Wednesday, August 09, 2006

TellMe Is a Physical World Connection Company

I have discussed the idea of the camera on your mobile phone being your "mouse" for the physical world, but your voice could too. A voice browser.

A camera can recognize machine readabale identifiers (barcodes, images, RFID tags) and act as physical world hyperlinks.


The concept of saying specific words that would link to specific sites, or offer targeted information is also a form of physical world connection.

From BusinessWeek TellMe tries a new trick

Rather than PCs and browsers, they'd use their voices to navigate the Net. Founder Mike McCue called his vision DialTone 2.0.

Imagine how easy surfing would be if you could speak your search query, instead of typing it on your mobile.

TellMe is in discussions with Web portals, search engines, and wireless carriers about melding its voice products with their services and distribution.

With more than 2 billion cell phones in use world-wide (many with Web browsers) and carriers and Internet portals looking for new ways to make money, Microsoft and McCue are betting that voice-driven Web information will become much more popular.

"Your voice can be the mouse of the mobile phone," says analyst Seamus McAteer at researcher M:Metrics.

To see how TellMe works, try these out.

1-800-555-1212
411 for Cingular
1-800-GOFEDEX
1-800-MERRILL
411 for Verizon home phones
1-800-STOCKS1
1-800-DOMINOS, and more

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Try text search by Tellme... number is TELLM (83556)..
Business by Name: Need to find or call a business? Just text the business name, city and state. Ex: 'starbucks cambridge ma' or 'pf changs 75287'

Business by Category: Not sure exactly what you want? Text the kind of business you're looking for. Ex: 'coffee cambridge ma' or 'chinese 75225'

Help: For help, just text the letter "h" and they send you more instructions.