“The razor toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygo centrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human.”
That’s the phrase that Ben Cook, the world’s fastest text messenger, was handed in the first head-to-head competition with a voice-recognition computer. The complicated 27-word message was entered by Ben’s lightning-quick fingers and by voice, using Nuance voice recognition software.
When the cell-phone screens cleared, seconds later, a new world’s record was established for fastest text entry — by the computer.
“I’m a little humbled to have been beaten like that,” the 18-year-old Provo, Utah, man said with a smile after the race.
The exhibition was sponsored by Nuance Communications, a company that hopes to deploy its new software across several wireless carriers next year.
The first message, “I’m on my way. I’ll be there in 30 minutes,” took over a minute with the predictive software, 29 seconds with a Blackberry and 16 seconds for the record holder. The voice recognition software finished it in under 8 seconds.
The final message was a duplicate of one that brought Cook a world record. It read “The razor toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygo centrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human.”
Cook, a teen from Utah, holds the Guinness World Record for the fastest entry of the 160-character standardized message on a mobile device. His record for the standard message is 42.22 seconds. Cook finished it in 48 seconds this time, some six seconds more than his record time.
Nuance Mobile Dictation crushed the world record time, completing the message in 16.32 seconds. The 20-foot screens set up on either side of the contestants flashed red to signal the finish.
Nuance installs voice recognition/response systems that sound human. Amtrak’s reservation system uses it, as do many Fortune 500 companies. Nuance envisions voice recognition as a tool for drivers and others who want to send text messages, instead of calling or leaving a voice mail, but don’t have time to sit and type.
The Nuance Mobile Speech Platform, lets users can speak natural queries or dictate SMS or email. Users can also instruct their mobile devices, by voice, to read back incoming messages using Nuance’s text-to-speech technology.
Verizon Wireless says more than five billion TXT Messages were sent in September 2006 - the most TXT Messages ever sent in a single month in the United States. The growth in TXT Messages reflects an increase of 150 percent - or an increase of three billion messages a month - for the same time period in 2005.
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