Ajay Juneja

Steve Ballmer gave a wonderful, timely revelant speech about the economic situation to the U.S. House of Representatives today...

2009-02-07T05:40:00Z

Here's a link to the talk:

http://microsoftontheissues.com/cs/blogs/mscorp/pages/steve-ballmer-comment-s-at-democratic-caucus-retreat.aspx

I especially like his reflection about when he and Bill Gates were accounting for every employee and the amount of revenue they were bringing in on little yellow pieces of paper. I'm guessing they were post it notes.

Very good reading for the times we are in!

So what have we been up to lately at Speak With Me?

2008-11-19T18:08:00Z

I noticed that this week I got five emails from friends asking "So what's been going on?" or something to that effect! I figured this would be the easiest way to tell everyone!

Our economy has been a mess...

We're still raising and have been able to raise money.

We're on track for a really awesome product ready towards the tail end of next year. I hope it doesn't slip!

If you know me or attended the United Cerbral Palsy Foundation Charity event in Philadelphia, you might have an inkling of what the first product might be.

If you don't know me then know that the first product is something for your car.

But Americans aren't buying more cars. That's okay, they still have their current cars, they can put this into them!

The current system has been in my car for 3.5 years and 60,000 miles. Tested in the rain in Seattle while going through a tunnel, tested on the highways of California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.

I did distraction testing during an aggressive driving course with some friends & some of our investors. Prior to this, the usability tests showed a <1% difference in lap times between using the system while driving and not.

We demonstrated for real, that using Speak With Me's system while driving causes next to no distraction. How? Because the car behind me had trouble keeping up with me. Imagine his surprise when discovering I always had the music I wanted playing, and that my car did not have two turbos. (It does have a clutch-type 100% locking LSD which really helped my corner exit speeds, and the suspension is aligned and corner balanced).

What about those swanky iPhones, the new Android phones, the new Blackberry Bold & Storm, and the Windows Mobile smartphones? And Google came out with it's voice app this week? Isn't that a competitor?

The speech apps that are out there for mobile phones are using speech recognizers with complex language models. They work - kinda sorta - well they think about working. Are they competitors? Kinda, sorta, but not entirely.

As you can see from this review of Google's voice search added to their mobile app by John Markoff, the NY Times reporter and author of the fabulous book, What The Dormouse Said,

speech recognizers on their own, still aren't up to the task.

Speak With Me is different. We help the recognizer understand context. Think of it as a debriefing session from your assistant before you go on stage. That's how we're more accurate.

But gosh darn it, why haven't you shipped anything yet so we can try it out?

Because half baked cookies are kinda mushy. We could get a phone app out faster, but it would sacrifice the time to market of our other key product which is in the GPS market. The two products share some similarities, but have some differences too. One has the data on the device, one has the data in a cloud. So we made a tough decision this week, to stay on track with the GPS product, and hold off on the smartphone related products till we're a bit further along with the GPS product. Back in 2005 when you first read about us from Robert Scoble's Blog or Techcrunch, there were very few devices capable of running our software in the mobile and embedded space. Today there are tons, and everyone - not just Speak With Me, is scrambling to make the best use of the computing power we have today to give everyone fabulous software for their mobile devices. The phone today is like the PC world in the early eighties, I agree with Steve Ballmer on that point.

It is interesting how the internet has really led to much faster demand creation. What if the New York Times had an article about Xerox PARC in the seventies - would we have all had the GUI before the early eighties? I'm curious and I think I'll ask John Markoff and Doug Englebart that question directly in a couple weeks. SRI's doing a 40th anniversary event of the mother of all demos - on December 9th. Doug as you may or may not know, was the inventor of the mouse. Just think, he demoed in 1968 - what we as the public didn't get to use until 1982. Wow.

So how do you make a good cookie?

