<B>TechTalk</B>
By Cheryl Rosen
<B>TVs and Cells and Kiosks, Oh My!</B>
Like Dorothy in the Land of Oz, corporate travelers soon will be faced with a rainbow of new options that will change the way they connect with the folks back home. From cell phones to office phones to television sets, the race is on to hook up all kinds of devices to the Internet. And each one offers another alternative for making and changing reservations and accessing important information on the road.
Betting once again that travelers would rather talk than type, two former <B>Nortel</B> executives in May plan to launch <B>888TelSurf</B>, an "audio browser" service that will use speech recognition software to deliver Internet--and even intranet--connectivity over the phone.
The idea, said a tongue-in-cheek Ken Guy, is to avoid thumb-mail as travelers try to type on tiny cell phone keys, and squint-mail when they try to read the screen back. "With us, you just speak and the system reads you back your e-mail, travel directions, traffic conditions, weather or news," said the TelSurf co-founder.
Guy clearly is not kidding around in his vision of a site far broader than the current demo (at www.888telsurf.com) might suggest. "Our background at Nortel is in building voice and data networks that roll out easily and scale up big. And there is an e-commerce opportunity here," he said.
Currently in testing in the Los Angeles area, the service will expand across North America in May. After a second influx of venture capital expected in about 90 days, 888TelSurf will focus on four areas of growth: partnerships and links with cell phone carriers, Web portals and engines, corporate intranets and enterprise networks, and content providers. Guy already is working with "a multibillion-dollar corporation" to allow its mobile workers to "access their corporate intranet to get sales and inventory status as well as general information." But he declined to name names, citing "non-disclosure with everybody." By the second half of the year, Guy expects that travelers will be able to query the system for the nearest hotel, get driving directions and make an actual booking before hanging up.
The site will take advantage of three different forms of audio technology: a text-to-speech engine from <B>SpeechWorks</B> of Boston that will read e-mails robotically, concatenated speech to paste together stock and weather reports, and actual audio feeds of business news. Users will access the system through a toll free number, and then be given the choice of either paying 6 cents a minute or listening to a commercial to get free access. While 200 million people now access the Internet worldwide from a PC, more than 2 billion have a telephone, noted CEO Simon Lam. "We are the PC, ISP and browser," he said. "All you need to do is boot up your ear and log on with your mouth."
Meanwhile, <B>IBM</B> in July will introduce a family of chips designed to turn the television into an Internet appliance. The "system-on-a-chip" will "help drive new capabilities for Web browsing and interactive applications, such as e-commerce and information retrieval," the company said. Paul Belluz, director of digital video products at IBM's microelectronics division, noted that the computing power in the next generation of set-top boxes "will surpass that of the desktop PC of just a year or two ago."
And <B>Continental Airlines</B> this month finished replacing all 170 of its E-Ticket kiosks with state-of-the-art eService Centers that work faster, look sleeker-and even speak Spanish. Also finishing up is a test of the carrier's first corporate kiosk, at <B>AT&T</B> headquarters in New Jersey. Manager of electronic marketing Anna Adamo said Continental plans to put in perhaps five more corporate kiosks this year, and also to begin reciprocal kiosk checkin with codeshare partners <B>Northwest</B>, probably this summer, and <B>AmericaWest</B>, later in the year.
But perhaps the most exciting result of the new kiosks will be Continental's plans for its frequent flyers. "We're focusing on our Elite customers," Adamo said. "Now, when you go online and buy a ticket, most airlines give you 1,000 bonus miles. We'd like to take that a step further and give our travelers additional bonus miles or coupons for checking in at the kiosk. Or if we have an irregular operation, we could give them a pass to the President's Club. This new platform allows us to do those sorts of things.