SpeechTechMag.com: Speech Poised to Dominate Mobile Market

SpeechTechMag.com: Speech Poised to Dominate Mobile Market

Posted using ShareThis

Spinvox in a spin over privacy worries

via telecoms.com

Spinvox in a spin over privacy worries

UK-based speech to text specialist Spinvox has been caught up in controversy this week over its data protection standards, as well as questions about the company's finances.

It has long been known that Spinvox uses people to transcribe messages under some circumstances; when the translating software fails to understand the message, for example. But recent claims by employees past and present go so far as to say that in fact the majority of messages are transcribed by call centre staff in Africa and Asia.

This has raised questions over data protection, and it now appears that the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is breathing down Spinvox's neck over the firm's claim that it does not transfer any data outside of the European Economic Area.

Despite extensive funding, it is the burden of running these call centres that is understood to be putting a strain on the company's finances, and it emerged last week that Spinvox staff had been asked to take share options in the firm instead of some or all of their paycheck for July and August. The firm is also known to be looking at other "cost cutting measures," which many take to mean job cuts.

The BBC on Thursday reported that Spinvox has also been locked out of a London data centre over payment issues, which lends credence to the speculation that the firm is under financial pressure.

Rapid growth has been blamed for the company's financial problems, and it should be noted that this same rapid growth was once a source of pride for the upstart firm. In June, the company signed a deal with Spanish carrier Telefónica that will see its text voicemail service made available to Telefónica's entire Latin American customer base. The carrier has almost 125 million customers in the region.

Telecoms.com spoke to one of Spinvox's partners, BestBefore Media, which uses the Spinvox API to do audio transcriptions as well as offer a service it describes as the "twitter of the spoken word," known as AudioBoo.

Mark Rock, CEO of BestBefore said that his firm used Spinvox because they were impressed by the quality, but added that he was surprised to discover that people managed most of the transcription manually. "The line we were spun is that humans were only used where necessary," he said.

Rock's greatest concern also centres on privacy issues as his firm offers transcription services used by journalists which may involve sensitive information, leading him to "look into the data protection issues." However, Rock noted that Spinvox is not mission critical and that there is "always somewhere else to go" if Spinvox were to run into trouble, financial or otherwise.

FlyCast Raises $2.1 Million For Mobile Radio

clipped from mail.google.com Joseph Tartakoff 02:00 PM FlyCast Raises $2.1 Million For Mobile Radio Radio streaming service FlyCast has raised $2.1 million in a round of funding, according to an SEC filing. A spokesman would not say who had participated in the round or detail the company’s plans for the new cash. Earlier this year, FlyCast hired radio industry veteran David Kennedy as its CEO. keep reading »

Shiny New Business

via Start-Up Blog

Have you ever had a new girlfriend? You can't stop thinking about her. You want to make it work. So you start putting in an extra effort to give this relationship the best chance of success. You start buying new clothes, ensuring you look your best, maybe even start going to the gym everyday. In this situation everything matters. You want to spend every waking moment with her, because it is so enjoyable, so much fun, the future looks so bright, the whole thing is so new. At this time we can't imagine the joy of being involved in this thing ever diminishing.

Eventually, the emotions driven by newness wear off. It doesn't necessarily mean we love our new girlfriend less, we might even love her more. It's just a different set of emotions. And this new set of emotions often mean we, are less enthusiastic to prove ourselves, and or make it work – she moves from a chase, to a catch.

Photo by Sami

A new startup isn't much different. Just re-read the above two paragraphs and think back to when you got going on your latest startup. It was a lot like the new girl friend. It was love. The emotions and behaviour have a strong analogy. What matters as entrepreneurs, is having the ability to keep up the momentum when the newness wears off. And there is nothing more certain than this. It will become less fun, less exciting and more arduous. It's especially evident when we need to undertake administrative tasks with our start up – or keep door knocking after many rejections. It's our ability to stay focused on 'old projects' that will determine our ultimate success.

