With Q in decline and disarray, Carly (Fiorina) might well be acquiring the island of Atlantis - James C. Blasius
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Voice to text outfit more Spin than Vox
TROUBLED VOICE TO TEXT OUTFIT Spinvox is back in the news with reports that it is close to cutting a £92 million deal with its American rival Nuance.
The British company, which previously hit the headlines when the a BBC hack discovered that many of the voice messages which were supposed to be translated into text by its much hyped software were actually being converted by Indian call-centre workers, has also been mired in accusations of financial mismanagement.
A £30 million loan from one investor, which was due to be repaid by the end of this week, has been rolled over until the end of January 2010 in order to keep the company afloat until the acquisition has been finalised.
Massachusetts-based Nuance, which is best known for its Dragon Natuarally Speaking voice recognition software, and has deals with more than 40 mobile phone providers, will no doubt be eyeing Spinvox's claimed user database of 100 million users, as well as working relationships with some of the biggest telecoms companies in the world including Telefonica and Telstra is South America and Australia.
Spinvox, which was once lauded as one of the most promising tech start-ups in Britain, recently asked its staff to take part of their salary in stock options. It is also widely thought that initial investors, including the Carphone Warehouse and Invesco, have given up on ever seeing any of their cash back.
Voice over Internet giant Skype may also be keen to acquire Spinvox as it already uses the company's voice to text services, but according to sources, the smart money is on a Nuance buy-out, not least because the purchase will also take a competitor out of the market.
Naunce also tellingly held a career day at which 'talented mobile tech professionals' were invited to join a 'world class team' in Marlow and Cambridge. No prizes for guessing where Spinvox is based.
All in all it seems that the most impressive conversion Spinvox has yet managed is turning £150 million of investment capital into £92 million. µ
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To me it is obvious where you have scraped your article from, but you really should cite your sources here.
then I can see "Naunce" wanting to make some changes.
But let me check.
Google:
"Naunce: Dragon Naturally Speaking 10"
"naunce pdf converte 6r torrent download results"
I stand caurrected.
I wonder if their stuff is like Microsoft's (XP, speech version 5.1) where you have to say "peeriod" for a full stop and to invent a new word pronounced "perryod" but spelled "period" when that's what you want to write. Good puck then to new ounce, to sting fox, and to swipe as hell.
I've just had an idea....... as far as I recall, XP speech also doesn't let you spell using the phonetic alphabets like tango hotel india sierra. So why don't I make up my own? Maybe with made up words? But please let me know if it's been done. The point, of course, is to use distinct sounds for letters instead of the similar ones such as English bee pee dee and emm enn.