To get things started here at my ActiveAnalysis blog, I am posting a slightly edited version of a recent post from my Genesys blog (you can find the original at www.betterinteractions.com , under the heading "Thinking Foreword").  In general, I will not double post, and I encourage checking out Better Interactions -- my blog and Rob Winder's are not very Genesys-specific (mine basically not at all!).   read more »

AOL's recent move to embrace OpenID (right behind Microsoft and the rest of world+dog) has taken the next step, with all AOL and AIM screen names becoming an OpenID URL.

With this, in one fell swoop, over 63 million new OpenID accounts have just been created.  read more »

Ma.gnolia.com, a popular social bookmarking site, added OpenID as an alternative method for new user registration in December, 2006. OpenID is a decentralized user-centric identity architecture that allows a user to use a URL based ID (think of it like a username) to log into a variety of websites.

Earlier this month, Larry Halff, founder of Gnolia Systems shared usage statistics of 5467 users that registered for new service between December 15 and January 31. No specific user data was provided.

Sample Sizing:  read more »

On February 6, at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, Andy Rolfe of Authentify and Dr. Stephen Elliot of Purdue University presented the results of a study on Authentify's implementation of voice biometrics/speaker verification. It should be noted that this study should not be considered to be a statement on voice biometrics on the whole, but on a specific implementation of a a single vendor's hosted authentication solution.  read more »

According to a recent article in Information Week the speech recognition feature in Microsoft's new OS, Windows Vista, contains a major security flaw. Apparently, pranksters were able to execute commands on a PC from a remote location through the use of audio files hosted on a website. For example, the audio file can say shut down, copy and delete and these commands were executed by the PC. There were even some reports that a person was able to create a recording that downloaded and executed a file from the Internet. Now that can be scary!  read more »

Jason Calacanis (Sequoia Capital) and Michael Arrington (techcrunch.com) have announced a new conference called the TechCrunch20. Twenty companies over two days will get an opportunity to present to 250 to 500 of their peers (and competitors, the media, VCs, the press, etc.).  read more »

I have been tracking the number of publicly announced speech recognition deals for the past two years and the results are midly disturbing (for those in the speech market). In 2005, there were approximately 160 publicly announced customer wins; in 2006 there were only 95. That's almost 50% less. Now here's the half-full, revenue figures and port shipments from vendors clearly indicate that the speech market has grown in 2006. In 2005, I projected that the number of publicly announced customer wins would eclipse that of those in 2005 but I was wrong. Now as an analyst I try to be accurate in my assumptions and methodologies but I know that I cannot divine the future with precision (as much as I would like). So I'm left to ponder and analyze what has happened in the market in retrospect and analyze that data and apply that to future forecasts. Here are my conclusions for the lack of PR for speech in 2006...  read more »