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Nuance Communications, Inc., a provider of touch and speech interfaces, recently announced that Jawbone’s new Jawbone ERA Bluetooth headset integrates Nuance’s (News - Alert) innovative Vocalizer Network connected text-to-speech (TTS) to deliver a unique Caller ID by name feature via Jawbone’s MyTALK platform.

Jawbone ERA, which enables consumers to load an address book onto the headset’s serial flash via Jawbone’s unique MyTALK platform, was fully integrated and developed through the Nuance Mobile Developer Program. It was also the first mobile device deployment of Vocalizer Network.

An intelligent caller ID, Jawbone ERA announces the caller’s name in an incredibly natural sounding voice through a combination of pre-recorded names and Nuance’s innovative Vocalizer Network TTS for all other names. Nuance has now optimized Vocalizer Network for HTTP-connected mobile devices to deliver readback of names, numbers and more from just about anywhere.

“The Caller ID by Name feature of the Jawbone ERA takes the hands-free experience to an entirely new level, with callers’ names announced in an amazingly natural sounding voice. We have pre-recorded thousands of the most common names for this function, but there is a long tail of over 100,000 proper names that continues to grow everyday, and for this we needed a high-quality TTS solution,” said Travis Bogard, Jawbone’s vice president of product management and strategy, in a statement.

“To ensure a top-quality experience that was seamless with correct name pronunciation, regardless of whether the name was pre-recorded or generated with TTS, we chose Nuance’s Vocalizer Network. And the Nuance Mobile Developer Program enabled us to quickly and easily integrate and deploy Nuance’s connected TTS for use in Jawbone ERA,” added Bogard.

“Jawbone’s unique Caller ID by Name feature is yet another example of how we’re empowering developers to innovate and differentiate through the power of voice technology,” said Michael Thompson (News - Alert), senior vice president and general manager, Nuance Mobile. “By letting developers customize and rapidly integrate our proven voice capabilities into virtually any device or application, we’re fostering a compelling ecosystem of intuitive mobile solutions.”

Recently, TMC reported that Nuance launched VoCon Navigation, a ready-to-integrate pre-packaged voice application module for embedded one-shot destination entry.

Rahul Arora is a TMCnet contributor. He has worked as an editor and freelance writer for several reputed organizations in India. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Janice McDuffee