After all the discussion over the past few days about SpinVox as a company, we thought it would be a good time to talk more abot our technology and how it works. As one of our investors, Julie Meyer, pointed out only yesterday, we’re a breakthrough company…with a strong IP <http://juliemariemeyer.typepad.com/in_the_game_julie_meyer/2009/07/swinging-for-the-fences.html> , and as we’ve grown, we’ve tried to walk the line between getting people to understand that we believe we are on to something special with our technology, whilst also trying to maintain a level of protection for our IP and systems.

However, it seems that the interest we’ve built up in SpinVox over the past few years has now grown to such an extent that there is a real desire to know in detail about what’s under the bonnet.  So today, we’ve released a lot more information about our technology and our approach to creating the SpinVox VMCS – Voice Message Conversion System – and the amazing performance improvements it has delivered over the past couple of years.

So to begin with, did you know that VMCS already knows more than 99 per cent of anything a user is likely to say in English or Spanish? It contains over two billion words and phrases derived from the equivalent of 72 years of audio training – making it the world’s biggest body of spoken language. This knowledge system is growing rapidly and accelerating our ability to automate and improve accuracy levels. It is now so advanced that VCMS only requires two per cent of the Quality Control agent input it required two years ago. This means that to support millions of users we’ve reduced the system’s need down to just a few hundred per market, as our automation has taken over 98% of the task.

We’ll be talking more about the technology that powers SpinvVox over the next few days, so please keep coming back to read more.

Daniel Doulton, co-founder

Statement

Voice Technology Firm under fire

An Article by Rory Cellan-Jones
London, UK – 23 July, 2009
An article entitled `Voice technology firm under fire` was published by the BBC this morning written by Rory Cellan-Jones.  It is the latest in a series of previously fair and accurate articles the BBC has written about SpinVox, but on this occasion the article contains a number of allegations over its privacy standards, technology, evidence offered by a Facebook group and finances which SpinVox believes are both incorrect and inaccurate.

We have today extended an invitation to Rory Cellan-Jones to visit our headquarters and see for himself the extent of our automation, its accuracy and learning processes in action.  The BBC has previously been briefed and had access to SpinVox, its products including its speech team.

SpinVox commercial client base is international, predominantly in Latin America, Asia Pacific, North America and southern Europe.  It has no network operator services in the UK but offers free trial accounts such as the one Rory uses.

Privacy standards
SpinVox takes security extremely seriously and ensuring the protection of data is core to the SpinVox ethos. To date, SpinVox has successfully managed millions of conversions, and has no history of breach of security.

SpinVox has achieved two prestigious ISO qualifications: ISO 27001 (the international Information Security Standard) and ISO 9001:2008 quality certification. Both were achieved after an extended and intense period of audit and assessment by the BSI (British Standards Institute).  SpinVox has recently passed its regular inspection for ISO 27001; these happen every 6 months and SpinVox remains current.

SpinVox is fully compliant with the Data Protection Act 1998 (“the Act”) and ensure that its processes and systems are designed to comply with all relevant data protection legislation.  All information is held within secure hosting facilities, which are located in the UK.

SpinVox has a number of partners that assist in providing Quality Control to the SpinVox system.  These are located both within and outside of the EEA.  Based upon requests from carrier partners due to their own data protection requirements, SpinVox restricts to which of its partners information is provided.

SpinVox is permitted by way of the Act to process data outside of the EEA in compliance with certain requirements as set out in the Act.  SpinVox ensures by way of its contractual arrangements and by way of its continued ISO 27001 compliance and rigorous internal controls that these requirements are met.

SpinVox has been through due diligence with some of the largest carriers in the world together and institutional investors, including their legal advisers, covering our entire company and conversion system.  Following their due diligence and audits they have gone on to sign contracts with SpinVox, showing that we have the confidence of our customers and investors.

Technology
Claims have been made to the BBC, suggesting that the majority of messages have been heard and transcribed by call centre staff in South Africa and the Philippines. These are incorrect.

SpinVox has delivered world-leading breakthroughs in speech recognition and related technologies, developed by its Cambridge–based Advanced Speech Group – a highly qualified team of speech scientists working together with the world’s leading speech academics.  This team is considered to be one of the largest commercial speech R&D teams world-wide.

In the past two years, the Cambridge ASG team has applied the latest research to create state-of-the-art techniques that today deliver a system that outperforms any equivalent speech technologies on accuracy, speed, scale, reliability and language range.

VMCS is continually evolving via a live-learning process, enabling an ever-increasing proportion of automated conversions.

One of the key technology breakthroughs applied within VMCS enables it to ‘know what it doesn’t know’. VMCS can then refer a message to a human for assistance as required.