Start-up Cost Projections For First Time Entrepreneurs

Q: At a pub in Los Gatos, CA a casual conversation with some young, first time entrepreneurs lead to an interesting comment: "...the business plan outlines our estimated (operational) expenses but how do I know an investor is not going to look at these numbers and say...'are you f'ing kidding me' and  right then and there we can loose this guy (his interest)..."How can an entrepreneur build these projections most accurately and in a way that will maintain credibility with potential investors?  What could be defined as the "best practice" for entrepreneurs dealing with this subject? A: (Brad) As I've said in the past, I've never met a financial plan for an early stage company where the revenue side was correct.  However, I've met plenty where the cost side was correct (or – at least – appropriate).  The key here is simple – you want to have a cost structure that makes sense, covers all the bases, but doesn't assume a big revenue ramp to be supportable. If you are in the very early stages (e.g. a few people and an idea), recognize that your investor is likely going to be funding you for about 12 months to see how things play out.  The biggest mistake first time entrepreneurs make is that they fall prey to the idea that they need to put together a five year P&L forecast and cash flow projection.  I can guarantee – with 100% certainty – that this model will be wrong.  As an investor, I don't really care about this; rather I want to see how you are thinking about getting to "the next stage" of your business.  You get to define the next stage, what it'll cost you to get there, and what things will look like when you get there. If you are a first time entrepreneur, go find an experienced entrepreneur to act as a mentor.  She can be a first line of feedback your cost model and likely will know a few "financial people" that can help you put together a simple, yet credible model.  In addition, when you spend time with potential investors, don't try to bluff.  Tell them it's your first time building a model like this and that – while you had help – you know you lack experience and are looking for feedback.  Try to engage the investor in the process. Listen the potential investors feedback and iterate on your model. Simple message – don't be afraid to ask for help.

You are subscribed to email updates from Ask The VC To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Inbox too full? Subscribe to the feed version of Ask The VC in a feed reader.
If you prefer to unsubscribe via postal mail, write to: Ask The VC, c/o Google, 20 W Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

The Origins Of Text Messaging

By Tricia Duryee - Mon 04 May 2009 02:41 PM PST

With U.S. cellphone owners now sending an average of 357 messages a month, and Twitter pretty much standardizing thoughts of around characters, it makes you wonder how the technology ever got started?

The LA Times answers that question today after interviewing Friedhelm Hillebrand of Bonn, Germany, who helped usher in this new era of communication. Hillebrand's research stretches back to 1985, when he used his typewriter to compose random sentences to determine that messages of 160 characters were "perfectly sufficient." He also found that often postcards contained fewer than 150 characters, and messages sent through Telex, a popular telegraphy network for business professionals at the time, were also usually about the same length, he said.

After determining a message's ideal length, he had to create a market. As chairman of the nonvoice services committee within the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), a group that sets standards for the majority of the global mobile market, they decided that all phones and providers must support short messaging service (SMS). Next, since networks didn't support data at the time, Hillebrand needed to figure out how they would be sent. He thought to leverage a secondary radio channel that had been used only to alert a cellphone about reception strength and incoming calls. Hillebrand told the Times: "Most of the time, nothing happens on this control link. So, it was free capacity on the system." Initially, they could fit only 128 characters, but with a little tweaking, they squeezed out room another 32 characters to hit the perfect number.

The LA Times reported that today Hillebrand, who lives in Bonn and manages Hillebrand & Partners, a technology patent consulting firm, never got rich from participating in the concept. Although if it's any consolation, he does get an honorable mention in the Wikipedia entry on "SMS."

Shai Agassi on Electric cars - AWESOME!

6 Tips for Taking an Enterprise Company to the Masses

via Found & Read

6 Tips for Taking an Enterprise Company to the Masses

Posted: 29 Mar 2009 09:04 AM PDT

Ed Mallen, President and CEO, TimeDriver

One of the key sales criteria in the enterprise application space -– and one of the greatest development challenges -– is the ability to scale. At TimeTrade Systems we have met that challenge, creating a successful business selling SaaS-based applications that enable very large organizations and businesses to schedule and manage millions of appointments.

