In the near future, this may not be a Sprint only service. In an interview with Group Product Manager for Google Voice, Vincent Panquet, CNet has confirmed that they are in talks with other service providers to bring the service to more people.

“We are having discussions with other carriers about this,” said Panquet, though he did not mention any specific providers by name. I guess that eliminates any questions as to whether or not the Sprint agreement was an exclusive deal.

“Sprint integration has worked really well,” Paquet said to CNet. “We have, since Day One, had a steady stream of people signing up for it.”

Google Voice’s key feature is it’s voicemail transcription service, which allows you to view and manage your voicemail through your e-mail account, seeing the messages visually and eliminating the need to call your voicemail every time you have new messages.

The convenience of this unique feature may have been something that drew people towards Sprint when choosing a service provider. The company will now have to look to other services to set them apart.

If you are unfamiliar with Google Voice, this video shows you all you need to know.

Many who have watched the prologue have complained they can’t hear what Bane is saying because of his muffled and garbled voice. There are those who have defended the effect, telling people to simply pay attention and try to listen. All of the hype has led to a swell of controversy, which has manifested in parody videos.

While many have gotten a laugh at the effect and the controversy surrounding it, the executives at WB are taking the problem seriously. According to Hollywood Reporter, sources involved in the movie say that WB asked Nolan to alter the effect so people would be able to understand Bane. The director said there are plans to alter it some, but will not do a complete re-work.

“Chris wants the audience to catch up and participate rather than push everything at them. He doesn’t dumb things down”

The response on Twitter has been mixed, with many people simply making fun of the effect.

The upside to all of this controversy is that Muffled Bane has gotten his own Twitter account (@MuffledBane)

So, can you understand what he’s saying; in the prologue and on Twitter?

According to Apple, Siri works by “sending data to a remote server.” The folks at Applidium identified that server, set up a fake authorization, and in no time had Siri sending data to their very own HTTPS server.

So basically all we had to do was to setup a custom SSL certification authority, add it to our iPhone 4S, and use it to sign our very own certificate for a fake “guzzoni.apple.com”. And it worked : Siri was sending commands to your own HTTPS sever! Seems like someone at Apple missed something!

The implications of this are pretty obvious. By cracking open the protocol, Applidium was able to use Siri without ever speaking through an iPhone 4S. This means that it would be possible to get Siri to work on any device.

Today, we managed to crack open Siri’s protocol. As a result, we are able to use Siri’s recognition engine from any device. Yes, that means anyone could now write an Android app that uses the real Siri! Or use Siri on an iPad! And we’re goign to share this know-how with you.

There’s only one roadblock, and it has to do with specific iPhone 4S “identifiers”:

The iPhone 4S sends identifiers everywhere. So if you want to use Siri on another device, you still need the identfier of at least one iPhone 4S. Of course we’re not publishing ours, but it’s very easy to retrieve one using the tools we’ve written. Of course Apple could blacklist an identifier, but as long as you’re keeping it for personal use, that should be allright!

The full description of what they did is available on their blog, where they challenge developers to get to building apps. “Let’s see how long it’ll take Apple to change their security scheme,” they say.

Rumors swirled about earlier this month that Apple was planning on bringing Siri to older devices, notably the iPhone 4. They quickly quashed that rumor, unsurprisingly.

And the identity of the British Siri has been uncovered. His name is Jon Briggs and he has never worked for Apple.

Briggs is a tech journalist turned voice-over specialist. He recorded the voice of “Daniel” for Scansoft, a company that merged with Nuance, who in turn provides Apple with content for Siri.

Here’s what Briggs has to say in his interview with The Telegraph:

I did a set of recordings with Scansoft five or six years ago, for text-to-speech services. Five thousand sentences over three weeks, spoken in a very particular way and only reading flat and even. Then they go away and take all the phonics apart, because I have to be able to read anything you want, even if I’ve never actually recorded all those words.

The first time that he realized that he was the voice of the UK Siri was after seeing a demo on TV.

Here’s the funny thing: Apple contacted Briggs and asked him to refrain from talking about his involvement as the voice of Siri. So Briggs apparently told Apple “hey, I don’t really work for you” and promptly did an interview with The Telegraph.

He’s not bitter, however. He says that he is a fan of Apple products and thinks that Siri is a real “game changer.” And his famous voice is not just featured on Siri, but on Garmin, TomTom, The Weakest Link, and navigation systems for cars like Audi and Porsche.

He’s made some comments on the situation on Twitter:

Here’s Briggs’ voice in action:

In other Siri news, Apple has quashed rumors that they are bringing Siri to older devices, namely the iPhone 4. And yesterday we learned exactly how Siri knows to activate when you hold your phone up to your face.

Siri is a “personal assistant” for your iPhone 4S, and is completely accessed through voice recognition. According to Apple during their keynote, you can ask Siri just about anything and receive an answer. Here’s the AI explaining what she is:

User: Siri, what are you?

Siri: I am a humble personal assistant

The idea of asking Siri questions has led to entertaining tweets, such as:

Along with the tweets poking fun at Siri, many have been questioning whether or not Siri is a strong enough headline feature to purchase an iPhone 4S. As with all announcements of this magnitude, many have been cheering for Siri and will buy the new handset on release date. Others are skeptical of the feature and question how it will work in noisy locations, and just how useful it will be.

