We just released an update that improves the sound of the default text to speech voice; a few developers have been testing out Allison in recent weeks and now we’ve not only released it for everyone, but also made it the default voice.
If you have an app that’s using the default TTS voice, try giving your app a call and give it a listen.
We’ve talked a bit about how text communications are on the rise, replacing a lot of the voice self service that companies have traditionally offered. Text doesn’t always replace voice, however. With platforms that can work over both voice and text, it’s possible for text to augment the voice channel.
Take the example of directory assistance. Back when I was a kid, you called directory assistance, gave a business name (to a real human!) and they gave you the phone number. You wrote down the number and gave the business a call. Over time, companies started offering a service where they’d transfer you to the number, letting you skip writing it down and dialing yourself. With mobile phones, this service became even more important, as you’re often calling for assistance when you can’t stop and write something down.
An issue sometimes arises, however, when the number is busy. Or you get disconnected and have to call back. Since you didn’t pick up the number from the directory assistance but were transferred by them, you end up having to call back, ask for the business again, and get transferred again.
Multi-modal to the rescue.
Imagine if your phone company didn’t just transfer you to the number, but also sent you a text message with the business name, number, and address. That’s a multimodal conversation. You start out communicating in one channel (voice) and end up finishing the conversation or getting supplementary information via another (text).
As an example of multimodal applications, I’ve updated our Tropo Local Search demo. If you call from a mobile phone and look up a restaurant, you’ll get a text message containing the contact information of the listing you selected. Give it a try by calling (415) 894-9965 and finding coffee, pizza, or some other type of food in your neighborhood. And of course, the code is available in our documentation or on Github.
At Voxeo, we love clouds but we don’t have our heads in them all the time. We realize not every developer wants to write applications in XML. There are lots of developers with lots of ideas, but they want to write their apps in the languages they’re already using. So we decided to do something about it – we created Tropo.
Tropo is an application platform that enables web developers to write communication applications in the languages they already use: Groovy, Ruby, PHP, Python and JavaScript. Tropo is in the cloud, so we manage the headaches of dealing with infrastructure and keeping applications up and running at enterprise-grade. Tropo is simple to deploy, requires no contracts and no up-front setup costs. With Tropo developers can build and deploy voice and telephony applications, or add voice to existing applications.
Previously developers had to write voice applications in VoiceXML. This has left out developers who either did not want to learn VoiceXML, wanted the flexibility of working in other development languages or have been working in VoiceXML for 10 years and are ready for a change.
Already, developers are having fun with the platform… take a look at the sample applications and you’ll see voice mashups that read you various news feeds (or your Google reader)… an app that gives you the ETA of trains on the BART system… location mashups using Yahoo!Local… weather examples… even a Monty Python quote server. (UPDATE: March 2, 2011 – A better place to start today is our Quickstart guide.)
With many applications still to be written and many existing applications that can be enhanced by adding voice, Tropo is unleashing the creativity of the web developer community on the communications world. We can’t wait to see what happens. Please visit www.tropo.com for more information and to sign up to get started today!
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