Microsoft released their Visual Search beta on Bing this morning. It’s pretty cool, particularly if you are a visual person. I played around with some of the categories they had listed to show off the application. One category, dog breeds, really shows how this software shines, compared to doing searches on Google. I’ve done this search before when trying to show what certain breeds of dogs look like, for my kids. Visual search is cool. Click on dog breeds and up come boxes with the individual dogs in them, just like if you pulled open a big file drawer and could see all the files. Go and try it.

Easily laid out to help, the screen allows you to sort by size of dog, either by clicking on a “sort by size button” at the top, or sliding a scroll bar labeled as such down the side. On the left side are popular subcategories that some one might want to click on, such as “most obedient”, “hypoallergenic”, etc., Below that are sub categories under the heading “narrow the search”. For example, categories include grooming needs, size, temperament, etc. Once you narrow your search, then you get links to the best choice for what you are looking for.

I loved it. But it’s more than that. The visual component is what got me. Let’s take “popular books” as a category. Sometimes you know the author or the name of the book, but sometimes you have just seen a book around and can’t remember either of those. Click on “popular books” and up come dozens of covers. I instantly recognized several my fellow airplane passengers had been reading last week on a plane with me.

While just playing with it seems like a toy, it does have the potential for enhancing unified communications and mobility applications, particularly multi-modal applications. Giving people visual choices, even on a small screen can speed up their ability to make selections, and the visual component spurs memory recall. I’d like to see how developers will incorporate this function into applications.

For now I have to quell my desire to go to Barnes and Noble.com rather than work. :) I now have to quell my desire to play longer with Visual Search. It’s fun and useful. Oh oh, I hear “greatest movies” calling me. Back to work.

Tags: ADA communications, Mobile UC, Unified Communications by Nancy Jamison
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Last week I blogged about Mike McCue’s planned departure at the end of June from Tellme and Microsoft’s plans to fold Tellme and all other things speech into one division under Zig Serafin. This includes Tellme, a research team developing text-to-speech in Beijing, and the Redmond-based Speech Components group. I’ve since talked to Microsoft and a few others, so here is a brief update on the reorganization of speech at Microsoft.

Something I sort of glossed over, but thought about after I posted, was the importance of this new group having Zig Serafin at the helm. For those of you who don’t know, Zig has spent a decade at Microsoft and is the co-founder of the Unified Communications (UC) group there. In my opinion, this is extremely important. From an industry standpoint, speech technologies have been gaining traction in pockets or silos for two decades. Speech technologies first showed up with applications such as speech-enabled IVR, and voice-activated dialing, then with directory search, and dictation. In the past two years, as unified communications evolved, speech started to proliferate everywhere from mobility applications to more complex natural language voice search. I’m not forgetting other uses such as translation either, but we have seen a more concentrated melding of multiple types of speech technologies such as speech-to-text for mobile users sending messages and in applications such as unified messaging (a component of UC) as part of the UC push.

Making Zig the leader of the combined speech groups, given the results of his efforts in UC, is a big statement as to the commitment Microsoft has made, and will continue making into the development and deployment of speech technologies across applications and platforms. For those of you who have listened to keynotes given by Gates and Ballmer in the past, this isn’t new, but it is a reminder of how far Microsoft has come in speech and its commitment to it.

As part of this, Microsoft is creating a speech center of excellence. This is really to focus their efforts on developing speech across business and consumer products. Tellme’s research and installed base of products is a big part of this as they have vast experience in many of the recipients of speech research including IVR, multi-modal applications, directory assistance, etc.

Finally, Tellme is staying put. I mean that in a physical and philosophical way; maintaining their office in Mountain View and their brand. I had hoped this was the case, and had thought so as the spring Tellme announcement really showed how far Microsoft and Tellme’s product and research groups have come working together. Folding all of them into the same division just breaks down any work barriers further. Also, that joint effort is producing a broadening of speech deployments across more products as was shown by Tellme’s Windows Mobile 6.5 announcement. This deeper melding into one group reminds me a lot of Active Voice folding itself more tightly into NEC, which I blogged about in April.

Tags: ADA communications, Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information by Nancy Jamison
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I frequently blog about Tellme due to their speech recognition and self-service offerings, and I liked the relative autonomy which Microsoft gave Tellme after the MS acquisition 2 years ago.

However, I sense a change is in the works for Tellme Network, because its’ founder and GM, Mike McCue, is leaving Tellme at the end of June. It’s been reported that part of the change will be an overhaul of Microsoft’s speech recognition efforts, and that Tellme and all related areas will be combined into one business unit at Microsoft under the leadership of Zig Serafin.

Read more on my blog, http://www.jamison-consulting.com/blog/

Tags: ADA communications, Unified Communications Information by Nancy Jamison
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