TellMe Networks has released their mobile speech-enabled Java application for searching etc. — in beta.
Great app. Multimodal is the next step for user interfaces – I firmly believe that.
I wonder for how long the application will be for free. Running voice recognition is a very, very expensive feature to offer, from infrastructure to licensing; infrastructure-wise to support this application there will be dozens and dozens of servers. TellMe is probably using technology such as Nuance Mobile Solutions, which provides the voice recognition and voice-to-text horsepower, and TellMe provides the application itself (and content) etc. And engines such as Nuances don't come cheap at all. So I would suspect that while the TellMe application per-se will remain free, TellMe will start charging for the service, unless they do ads or similar; it is a matter of economics. Question is how much are you willing to pay for this service… how much per transaction or how much per month?
ceo
[Via TechCrunch]