By Michael Liedtke, Associated Press
February 05, 2001
Technology: Your request is their
command as computer services give tailored information over
the phone.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Adam Burg used to lug his laptop computer
to the mountains on his frequent skiing trips so he could
log on to the Internet and check the latest weather reports.
Now all he needs is his cellphone.
With a phone call to a toll-free number, Burg, 27, simply
asks for the latest weather report wherever he is and is told
in a matter of seconds.
If he wants to locate a nearby Chinese restaurant or find
out what's playing at nearby movie theaters, he can find that
out too by just speaking a few words into the phone.
Burg, a hard-driving technology worker, uses Tellme Networks,
one of several free, voice-activated services known as "voice
portals" that use voice recognition software to retrieve
and translate information from the Internet.
Taking their cues from spoken words, the services dispense
stock quotes, horoscopes, driving directions, sports scores
and other widely sought information over any telephone.
"For a mobile person like me, it's very useful,"
Burg, of San Francisco, said before catching a flight to New
York. "I already take my cellphone and Palm Pilot everywhere
I go, so it's nice not to have to haul my laptop, too, just
so I can get on the Internet."
Breakthrough for the Nontechnical
Too
Tellme and rivals BeVocal and HeyAnita aren't just designed
to appeal to on-the-go, technology-savvy consumers. They also
aim to attract the millions of people who aren't computer
literate.
The services have become a valuable tool for blind people
including Brent Bacome of Hanford, Calif., who finds it much
easier to call BeVocal than to try to fetch information from
the Web using special equipment that "reads" words
aloud from a computer.
"It's been marvelous for me. It seems to understand
me better than a lot of people do," said Bacome, 47,
a teacher's aide who uses the portal for everything from news
reports to locating the closest Starbucks coffee house.
With an estimated 2 billion phones in use worldwide, building
a voice portal seemed like a no-brainer to Tellme CEO Mike
McCue, who helped popularize the Web browser as a vice president
of technology at Netscape Communication.
After leaving Netscape in early 1999, McCue, 33, invested
more than $1 million of his Netscape nest egg and set out
to develop an easily accessible information source that would
be appealing to computer-adverse people - including his mother
in Indianapolis, who he says now dials TellMe 's access number
more frequently than he does.
"Once you use it a few times, you quickly understand
how easy it is," said his mother, Lucy McCue Allan, 60.
McCue's mom isn't the only one impressed with his company.
Venture capitalists so far have invested $238 million in Mountain
View-based Tellme .
Although there remain far more Web surfers than voice portal
pioneers, the service providers are quickly expanding their
reach.
Both Tellme and Sunnyvale-based BeVocal are accessible nationwide
and provide business directories and driving directions that
cover virtually the entire country. Tellme 's billboards are
plastered on the sides of New York City buses. And it is developing
plans to expand to Europe.
Talking to a portal isn't like having a normal conversation.
The portals only recognize certain words. The limited vocabulary
means users have to know each system's keywords to navigate
quickly.
The voice portals also have trouble making out words in a
noisy environment, or amid the static of a wireless phone.
When talking on a clear phone line, the portals are fairly
simple to use. Navigating around Tellme requires saying just
one or two words, such as "driving directions,"
or "restaurants," and the voice prompts guide you
the rest of the way. Get lost and the command " Tellme
menu" takes you back to the auditory equivalent of a
home page.
Regular callers can also create a "favorites" list
that makes it easy to go directly to specific information.
As work continues on new software and applications, voice
portals created for consumers and businesses are expected
to become big business.
The voice portal industry is expected to grow from $2 billion
in 2000 to $12 billion in 2005, with a projected 128 million
callers, according to the Kelsey Group.
As privately held companies, the all-purpose portals don't
disclose how many people use their services.
Text-to-Audio Conversion Useful
The Kelsey Group estimates users at slightly more than 1
million. Another 3 million are believed to use more specialized
portal services that translate e-mail messages and perform
other specific tasks.
"There is still a lot of evolution that needs to take
place," said Kelsey analyst Mark Plakias. "A lot
of what we are seeing now won't be around in a few years.
The portals today are where the Web was back in 1995."
The potential market for voice portals is spurring more Webmasters
to encode the content on their sites with "Voice XML,"
computer code that can be translated into English by voice
browsers.
Meantime, a San Francisco company, VocalPoint Technologies,
has developed a technology that can read HTML, the computer
code behind the Web, and convert it into voice applications
for businesses that want to create their own portals.
For now, Tellme and BeVocal are just trying to build a mass
market of customers that will entice businesses to advertise
on their services.
Both portals are still in their infancy. Tellme 's phone
lines opened in April 2000 and BeVocal began accepting calls
in June 2000.
Over the long haul, though, the companies hope to do much
more than provide consumers with a new way to extract information
from the Internet. Ultimately, they want to morph into the
launching pad for the phone calls of the future.
"We want to become 'Dialtone 2.0,"' McCue said.
In this scenario, voice portals essentially would supplant
the telephone keypad for placing calls.
Instead of punching in numbers to place a call, people simply
would pick up a phone and announce the name of a person or
business. Business calls might be answered by another automated
system.
As McCue sees it, this is the ultimate "killer application"
for portals -- free directory assistance that finds a business
or person for a caller, then connects them. The company plans
to make money from referral fees paid by businesses.
It's an ambitious game plan that the portal start-ups know
they won't be able to execute by themselves.
Already, BeVocal has licensed its technology to wireless
phone carriers Sprint and Qwest so they can provide voice
portals to their subscribers.
Even more wireless phone alliances are in the works, said
C. Mikael Berner, CEO of BeVocal , which is backed by $46
million in venture capital.
"We strongly believe every wireless carrier in the U.S.
will have some kind of voice (portal) by the end of this year,"
said Berner, whose company also operates its own publicly
accessible portal.
Tellme's backers include AT&T, which invested $60 million.
Eventually, says McCue, his company may well end up a business
partner with Yahoo and America Online, which last fall introduced
telephone portals of their own.
Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times
Associated Press Newswires (Also appeared in the LA Times
and the Canadian Press)
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