If You Suspect Theft or Carjacking, Press 7

FREMONT, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE FEATURES)--Aug. 13, 2002--Automated telephone systems can be frustrating enough under ordinary circumstances. But if your car gets stolen, the system that calls to notify you had better not add to the stress, since you bought it for reassurance and security.

So is the thinking at San Francisco-based Televoke, whose systems track and control vehicles and other valuable assets.

Televoke was founded by Rick Bentley, who wanted a way to track important things after his motorcycle was stolen years ago, and realized that miniaturization, GPS tracking, and the cellular phone network now makes it possible. He hired Brian Krause of Adducive, based in Fremont, to make sure the telephone notification service was well done. A demo is available at http://www.televoke.com, and information about Adducive is available at http://www.adducive.com.

Bentley and Krause worked on the Portico virtual assistant at General Magic. While Televoke's system does not use speech recognition or the virtual assistant metaphor, it does use similar principles to create a natural friendly voice that avoids the illogical and redundant instructions other IVR (interactive voice response) systems suffer from.

Voice talent is important. Televoke's voice belongs to Stacy Kray. Even though Kray had no voice-over experience two years and thousands of recordings ago, she had the reassuring voice Bentley was looking for and her background as a singer gave her the control needed for this demanding and sometimes repetitive assignment. Selections from her first CD are on the web at http://www.stacykray.com.

But voice talent isn't the only key to success, according to Krause. "Companies put a lot of effort into finding the right voice and making clean recordings, but pay very little attention to scriptwriting," Krause says. An MIT-educated software engineer himself, he admits that programmers make things easy to program at the expense of making things easy for the users. "It's a challenge to see how few individual recordings you can get away with. But that's not always the best way."

An efficient programmer, for example, will specify just one set of recordings for numbers no matter how many contexts the program needs. This makes the system robotic, and also difficult to understand because of how the recordings are spliced together to make sentences.

Instead, Krause and Kray have created one set of recordings for times and another one for phone numbers. The intonation makes them fit into the sentences where they will be used. They're written people say them aloud, not the way they appear in writing. "Eight fifteen Tuesday morning" is preferred to "eight fifteen a.m. on August thirteenth."

Attention to the big picture as well as the details helps, too. Krause supports Televoke's commitment to making things as simple for callers as possible. "We just added a few steps for the vehicle installers so that the web interface will no longer show customers options for features they don't have," he says. "Sometimes, I'd counter resistance if I suggested adding a step like that, but Televoke suggested this on their own."

Krause has been a user interface designer for twelve years, and has worked with speech for five years, even teaching his clients' customers how to develop over-the-phone applications. "A broad background is especially useful in a role like mine," he says.

About Adducive

Adducive provides software user interface design and rapid production services including prototypes for telephone, handheld, and desktop systems. Since 1998, its clients have relied upon founder Brian Krause and his network of talent for effective and polished interfaces in multiple languages. Clients include Televoke, SAP Labs, Nuance Communications, and Silicon Valley start-ups. For more information, visit http://www.adducive.com.

About Televoke

Televoke "connects people to things" by providing an automated web and telephony service platform that enables businesses to develop and deliver location-based safety, security and productivity applications for their customers worldwide. With Televoke's wireless software platform, individuals and enterprises can track and control valuable assets, and be proactively notified through any Internet-connected device or telephone when a valuable asset or loved one is at risk. Televoke was named by CNET as a "Top Ten" private wireless company to watch in 2001. For more information, visit http://www.televoke.com.