All speech technology requires training.  This requires humans to correct and inspect some audio and text to provide the system with corrections.  SpinVox not only does this real-time, but in total security through anonymisation, encryption and randomisation.  Other speech systems do this in off-line mode using humans to inspect inputs and outputs, SpinVox does not.

Agents working in a Live environment have no knowledge of customer, individual, product, market or use – the data is fully locked down and guaranteed by the in-house developed tool suite.

SpinVox clients – who include some of the world’s largest network operators – carry out extensive due diligence. We have always been absolutely clear in our communications that humans form an important component of our learning system – they are a key component by which the system learns.

Facebook post
The Facebook and accompanying blog page to which Cellan-Jones refers was posted an operator 18 months ago at an Egyptian call centre – RAYA – and clearly demonstrates that they were using training data – a model system that SpinVox uses to evaluate the quality of call centre support before contracting with the supplier to handle real user data.  The training system will require individuals to convert full messages in order to establish their speed and accuracy.

This would not be the case on a live customer system where should the VMCS system need assistance in learning, operators would only be presented with portions of any message for assisted learning.

Subsequent to the trial RAYA was not retained to handle Live data.   The web page has been up for in the region of 18 months and we have not chosen to pursue its removal as it does not breach any of our security conditions.

SpinVox, in its history has trialled with over 50 partners of which today we have selected only a handful of the most professional and ISO-security certified to be our partners.

Today, SpinVox now requires only a few hundred agents per market as its system is capable of automatically converting all standard messages without learning assistance.

Finance
In just five years, SpinVox has established itself as the world leader in speech conversion technologies, systems design and establishing a brand new category in communications – voice-to-content.

SpinVox is growing fast – it currently has over 30 million live users and will service over 100 million by the end of 2009 with 28 carriers across five continents. It currently operates profitably and will be cash-flow positive during 2009.

SpinVox routinely offers its employees the opportunity to benefit from the success of the company through share ownership either through award of options as part of an employment package or at anniversaries, through save as you earn schemes and occasional offers. Our current offer has been taken up by over 50 per cent of the company.

SpinVox has raised over £100m and continues to have funds available to support its continued growth internationally.

This week, while I’ve been off on my travels, we’ve had a young chap by the name of Ben Paine (picture above – say hello Ben) in and around the office helping out with whatever he can and trying to learn as much along the way.

The poor devil got lumped with me a few days back and, as part of his work experience/internship, I’ve asked him to put a blog post together outlining how he feels about his time here to date.

This is Ben’s first ever blog post and has taken the task very, very seriously – all comments and feedback is welcome… so without further ado,

Ben, over to you:

———————————————————–

Hi guys, I’m Ben

Over the past six months I’ve been putting significant effort (along with Jeff Wellstead, Lizzie Bewick and Nicola Jones) into securing a work experience placement for 2 weeks at “SpinVox” in Marlow.

Was it worth it??

Of course it’s been worth it; the people, the progress and the atmosphere inside the office make the experience something I will never forget. However the journey to and from is something I probably will forget.

To start with, let me put you in my shoes; you have never worked before (ever), you arrive in Marlow at 7.30 in the morning (nice and early), dressed in your finest suit ready to make your all important “first impressions”. You find a cafe (of which the high street is densely populated) buy a hot drink and a paper, and begin to calm yourself down.
Until it suddenly dawns on you that you are costing this business thousands of pounds- the time the staff take to show you what’s what, the work those staff can’t do because you need to be looked after, the time it takes the staff to sort out the inevitable problem you get yourself into during the first day. All this adds up to valuable money; of which any business cannot afford to lose, particularly during this economic climate.

The first part of this adventure, is meeting the team who will accompany you along your journey. Department by department, person by person, you rapidly appreciate the vast variety of people within this rather small office. You quickly come to the realisation that you will have a great time with some, others you may not enjoy your time with as much; everyone though does share one ambition in common; the strong desire to make sure you have a worthwhile two weeks.

Now you come to the part you might just feel like you have some experience at; the work. However you are soon proved wrong, your brain is flooded with new skills; using computers, designing PR boards and new filing systems. My first job did involve redesigning the PR board (which all of 200 Marlow based employees walk past daily) – clearly a very important job, not one to get wrong. But yes you guessed of course I got it wrong. I did however successfully dismantle the board, but selecting the most recent and relevant articles wasn’t quite so easy. I had somehow managed to mount all current articles from any digital and non- digital media about SpinVox – only then was I to realise there were far too many – explaining the “ shove everything up and see what it looks like” feel to the board.

Not what the PR team of the year were looking for; it was no longer their Pièce de résistance; it was now more in the category of visual pollution. Fortunately for me my second attempt, with more help from the department themselves, did however portray a positive, clear and consistent message- illustrating to me (and hopefully others) just how much positive media attention this business generates. Corr Blimeyy!!

