Just Like (a) Human

(With credit to GigaOm.)

I was checking my news reader this evening, since I decided to not go back to the shelter immediately after work. I came across one header in my reader that caught my eye, and caused me to frown for a good few minutes, simply because I’m not sure how to react. The gist of this header is, Microsoft now has their hands on TellMe.

For those of you unfamiliar with TellMe, they started years back as a voice-driven system that allowed users to navigate menus on a phone, to perform various actions, and to gather information. Here’s an example call flow I use when calling TellMe (1-800-555-8355 / 1 (800) 555-TELL):

TellMe: Hello, and welcome to TellMe! Main Menu. Here are all the features that you can choose from…
Xial: Weather.
TM: Weather? Got it. To return here at any time, just say “Main Menu”. / Weather. Say a City and State, or Enter a Zip Code. For example, you can say “Dallas, Texas”.
X: Three Three Six Seven Two.
TM: Tampa, FL. To stop this forecast, just say “Stop”. At 6:12 PM, it’s 76 degrees, with a gentle breeze. Tonight –
X: Stop. Main Menu.

It’s very much like holding a meaningful conversation with a computer, like the start of the technology we’d think of seeing in Star Trek.

TellMe’s been working on their VoiceXML Platform for years now, and even had a section long ago called Extensions, where people could actuallly publish their own VoiceXML applications to those calling the TellMe service on their phone. One could experiment with much of the apps published, and easily spend a half hour talking to the phone just playing a game (I was guilty of this — someone had done a VoiceXML version of Dope Wars / Drug Wars I would spend hours a day just playing game after game of this, because I was addicted years ago), or trying out ideas that ended up making it into the mainstream TellMe application in some way, shape, or form.

Finding out that Microsoft now has a hand on TellMe has me slightly wary, since it is Microsoft, after all, but, given the details that are published at GigaOm, this just might be a good thing.

[tags]TellMe, Microsoft, VoiceXML, GigaOM[/tags]