It’s like they read the comment section of the Google Public Policy blog post about all this the other day. Their letter reflects some of the anti-Google sentiments there—especially the undercurrent of “Why are you stifling competition, Google?”:

Of course, as a company whose motto is “don’t be evil,” Google should have no objection to abiding by the Internet Policy Statement and other net neutrality principles it advocates with respect to Google Voice and all of the Internet-based services, applications and content that it offers. And as an agency committed to “preserving a free and open Internet,” the Commission should show no hesitation in ensuring its Internet principles are applied evenhandedly to the “network providers, application and service providers, and content providers” – including Google – who are expressly subject to them today.

As the Wall Street Journal aptly reported, however, the call blocking incident with Google Voice has exposed Google’s true agenda for adulterating the Internet Policy Statement: “The Internet giant wants cumbersome [net neutrality] rules applied to everyone—except Google.” In other words, Google wants the Commission to rig the game in its favor by rewriting the Commission’s broadband principles to cover only broadband Internet access providers, while giving Google a free pass to discriminate against whatever calls, websites, applications or content it pleases.

Don’t hold back, AT&T. Tell us how you really feel.

As I said MOnday, “While it’s no surprise to see AT&T and Google on opposite sides of a neutrality battle, the roles they’re cast in this time are at least a little humorous—Google as the one trying to restrict access and AT&T as the fair-minded, open-access alternative.”

What do you think? Is Google trying to evade neutrality, or keep costs down? Is AT&T the disadvantaged underdog or are they just trying to maintain their stranglehold?

Full text of the letter:
at-t letter to FCC over Google Voice Oct 14

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Along with all of this the rumor mill firing up again about what will happen to Skype. BusinessWeek reports that there was more focus than usual at the annual meeting yesterday on Skype’s place in the eBay fold. Considering the fact that just about everything else is up in the air other than the original core business model this is no surprise. It is not the first time that there has been talk about the possible sale of Skype either.

Turns out the Net phone calling software pioneer enjoyed 20% net income last year, on $550 million in sales in 2008. And unit chief Josh Silverman says the plan is to double sales in the next three years, while maintaining those profits.

Aggressive talk that serves to make one wonder if the Skype division is preening to attract suitors. Talk about more corporate sales and more of a concentration on mobile usage surfaced as well. Most interesting is the talk about putting more effort into Skype’s paid services. I honestly have never considered moving beyond the free services myself.

Back in 2005 ebay bought Skype for $2.5 billion (with a b) and they simply have not seen the return and synergies that were anticipated. CEO John Donohue even went so far to say that “We were wrong” on the projected impact and value.

The bottom line is that the language was carefully constructed to make the point that there is nothing stopping a sale of Skype. You have to suspect that offers would be entertained. Who would be the best fit for this opportunity? Is it even an opportunity or would another buyer run into the same trouble that eBay did? Put your opinion up for bid and we’ll see if anyone is buying.

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The service looks a lot like Gmail for voicemail, although you don’t have to be a Gmail user to use it. It lets you retrieve transcripts of your voicemail, archive and search all your sent and received SMS messages, and you can make calls directly from Google Voice’s interface. The calls are free in the US, and cost a small fee internationally.

Watch this video from Google:

So here’s the really cool part for us writers…

You can call Google Voice and leave yourself messages.  Google will automatically transcribe the messages into text and email them to you!

So, next time you’re in the car or you just don’t feel like typing, you can simply call Google Voice and you’ll get your words emailed back to you.  How cool is that!!

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The book, in all its silver- and moonstone-covered beauty, was actually bought at auction, and the proceeds will go to The Children’s Voice charity.  So, although crazy amounts of money have been thrown around in the eBusiness industry, and we’ve never been afraid to make fun of bad decisions, it’s hard to call this one.

Unfortunately, it’s also impossible to call it a brilliant business move.  Amazon has put up numerous photos of the book if you’d like to “ooh” and “awe” at it.  There’s also a review of one of the stories within, and by Amazon’s reckoning, it was quite good.  That’s as close as any average reader will get to the book, though – pictures, reviews, and discussion threads are all Amazon plans to offer.

This has left a lot of people (see those discussion threads) with a sort of “what about the rest of us?” feeling.  Granted, Amazon’s showing more of The Tales of Beedle the Bard than a private collector could be expected to, and J.K. Rowling’s own restrictions are to fault for the lack of wide distribution, but, well . . . we want our fiction.

At the same time, Amazon wants its PR – that’s the only reason we can think of that might be behind the purchase of this book.  And, as the existence of this article proves, the company’s getting it.

You might ask what this has to do with internet marketing, but I think you’ll find the exchange of interest.

First up, Blodget put up his thoughts on Google’s share price hitting $2000, giving it a market cap of $750+ billion.

Then Michael Arrington decided to voice his disdain for Blodget and his reckless valuation.

Not long after, Blodget blogged that he believed TechCrunch could sell for more than $100 million, possibly to CNET.

Lastly, Arrington (with tongue in cheek) took back his criticism of Blodget.

So, which do you think is more likely to happen? Google will reach $2000 a share, or TechCrunch will sell for $100+ million?

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