Other jobs soon piled up thick and fast, occupying my precious time here. Some of which took my interest more than others. I accepted the jobs that no one wants, but has to do once in a while: filing invoices, photocopying, or even dashing out for the much desired (by most) “Starbucks run”.

These less enthralling jobs were soon forgotten as I found myself attempting more complex and brain engaging tasks; for example testing new software, internally refurbishing computers and finally discovering the power of “Twitter”, not only for individuals, but also for companies. The fact that digital PR (social media communications) is already crucial and that its importance will continue to grow, if businesses are to communicate successfully with their new increasing online audiences.
To you, these jobs may not seem any more enticing than photocopying or filing; but to a technology enthusiast like me, this was rapidly becoming heaven.

How lucky was I??

So, what about the team venturing through these harsh economic conditions, how were they coping with this new obstruction (that to them has just happened to suddenly arrive in their daily lives)?

Well from my observations, the answer would have to be brilliantly.

I found myself working in at least four different departments, adjusting my still overwhelmed mind to befriending anyone I happen to meet or talk to whilst working my way through daily assignments. Luckily I was successful in finding common ground with most, ranging from daily politics, to” The Ashes” or which celebrity you look like. This large group of people were providing me with “life experience” as well as work experience; of which I didn’t bargain for. Their willingness to interact with me has taught me so much more than just how to data cleanse or how to test software.

I have learned how to actively participate in a successful, progressive, working environment- not included under the “skills I have learned” section in my record book. Surely these attributes are infinitely more valuable than learning how to work a photocopier, or how to reorganize clothes racks.

So any downsides, any reason I possibly wouldn’t want to put myself in this situation again?

No. Not really. Only public transport defies me of a perfect work experience; mind you, public transport provides a constant irritation in most people’s daily lives. If I was a year older and could drive would not have to mention this but hey, everything has a catch, right?

Lastly then, to conclude, what have I, a 16 year old, who hasn’t previously been near this company, learned about this business, the way it functions, and where it’s going? If I were to give an honest answer it would be too much to write down.

If I had to compress then; I have seen clearly how this business has the finest, committed staff to make this business function as efficiently as possible, I can see how from being here two weeks, this business is quickly developing, growing globally and making the speech to text market its own and finally most importantly how the owners are showing unswerving faith in the troops, galvanising them into the forthcoming venture into the unknown.

Yes. You heard it right. Those awesome folk over at Audioboo are DEFINITELY working with our SpinVox Create API programme to create all sorts of audio -> text wonderments.

This is, I must admit… a bit of a crowd pleaser

There have been a fair few tweets and emails exchanged about this. Audioboo has a lot of fans you see and – fortunately enough for us – those same fans just so happen to be big fans of SpinVox too!

“When will SpinVox work with Audioboo?”
“Imagine if Audioboo had SpinVox plugged in?”
“Will someone at SpinVox PLEASE get involved!”

OK ok ok! We listened!

I hinted at it myself a few months ago and then Audioboo went and mentioned it in the Guardian Digital Blog ‘PDA’, and today?

Well we’re kind of making it official.

Audioboo – if you didn’t know – aims to become the ‘Twitter of the spoken word’ via its (actually quite fantastic) audio recording and broadcasting platform. If you know anything about SpinVox at all then you kind of know where I’m going with this.

Basically, our API is being implemented in the back end as we speak and will very soon be used to automatically convert speech to text across Audioboo’s applications

Hang on, I’ve got a couple of quotes here…

Audioboo CEO, Mark Rock, said: “The deal with Spinvox is of immense importance to Audioboo as we roll out both our API and business model. With the Audioboo API, any developer will be able to build their own mobile and web applications to record to Audioboo and SpinVox integration will be an important addition to that which we can deliver simply and quickly through the SpinVox API.”

Wait… there’s more

“On a wider scale, we have already begun to roll out Audioboo Pro accounts for media companies, these increase the recording time available and add a variety of web-based tools – such as moderation- to help companies manage content. Spinvox integration will be an additional feature for Audioboo Pro, allowing journalists a simple way to record draft articles and have them automatically converted to text and sent to their news desks.”

Audioboo was established in March 2009, and, already, more than one Audioboo audio recording (boo) is being made every five minutes. The Audioboo.fm website is attracting more than 100,000 unique users, RSS and iTunes links every week with over 1000 hours of audio having been uploaded by the more than 30,000 registered users.

Wow.

BRING ON THE BOOS!

Find out more about Audioboo over on their website, or better yet – just download it onto your iPhone. We love it.

.

Well… Ok.

Maybe not THE Amy Winehouse.

;D

But still, it’s good to see the SpinVox Speech Mobsters on the move at Glastonbury again, do you remember seeing them there last year?

Thanks for the photos Matt, we love them.