Nuance Communications, makers of Dragon Dictation and the voice recognition technology behind Siri in the iPhone 4S, have agreed to purchase competitor Vlingo.

Nuance Communications Inc. agreed to buy Vlingo Inc. in a deal that gives the developer of voice- command technology a system that can respond to spoken words with actions such as Internet searches.

Vlingo had a big boost in downloads after some iPhone users realized it could perform tasks that Siri has yet to offer, such as sending status updates to social networks like Twitter and Facebook by simply speaking into their iPhone.

Details of the upcoming acquisition have yet to be disclosed by either company. While this may be good for Nuance, having one fewer major player in the voice recognition space is sad for those who like dynamic, highly competitive markets.

Source: Bloomberg BusinessWeek

Wondering how to get Siri to better understand and pronounce your contact’s names? Sometimes adding phonetic spelling will solve the problem. A good example of this is my name. Siri is pronouncing it as A-lie, as in the cake is a lie. Here’s how to set up a phonetic spelling to a name.

1. You’ll need to go into whatever contact card Siri is having trouble with. In this instance, I’m editing my own.
2. Next you’ll need to tap Edit at the top of the contact card.

3. Scroll all the way to the bottom and click add field.

4. You will see two fields that allow you to add a phonetic first and last name. Fill them out. In this instance I put “Alley”. This seems to make Siri pronounce my name correctly.

5. Once you are finished click Done to finish editing your contact card. You should now see the phonetic spelling of the name underneath the contact’s actual name.
6. Try Siri again. Your name should be pronounced correctly now.

Has Siri had issues pronouncing any names for you? Did adding a phonetic spelling fix the issue?

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Now after watching the above video, it seems as if Google has made one heck of a voice recognition app. But where the heck has it gone?!

It’s pretty clear Google loves the iPhone, that is something we all know. Now why would Apple go ahead and delay their latest App Store app, Advanced Voice Search? Or have the reports of a Friday release been greatly exaggerated? The app was “expected” to make it’s appearance in the App Store this past Friday. TechCrunch is now telling us to look for it tomorrow!

Google was under the impression that the application would be live on the App Store on Friday (obviously, since they pushed all significant press attention to it). Sometime Friday they found out Apple wouldn’t be pushing it, despite the fact that Google submitted it for review earlier in the week and got a thumbs up for Friday. One source says they’ve had little direct contact with Apple during the review, instead getting their updates via the standard iPhone developer tool, which has said “in review” for the last few days.

So what is your take on this? Why did Apple delay this app from Google? Or do you think it was never slated to be released this past week at all?

Sound off in the comments!

[Via Techcrunch]

Although Microsoft themselves haven’t deigned to design applications for the iPhone directly (yet!), that doesn’t mean their various subsidiaries and hangers-on aren’t eyeing the platform. We already told you about the first zany Microsoft-tech to hit the iPhone, the Olympic-version of the Zumobi tiled-content application. Now Gizmodo brings word of another Microsoft-related company coming to the iPhone: TellMe.

TellMe is a more direct Microsoft subsidiary than Zumobi and it’s essentially a voice recognition company whose technology is already used by Microsoft in various applications (notably for mobile users, on their excellent Live Search app for Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and Symbian devices). They also have a stand-alone BlackBerry app that enables localized search. The basic premise is that you talk at your phone, your voice gets transmitted to the TellMe servers for very quick and very intelligent voice recognition and parsing, and finally those servers send your phone the information you asked for. All in all, it’s a pretty sweet system ….as long as you have unlimited data.

Our hope / assumption is we’ll see some voice recognition software that will not only handle local search (and integrate with Google Maps) but will also manage to search contacts. Pretty Please?

Hot on the heals of the Microsoft MacBU (makers of Office 2008 for Mac) talking iPhone SDK, comes word (via Fortune) that Microsoft’s recently acquired TellMe division, which specializes in voice recognition, is also eyeing Apple’s little market grabber:

“If the SDK supports [voice recording and location-based information],” [general manager Mike] McCue told Fortune in February, “we’re absolutely going to get a version out there as soon as we can, get TellMe out there on the iPhone.”

Of course, limits placed on the iPhone SDK may well make this impossible without the mythical “special dispensation” from Apple. We do know Bill Gates loves him some “natural interfaces”, though, and who knows how long it will be until VistaMob 7 or Surface ship, so is this like back in the early days when Microsoft got all GUI on Mac Excel? Or is Microsoft really all just about the software profits, man? What do you think?