By using the highest quality ingredients, like Ghiradelli Chocolate Chips, Organic Cane Sugar, organic eggs, pure vanilla extract and not imitation. Then bake them for the right amount of time. You'll end up with something spectacular, just ask anyone who's eaten my cookies :) When they're ready, you'll know...

You didn't expect me to tell you the ingredients within Speak With Me, now did you ;)

The Rage of the Previously Rich (story from NY Mag)

2008-09-23T02:29:00Z

http://nymag.com/news/businessfinance/50523/index1.html

Very interesting article in today's NY Mag...

I have several friends in NYC wanting to make their way to the CA tech industry now - Silicon Valley is doing OK for now...

(and I hope it stays okay - the dot com bubble was enough grief for us out here!)

Oh what a wonderful, magical week it has been!

2008-08-29T03:37:00Z

...and oh how I wish I could share the stories with the world right now, but they would violate the Friend-DA's in place already - which as we all know, are more secure than NDA's anyhow!

Just know that the world is full of miracles and wonderful things as long as you're paying attention to the messages it is sending you!

Julie Roehm in Forbes Magazine on Life After Walmart

2008-07-17T04:26:00Z

So Forbes published an article about Julie Roehm, who does marketing work for us among other clients. You'll see her impact as we go to market...

For those of you who haven't met Julie - she's an absolutely amazing super-awesome person with a heart of gold and a marketing genius!

She alone is more effective than many companies' entire marketing departments!

The moment you behave contrary to your philosophy, is the moment...

2008-07-16T06:31:00Z

...you no longer can rely on your philosophy to pull you through when you'll need it the most.

Powerset gets bought by Microsoft for $100M+

2008-06-26T23:56:00Z

Powerset gets bought by Microsoft for $100M+.

So - this was a soft rumor a couple months ago here in Silly Valley - and it appears it is now official - Powerset, a natural language search company, was bought by Microsoft today for $100M+.

I'd like to congratulate Barney Pell, his investors, and his team at Powerset on a successful exit - I know that earlier this year, I remember seeing them sweating to get their first product shipped - which they did do, for wikipedia.

If you haven't used Powerset - give it a shot - I think it's a fantastic tool, although I am biased given that I both know the founders and understand the technology behind it.

I think this is a great validation that natural language search is getting it's day, which is great news for Speak With Me, Inc. too!

Speaking of Speak With Me, I have a lot of awesome news to share about that - news that I'm not allowed to blog about for the time being. Good things come to those who wait!

Finally - a GPS with William Daniels (the voice of KITT) as a Text To Speech voice!!

2008-06-20T23:00:00Z

Mio Knight Rider GPS!

About darn time!

Oh and if you really want the Knight Rider experience... wait till the GPS systems & mobile phones with Speak With Me's software inside of it come out!

Facebook has replaced email - and Twitter is fast replacing SMS

2008-06-19T16:09:00Z

So a few minutes ago, I got this message from a friend through Facebook...

Ryan sent you a message.

--------------------

Re: Coffee?

So I tried to DM you on Twitter just now and found out you don't follow me. I'm going to have to give you a hard time for that.

Anyway, I've got a 9am call that I'm taking in my car on the way up to PA. If I'm not there at 10, I'm on my way. See you soon.

-Ryan

--------------------

I think it's official now that, at least in Silicon Valley, Facebook has replaced email (or at the very least heavily supplemented it - and it appears Twitter is fast replacing SMS.

Funny that a few years ago I had a conversation with Luke Nosek about Facebook replacing email, especially for the younger generation - and I know shortly afterwards someone from the Founders fund started using that line (cause hey, it was true) - and now it appears Twitter is fast replacing SMS.

Congratulations to my friends at Facebook and Twitter - you are thoroughly continuing to enhance and change the way we all communicate!

Ok, Now i have to go have Ryan ream me for not following him on Twitter yet.

Twas a very Happy CES!

