Open Voice #43: Scared for Voice mining; Australia's Voice surge; New Siri first AirPods

By Maarten & Sam • Issue #43 • View online

Hey All,

Another week, another newsletter all about Voice!

Last week was fun. Maarten judged the first round of the Dutch Spin Awards in the Voice & AI category. Yes, Voice is now a category in campaign and digital awards programmes. Sam got invited to speak about Voice at NRC Live on April 11th. It’s a nice addition to the other speaking engagement at Voice Marketing & Chat in 1 day and hosting the Voice roundtable at Savant eCommerce Amsterdam.

The Voice Cast podcast show went live with with Gerben Koot from research firm Kantar. They published the first official Dutch adoption numbers since Google Home’s Dutch launch almost 6 months ago. 5% or 300.000 dutch households have a smart speaker. A good number a still oh so early days. Let’s see if we can beat those. Listen on iTunes, Spotify or subscribe via RSS.

The Open Voice event is looking to become a good one. Make sure you save the date: May 14th. This is a later date then previously announced. More time means a better event!

🕵️‍♂️ Why companies want to mine the secrets in your voice

In recent years, researchers and companies like Voicesense and CompanionMx have taken note of the rich trove of information that can be mined from the voice, especially as the popularity of home assistants like Amazon’s Alexa make consumers increasingly comfortable talking to their devices. There is exciting research about how this information can enrich our lives, as well as privacy concerns about how accurate such insights are and how they will be used.

Let’s call it “Voice mining”, and lets make sure its regulated soon.

www.theverge.com • Share

👩‍💼 Voice Apps and GDPR

As an inhabitant, it’s a good thing we are from the EU. As a creator it might at times fee like you need to jump to a lot of hoops in order to follow the law. Jan König started a topic to collect information on Voice Apps and GDPR. Watch this space (and feel free to contribute - Jan has an awesome community).

community.jovo.tech • Share

👨‍🔬 Fixing the Voice First-Party x Third-Party Gap with schema.org

SEO people, are you paying attention? This experiment won’t work in the EU as far as I know, but this is something we can be ready for when the beta rolls out beyond the States.

– Thanks for the tip Martijn Koetsier!

medium.com • Share

🦘 Australia Leaps Past U.S. in Smart Speaker Adoption, Google Home Establishes Dominant Market Share

Australian smart speaker adoption reached 29% of the adult population in . less than two years. Can we beat that in Holland?

voicebot.ai • Share

Inclusive Design by Microsoft - think of these scenarios when testing your Action/Skill

New AirPods now available with hands-free Hey Siri

We both ordered a pair. An Assistant ready to help while on the go and without tapping or swiping. It is what will happen. And we’re keen to find out how the experience is and if it will like cause us to use Siri even more. We’ll keep you posted on our findings.

9to5mac.com • Share

Jess Williams

@Jess_P_Williams

Top Tip for getting your ISP #AlexaSkill through certification FAST(er): write very detailed #testing notes in distribution tab: inc. version changes and user stories. Imagine someone coming to it fresh. Oh and test your RefundIntent and check a refund card is sent. https://t.co/YYjWuhCfMA

10:13 AM - 22 Mar 2019

🎮 Amazon Reveals Three Ways Alexa Could Be Big for Gaming

Alexa can benefit gamers in three primary ways, and each type of skill is already available.

www.tomsguide.com • Share

Google made Google Assistant part of their newly announced ‘Netflix for games’ Stadia controller. Below is a snippet of the demo in the announcement.