So, when we saw an opportunity to leverage our technology and deep scheduling knowledge to help individual web workers, it was a no-brainer. From a development standpoint, we'd already solved the scalability problem, and we felt designing a web-based personal appointment scheduler should be easy – and tailor-made for viral distribution. Through the process of designing, supporting and marketing TimeDriver, a Web-enabled personal scheduling solution, we've learned some interesting lessons. Here are our recommendations for any company looking at similar opportunities for growth.

1. Focus, focus, focus. Carving out a separate development team was the best way to initially develop the product. Trying to leverage our enterprise developers on a "part-time" basis for the web 2.0 product would have meant that both products suffered.
2. Balance ease of use with true business value. We had an imperative to create an easy-to-use solution that would also empower individuals to personalize their appointment invitations. In addition, we needed to ensure that users knew that the solution was not a toy and would help them better manage and drive their consulting or small businesses. Describing a range of use cases proved tremendously useful in helping users understand ways to apply TimeDriver.
3. Be prepared to face the challenge of changing the norm. We were asking end users to adopt a new way to book appointments. To drive rapid acceptance, we made the product available on free trial. Even though we see our new approach as easier, there's always resistance to adopting a new way to perform an old task. We found that providing live support encouraged the early adopters –- which included a broad mixture of recruiters, HR professionals, lifestyle coaches, faith-based groups, insurance agents and sales people — to make TimeDriver their business appointment scheduler.
4. Listen to feedback from end users. Web 2.0 end-users are very vocal and very passionate, eager to share their feedback and experiences. We've leveraged their feedback when considering new features and applied them to our enterprise product, as well. There are no bounds to end-user creativity and ingenuity, and being prepared to listen will help direct new capabilities and leverage new sales opportunities.
5. It always takes longer than you think. We leveraged Web 2.0 technologies for development, and some delays in the process were simply out of our hands. For example, we chose the Dojo toolkit to ease the development of cross platform, JavaScript/Ajax-based applications. As Dojo is Open Source, we ended up waiting for releases to support certain functionality. Be prepared to allow for extra time in your development cycle, especially if leveraging open source tools.
6. Pick a "no turning back" deadline. Software is never perfect and every development team has a natural tendency to want to continue to "tweak." We decided to launch TimeDriver at DEMO '08, so we had to be ready for prime time by then. This strategy had dual benefits. Not only did it provide a definitive date to development, but the developers also received very public recognition for their efforts.

Ed Mallen is the President and CEO of TimeTrade Systems, 25-year software industry veteran, surfer for many decades and an avid cyclist and runner.

100 Exciting and Innovative Lectures for Every Kind of Entrepreneur

via http://onlinecollegedegree.org/2009/03/18/100-exciting-and-innovative-lectures-for-every-kind-of-entrepreneur/

100 Exciting and Innovative Lectures for Every Kind of Entrepreneur

Posted by Site Administrator in Learning Resources on 03 18th, 2009 | no responses

Successful entrepreneurs are a special breed of people with endless drive, passion, optimism, and determination. The following lectures address these folks with ideas on what entrepreneurship is, experience versus education, career advice, tips and skills, examples from personal entrepreneurial journeys, and advice for getting started. Browse through these video lectures, some only a few minutes long and others lasting an hour, to find information from professionals who share their experience and expertise.

Defining Entrepreneurship

Learn how these entrepreneurs define entrepreneurship with these videos.

1. What is Entrepreneurship?. Jeff Hawkins discusses what an entrepreneur is and how to use being an entrepreneur as a tool for success instead of as a defining characteristic.
2. Entrepreneur-in-Residence. Danny Shader describes the difference between those who are "product picker" entrepreneurs and those who are not.
3. Who are Entrepreneurs?. Tim Draper describes his view of what entrepreneurs are.
4. Mercenaries and Missionaries. Take a look at this definition of what entrepreneurs are and what they are not.
5. What Kind of Person Are You?. Are you a private or public person? Examine your personality as it relates to what it means to be an entrepreneur.
6. The Reality of Entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship should be done out of love and passion, not a drive for money.
7. What is an Entrepreneur?. Gordon Ringold shares his simple idea behind what an entrepreneur is.
8. Qualities of an Entrepreneur. Elon Musk offers his description of an entrepreneur.

