Vlingo was a

speech recognition Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers with the ...

software company co-founded by speech-to-text pioneers Mike Phillips (later co-founder and CEO of Sense Labs, Inc) and John Nguyen in 2006. It was best known for its

intelligent personal assistant An intelligent virtual assistant (IVA) or intelligent personal assistant (IPA) is a software agent that can perform tasks or services for an individual based on commands or questions. The term "chatbot" is sometimes used to refer to virtual ...

and knowledge navigator, also named Vlingo, which functioned as a personal assistant application for Symbian, Android, iPhone,

BlackBerry The blackberry is an edible fruit produced by many species in the genus ''Rubus'' in the family Rosaceae, hybrids among these species within the subgenus ''Rubus'', and hybrids between the subgenera ''Rubus'' and ''Idaeobatus''. The taxonomy ...

, and other

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...

s. Vlingo was acquired by speech recognition giant

Nuance Communications Nuance Communications, Inc. is an American multinational computer software technology corporation, headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, that markets speech recognition and artificial intelligence software. Nuance merged with its compe ...

in 2012. The application uses a

natural language user interface Natural-language user interface (LUI or NLUI) is a type of computer human interface where linguistic phenomena such as verbs, phrases and clauses act as UI controls for creating, selecting and modifying data in software applications. In interface d ...

to answer questions, make recommendations, and perform actions by delegating requests to various applications. Vlingo Find and other iterations were known as first-to-market innovators in speech-to-text recognition. With adaptive hierarchical language models, Vlingo improves its speech-to-text recognition as it learns a user's speech and search habits. It was the first technology of its kind to use adaptive hierarchical language models to learn from the corrections a user would make. Vlingo servers analyze speech queries and send any recommendations or possible corrections back to the user. This technology allows users to text, search, and navigate smartphones without typing. Vlingo had its own application with over 5 million users in addition to partnerships with a number of companies, including

Yahoo Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Manage ...

Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...

, RIM, and

Nokia Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finland, i ...

. Vlingo ships by default on Samsung Galaxy S2 devices, and Vlingo worked with Samsung to create S Voice personal assistant (available on the Samsung Galaxy S3 and newer

Samsung Galaxy Samsung Galaxy (, stylised as SΛMSUNG Galaxy since 2015 (except Japan where it omits the Samsung branding), previously stylised as Samsung GALAXY; abbreviated as SG) is a series of computing and mobile computing devices that are designed, m ...

devices.) Vlingo also powered early versions of Siri (before Siri was acquired by Apple).

Acquisition

, a large software company, had been trying to acquire Vlingo since the company was founded, which Vlingo rejected. As Vlingo became successful, Nuance launched a series of patent lawsuits to attempt to weaken the company. Vlingo countered with patent lawsuits of its own. After three years of patent battles, the first lawsuit went to court and Vlingo won. At this point, Nuance increased its offer price for the company and the Vlingo board of directors agreed to sell the company. Vlingo was acquired by Nuance in December 2011 for undisclosed terms.

Privacy violations

In January 2012 AndroidPit discovered that Vlingo sends packets of information containing the users

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of the global navigation satellite sy ...

co-ordinates,

IMEI The International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) is a numeric identifier, usually unique, for 3GPP and iDEN mobile phones, as well as some satellite phones. It is usually found printed inside the battery compartment of the phone but can al ...

(unique device identifier), contact list and the title of every song stored on the device back to Nuance without proper warning in the

privacy policy A privacy policy is a statement or legal document (in privacy law) that discloses some or all of the ways a party gathers, uses, discloses, and manages a customer or client's data. Personal information can be anything that can be used to identify ...

. Users of Vlingo have also found the program sending data to servers at the dhs.gov domain name. Concerning the

privacy violation The right to privacy is an element of various legal traditions that intends to restrain governmental and private actions that threaten the privacy of individuals. Over 150 national constitutions mention the right to privacy. On 10 December 194 ...

s, Vlingo stated that the improper warnings in the privacy policies were due to some privacy policies being out of date, or correct for some versions of the app but incorrect for others. Vlingo stated that they would update the

accordingly. Furthermore, they noted that a software bug was responsible in some situations for sending more data from users’ phones to Vlingo than intended, and stated their intentions to fix such bugs immediately.

Awards

Winner of 2008 Local Mobile Applications Developers Winner from

AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile te ...

. Winner of 2008 Best Mobile Application from Speech Technology Magazine. Recognized as one of the area's “Best Places to Work” by BBJ in 2008. Recognized as one of the “Fierce 15” Wireless Companies of 2008 from FierceWireless. Recognized as one of ten “FiReStarters” from Future in Review in 2008. Winner of 2008 “Northeast 100 Top Private Company” from AlwaysOn. Recognized as “One of the Top Emerging Mobile Players to Watch in 2008” in 2008 from IDC. Winner of 2009 Must Have Utilities App of the Year from Ovi Daily App. Winner of 2009 “Blackberry Rookie of the Year” from

Handango Handango was an online store selling mobile apps for personal digital assistants and smartphones headquartered in Irving, Texas. History Handango InHand was founded in 1999 by Randy Eisenman. It is an app store for finding, installing, and b ...

. Winner of 2009 Mobie Award: “Best Speech Recognition”. Winner of 2011 Mashable Award: Most Innovative App.

References

External links

* {{Intelligent personal assistant software Defunct software companies of the United States Companies based in Massachusetts Speaker recognition 2012 mergers and acquisitions