Tellme was doing some really cool stuff with multimodal right before they were bought.
Mundie is right though that the Tellme facility does offer Microsoft a kernel of Siri.
More fundamentally, TellMe and its competitors must convince consumers that they actually need such services.
US. Since TellMe, like its competitors, is free of charge, these calls are also free.
If Microsoft wanted to, it could really develop Tellme into something that could be its answer to Siri.
Tellme raised half a billion dollars from Jim Barksdale, Benchmark and all the smart Valley guys at the time.
Tellme had the vision for Siri before anyone had ever heard of Siri.
Microsoft was clearly thinking along those lines when it acquired much larger voice recognition start-up TellMe earlier this year.
With SYNC's unique architecture and the powerful Tellme voice service, there are no boundaries to the information users can access.
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"Imitation is the best form of flattery, so welcome to the party, " said Dariusz Paczuski, senior director of Tellme consumer services.
Tellme's software allows those with BlackBerry's or Samsung's Instinct smart phone to search for information using the company's voice recognition technology.
Tellme's Paczuski confirmed that his group is working on similar applications for the iPhone and smart phones running Microsoft's Windows Mobile software.
The Tellme experience has informed my advice to entrepreneurs ever since.
Flipboard Chief Executive Mike McCue is a well-known entity in Silicon Valley from his days at Netscape and Tellme Networks, and co-founder Evan Doll is a former Apple engineer.
The move helps plug a gaping hole in the iPhone's capabilities--voice recognition--while pitting Google against Microsoft, whose Tellme unit has long sought to bridge the gap between phones and the Web with voice recognition-enabled applications.
TellMe has opted for an advertising-supported business model, but also intends to charge e-commerce sites for building and maintaining their voice services and it wants to take a cut on every purchase that is made through its system.
Microsoft has a long history of delivering platforms and services to the automotive market, including in-car infotainment systems built on the Windows Embedded Automotive platform, in-car mapping services with Bing and the Microsoft Tellme voice application, and many other consumer solutions.
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Microsoft's sprawling business division now competes with Cisco for the business of digitizing office voice communications (bolstered by Raikes' acquisition of voice-recognition software specialist Tellme last March) and Elop will have to take on online threats to Microsoft's productivity software, such as the free online productivity tools offered by Google, as well.
Microsoft's sprawling business division now competes with Cisco (nasdaq: CSCO - news - people ) for the business of digitizing office voice communications (bolstered by Raikes' acquisition of voice-recognition software specialist Tellme last March) and Elop will have to take on online threats to Microsoft's productivity software, such as the free online productivity tools offered by Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ), as well.
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