Experience and Education

The great debate over whether education or experience matters most for entrepreneurial success continues with these lectures.

9. Experience is Overrated. Guy Kawasaki shares his unpopular view that the best entrepreneurs are young and inexperienced.
10. Real World Learning. Trip Hawkins discusses his first venture as a teenager and describes how success comes from failure and real-world learning.
11. To Get an MBA or Not?. Consider this position of not getting an MBA, but learning to manage through hands-on experience instead.
12. Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught?. Fern Mandelbaum gives her answer about what can and cannot be taught.
13. Successful Entrepreneurs. Understand why compelling ideas are more important than the desire to be an entrepreneur and how education plays a role in this idea.
14. Balancing Science and Business. Learn what Marc Fleury says about embracing more than one type of education to improve your success.
15. The Global Future. Learn what John Doerr says are the important areas to study to ensure success in the global environment.
16. Finding Your Strengths. Vic Verma discusses getting a technical education as well as what type of education may best serve you as an entrepreneur.
17. To MBA or Not: Technical Degree or MBA?. Find out what Gajus Worthington says about this question based on his experience.
18. The Value of Business School. Find out this entrepreneur's opinion about the best part of business school and why it is important.
19. Education: Importance of Peers. Understand why making friends and maintaining relationships during school is important for entrepreneurs.
20. To Get an MBA, or Not?. Vinod Kholsa explains why an MBA is not the only way to get the necessary experience to be a successful entrepreneur.
21. Importance of Experience. Find out what Jeff Hawkins says about why having experience is important.
22. Starting a business during undergraduate study. Joe Liemandt explains why this time of life is an excellent time to start a business.

Career Advice

Many successful entrepreneurs started first in a more traditional career. Find out what career advice some of those entrepreneurs have to share.

23. Career Advice: Five Takeaways. From taking risks to integrity, find out what John Roos says are the most important points for a successful career.
24. Career Advice. Debra Dunn and Randy Komisar offer their advice for graduating students that includes following your passion, continuing to learn, and learning to overcome fear.
25. Career Advice. Michael Goldberg describes how successful entrepreneurs follow their passion and never stop going forward and what areas he believes will be successful in the near future.
26. Career Advice. Brook Byers advises entrepreneurs to work with a company that will provide them with the experience necessary for their solo success.
27. Career Advice. John Doerr offers several specific pieces of information that he feels are invaluable to creating a successful career.
28. Pyramids, Not Ladders. Learn how making a lateral career move can be as valuable as making an upward one as you gain more experience and knowledge before moving up.
29. Creativity vs. Control. Learn what experts say about mapping out career decisions versus taking opportunities that come up along your career path.
30. Growing with Hewlett Packard. Debra Dunn explains why she decided to get her MBA and work with HP as a stepping stone to her success.
31. Lessons for Failure. Karen Richardson relates how her failures throughout her career have shaped her success.
32. The Career Path to Becoming a Venture Capitalist or an Entrepreneur. Learn why you should start your career at a company in sales and why you should never go into investment banking at the beginning of your career.
33. Career: Learning from Failure Early On. Failure and persistence are often important to success and are the keys to how this man succeeded.

Advice for Success

Take this advice from successful entrepreneurs who have gone before you.

