deal that will allow Comcast customers to use Skype's HD video calling on their HD television sets, made available through a Comcast-provided adapter box which works in conjunction with an HD video camera.
Customer trials of the new service will begin in "the coming months," but no exact date was given for the service's wider launch, only that more details will be made available "later this year."
Maybe Microsoft's multi-billion dollar deal for Skype wasn't such an outlandish deal after all. Because according to a recent poll conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, the popularity of Internet phone calls has jumped dramatically, with 5% of Internet users placing a VOIP phone call on any given day.
The survey found that almost a quarter of American adult Internet users (24%) have placed a phone call online. That's 19% of all American adults.
Although Steve Ballmer insisted that Microsoft would continue to support Skype on non-Microsoft platforms when it acquired the VOIP company earlier this month, it looks as though that may not necessarily be the case. And the first casualty seems to be Skype's integration with Asterisk, an open source telephony platform.
Digium, the open source project's maintainer, has informed its users that Skype for Asterisk will no longer be available for sale or activation after July 26. According to the notification, Skype has opted not to renew the agreement that allows Digium to utilize Skype's proprietary software in order to turn the open source Asterisk into a native Skype client.
Skype released an update to its Android mobile application today which fixes the recently reported security issues in addition to bringing 3G calling to U.S. users. Earlier this month, reports of a security vulnerability in the Android version of the app were found which could compromise personal information, including a user's name, phone number, chat logs and more. According to Skype, no reported examples of malicious applications misusing this information have been found, but the company will continue to monitor the situation after the fix has been rolled out.
However, the more exciting news for U.S. users of the Android application is support for 3G calling, which had previously been limited to select Verizon phones.
The Y Combinator-backed startup TellFi announced today that it was launching a virtual phone service that would give one year of free service - and a local phone number - to anyone in Canada.
Since Google Voice dropped its Canadian service in in 2009, there have been no free virtual phone options to customers and businesses in that country. and TellFi, which also offers service in the U.S., has stepped in to fill that gap.
Once a competitor of Skype, the video-streaming company Qik was acquired by the VOIP giant in January. But it appears this hasn't ended the development of Qik's live-streaming software, as Qik is launching a new iPhone app today.
Qik Video Connect offers video streaming and video calling - available for real-time viewing or recorded and sent as a video message. The app will also allow you to post live video links to Facebook and Twitter.
The popular VOIP service Skype will start displaying advertising in its Home tab beginning this week.
The company has just announced the change, insisting that, "the Skype experience is our first priority." The move to bring advertising to the Skype environment comes as the telephony company makes its move for a planned IPO this year. While Skype has an estimated 177 million active users, only around 8.1 million are paying subscribers. The addition of advertising will give the company another revenue stream.
