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Does GOOG411 Lead The Way On The Mobile Web?
 By Barry Welford
Expert Author
Article Date: 2007-08-24
We have previously suggested that eventually we would all be Talking Our Way Around The Mobile Web. Doing any serious navigation on a cell phone keyboard is unpleasant.
Cell phones are designed to work with sound. Of course there are challenges in understanding voices against a noisy background.
Nevertheless it seems the only viable long-term solution.
The opening keynote speaker at SpeechTEK 2007 may have presaged some powerful support for this view. SpeechTEK brings together the people who build those telephone voice response systems that are becoming a ubiquitous part of our lives.
The speaker, Mike Cohen, Google's speech technology group manager, focused primarily on his company's speech-powered mobile program, GOOG411.
Cohen was previously with Nuance, the speech technology powerhouse.
Cohen noted that there are nearly twice as many mobile phone users worldwide (2.76 billion) as there are PC users (1.56 billion). Clearly developers must find a way to expand information-gathering technology to cell phones and PDA devices.
When searching on the mobile Web, users want specific information fast.
To tackle this challenge, Cohen suggested speech technology has an advantage over traditional means of data entry.
Cohen underlined the importance of keeping an "obsessive focus on the end-user." If and when the Google Gphone (GooPhone) appears, that end-user focus will undoubtedly be predominant.
If speech technology is the way this is achieved, the Gphone will have an even bigger impact on how the mobile Web develops than we have seen with the Apple iPhone.
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About the Author:
Barry Welford, President of SMM Strategic Marketing Montreal works with business owners and senior management on Internet Marketing strategy and action plans to grow their companies. He is a moderator at the Cre8asite Forums and writes on current issues on the Internet and on the Mobile Web in three blogs, BPWrap, StayGoLinks and The Other Bloke's Blog.
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