34. Stay Interested. Learn how you become an interesting person by being interested in what is going on around the world.
35. Advice to Aspiring Entrepreneurs. Evan Williams suggests to start small and go bigger and explains why he believes this is the best way for entrepreneurs to get started.
36. Following Your Gut. Geoff Davis instructs students to go for big dreams despite any lack of money.
37. Persistence and the Notion of the Big Idea. Trip Hawkins advocates sticking to your beliefs and stepping away from what everyone else is doing to find your success.
38. Adding Value to Companies. Bill Campbell describes how adding value to companies at every stage of their development is important.
39. Following Your Goal. Passion, good judgment, and having fun are among the key elements discussed here to achieving your goal.
40. Work/Life Balance. Roger McNamee discusses why entrepreneurs cannot ignore family along the way.
41. Passion and the Customer. Vic Verma uses real-life examples of why it's important to consider the customer when building your business.
42. Overcoming the Fear. Randy Adams discusses preparing for the worst in order to deal with whatever may happen along the path to becoming an entrepreneur.
43. Confessions of a Serial Entrepreneur. Mitch Thrower discusses entrepreneurship and details what you can develop to make the most of your success.
44. 10 Business Secrets. Mitch Thrower lectures at University of San Diego and shares his ten business secrets important for making it big.
45. The Value of Broad-Based Leadership and Experience. Understand the importance of bringing together a leadership team with a broad set of experience and all of whom have a passion for what they are doing.
46. Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs. Networking and learning from those within your network are the focus of this advice.
47. Importance of Family In Building a Start-up. Find out what Frank Levinson says about keeping family among the top areas of focus when you begin your business.
48. Tips for the Entrepreneur. Larry Page offers five tips including don't settle, have experience, and it's okay to solve hard problems.

Skills for Entrepreneurs

These videos offer many important skills for entrepreneurs.

49. Skills of an Entrepreneur. Leadership and a dynamic management style are the keys to being a successful entrepreneur, according to Chong-Moon Lee.
50. How Do You Find Your Passion and How do You Pursue It?. Entrepreneurs looking for direction should watch this lecture to learn how to focus their energies.
51. Perseverance: Sticking to Your Beliefs. Entrepreneurship can be a struggle, but Guy Kawasaki explains how perseverance and passion will give you what you need to succeed.
52. Challenges for an Entrepreneur. Learn the value of understanding yourself and recognizing faults as a key to success as an entrepreneur.
53. Self-Awareness. Entrepreneurs must be able to look honestly at their strengths and weaknesses in order to succeed.
54. Passion for Work. Learn how a passion for what you do translates to entrepreneurial success.
55. Persistence Pays Off. Repeat long enough and you will be in the right place at the right time because of your Persistence
56. Learning to Take Risks: A Personal Story. Larry Page relates his personal experience of learning to take risks in order to achieve success.
57. How Do You Teach High-Tech Entrepreneurship?. Learn what education and abilities are best developed and how to develop them for entrepreneurial success.
58. Choosing the Path that is Right for You. Jeff Raikes describes attributes that are important for career success–among them, passion and the ability to get things done.
59. Creativity. Learn how you can find your creativity as an entrepreneur with this seminar lecture.
60. What Special Factor Makes an Entrepreneur Successful?. Learn what qualities Fern Mandelbaum feels are important for entrepreneurs.
61. 5 Critical Skills Entrepreneurs Need. Jerry Kaplan details the five skills he feels are important, including leadership, communication, and being a team player.
62. Skills for Social Entrepreneurship. Learn what Debra Dunn says about collaboration between non-profit and for-profit to help address social issues and the skills each brings to this joint venture.

Learn How Others Succeeded

These lectures offer the real-life stories of successful entrepreneurs.

63. The Founding of AgraQuest. Pam Marrone discusses how she turned her lifelong love of bugs and her upbringing in a green environment into her successful business.
64. Strengths of Silicon Valley. Find out what John Roos says about how Silicon Valley was built upon diversity and being allowed to fail.
65. Silicon Valley: Changing with the times. Roos discusses how Silicon Valley's ability to keep up with the changing times has promoted its ongoing success.
66. Silicon Valley: An Ecosystem. Successful entrepreneurs should tap into the ecosystem of knowing all the people involved and learning and growing from each other that has been a key element to the Silicon Valley's success.
67. Coming to Silicon Valley. Lee relates how he went from his family business in Korea to Silicon Valley and his eventual success in business.
68. Savi Technology Creates the Internet of Things. Vic Verma details how he went from being a graduate student at Stanford to President and CEO of Savi Technology.
69. The Early Career of a Serial Entrepreneur. Randy Adams discusses the beginnings of his career as an entrepreneur.
70. The Career Path of a palmOne Executive. Ken Wirt details his career history that lead to his leadership at palmOne.
71. Video of Cory Doctorow's talk. This Cambridge Business Lecture video features this accomplished journalist who speaks on Digital Rights Management, copyright, piracy, and his experience in business.
72. Matching Interest with Business Opportunities. Learn from this real-life example how matching opportunity with interest and ability is an important aspect to consider.
73. From Start Up Coach to Venture Capitalist. The experience here is an important reminder to young entrepreneurs to always keep options open and stay in tune with what is going on around them.

Female Entrepreneurship

Find out how female entrepreneurs have succeeded in a typically male-dominated environment with these lectures.

74. A Member of the CEO Minority. Understand what it's like to be a woman CEO in a male-driven environment.
75. A Girl Among Geeks. Karen Richards describes growing up among men and engineers and how that affected her role as a female entrepreneur.
76. Women and Entrepreneurship Introduction. Linda Hill, a professor at Harvard Business School, discusses HBS's the real-life business models it uses as case studies.
77. Joline Godfrey: Social Worker to Entrepreneur. Learn how this woman went from non-profit to for-profit while keeping the business of educating young women at the forefront.
78. Taran Swan: Business Development at Nickelodeon. Follow the success of this woman's journey.
79. Donna Lopiano: Women's Sports Foundation. Ms. Lopiano describes the entrepreneurial journey of Billie Jean King as she founded several ventures important for women in sports.
80. Enterprising Women Exhibition . Meet four successful business women and learn how they made it big in the world of business.
81. Women and Economic Development. Study women entrepreneurs across time and in various countries with this video lecture series. There is also a close examination of the women in India who developed the Self-Employed Women's Association.
82. Founding of Teach for America: Entrepreneurs Envision What Others Say is Impossible. Kim Smith describes how she and her partner overcame adversity to create a successful non-profit.
83. Examples of Social Entrepreneurs. Kavita Ramdas describes examples of successful female social entrepreneurs.

Getting Started

The following lectures offer helpful advice on getting started.

84. The Role of Networking to Find the Best Resources. Learn how Komisar relies on his network for resources, and then how he gets to know the people to determine if he wants to commit.
85. Starting out as a Sole Founder. Michael Goldberg discusses the disadvantages of starting out on your own as well as what it takes to make a shift from venture capitalist to entrepreneur.
86. Establishing Credibility. Learn how establishing credibility can be difficult, especially as a non-profit working with foreign governments.
87. Establishing Culture and Values Early On. Find out why, as an entrepreneur, it is important to establish the culture and values early.
88. The Role of a Consultant vs. the Role of a Virtual CEO. Discover what Randy Komisar says about the differences and why these roles, and the differentiations, are important.
89. Personal Connectivity Cycle. Judy Estrin discusses the importance of connectivity on an individual level and what it means to entrepreneurs.
90. Data Sources. This lecture at Georgia State University describes where entrepreneurs can find important data when gathering information for their businesses.
91. Testing New Ideas. Entrepreneurs can find ways to test their ideas prior to going out with them, and this lecture discusses how.
92. Business Structures. Learn about the different types of corporate structures in America.
93. Start Up Steps. Find out what important steps you can take to get your start-up business going.

Funding and Marketing

These lectures discuss funding and marketing your ventures.

94. Investment Timing: Early, Late or In-between. Janice Roberts discusses investment timing for entrepreneurs from a venture capitalist's perspective.
95. Selling the Dream. Find out how Guy Kawasaki approaches marketing your idea by evangelizing what you have.
96. Bootstrapping. Learn how to creatively raise money to get your business going.
97. Angels, Banks, & VCs. Explore these three ways to raise money for your entrepreneurial venture.
98. Finding Partners & Market Entry. Explore funny market blunders as an introduction to entering the marketplace and also discover how best to find a partner for your business.
99. International Supply Chains. Learn how to get your product from you to the customer on a large scale basis.
100. E-Marketing. Internet marketing and the entrepreneur are closely linked, so learn how best to take advantage of this opportunity.