2008-01-13T06:59:00Z

So this Consumer Electronics Show (my third one) - was a bit different from years' past. Whereas in the past two I had time to see the floor one or two days, and had less meetings - this one was packed to the brim with meetings from 6am - 11pm everyday! The great thing about all of the meetings - was that most everyone important who needed to get a closer look at our technology, did.

The downside was - I didn't get to see as much of the show this time! But... Alex Marchicelli & I did see something awesome that caught our eye and will end up as our future conference room trinket: The Nikko R2D2 projector:

It's a high quality DLP projector - and R2D2 moves around too! The remote control is the spaceship from Star Wars, too!

Speak With Me - Video of our Navigation Application!

2008-01-04T22:37:00Z

Hey everyone,

We now have a fully functional navigation system + Media Player + Cell Phone integration with StreetDeck + Microsoft MapPoint.

Please check out http://www.speakwithme.com for more info!

Special thanks to our friends at StreetDeck and the whole Speak With Me, Inc. team!

We are fast working on now porting our finished platform to Windows CE, QNX, Linux, Mac OS X, and Symbian!

Happy CES and MacWorld everybody - we'll be at CES showing some private demos this year!

Happy 2008 - 7 items of wisdom learned in 2007 to share with you!

2008-01-01T03:13:00Z

Happy New Year Everyone!

Wow - 2007 has been a big year! Lots of great things happening for Speak With Me, Inc. - which will be revealed slowly in the upcoming year - and a whole lot of lessons learned - in both business and personal relationships. I'll use this post to reflect on things I've learned this year - and hopefully all of you can share your experiences too!

1. The Fraility of Life. The Joy of Life. The Thrill of Life. Enjoying the ride!

As many of you know, I am one of the car nuts who hangs out at Santana Row routinely, coming in everything from my beater Red 1980 Rx-7 to the pretty fast blue sedan. Earlier this year, a bunch of us went on a drive thru Santa Cruz and up to Half Moon Bay - and one member of our group, Luis Aldaz - had a pretty severe accident that day, and unfortunately didn't make it. Luis - always lived life on the edge - and to the fullest. He raced his 911 GT3 routinely, skydived, and always was pushing himself in every aspect of his life, having immigrated here from Spain - and really made a name for himself in Silicon Valley. Everyone loved him - he always greeted you with a warm smile - and truly defined living life with no regrets. Luis is an inspiration to us all!

Some wonderful memories - Pictures courtesy of the Santana Row crew...

2. Live life with no regrets.

For every decision you make in life - if you are going to regret it later - make a different decision! Life is too short to have regrets!

3. If you want something, ask for it.

You'll usually get it. Being nice helps your odds :)

4. Be patient with your friends and loved ones.

I had a situation this year where I admittedly revealed something to a longtime friend before she was ready to hear it - and I got egg in my face in response. Looking back, I wish I was more patient with her - and since then - I've learned to be more patient with everyone. We all are aware of what others are going through well in advance of what they are aware of what they are going through - so in the words of the Eagles, "Learn to be still." People for the most part, have to emotionally grow on their own. Sometimes nudging them can help a ton - but only if they trust you - and trust themselves - enough to hear you and listen.

5. Never make a fear-based decision.

We all have a choice in life - to make decisions based on fear, or faith. I've found that every situation in which I've taken the faith based decision - has yielded long term success - even though there may be a shorter-term struggle to get over along the way. However, fear-based decisions tend to be extremely short-sighted and one almost always regrets them in the long term. This goes with #2 - living life with no regrets.

6. Miracles can happen - but you gotta make them happen!

My good friend Andre Vanier - founder of Rondee.com - and I had a discussion in early July - where we were going through everything I had done to get Speak With Me, Inc. funded. We went through the list three times - and we had exhausted all possibilities - so the conclusion was that, yes indeed, I had done everything humanly possible to get Speak With Me, Inc. funded. So Andre suggested to take a break and wait - and try to focus on other things. Indeed, a week and a half later, we got our first funding check in! Some day I'll post the before and after account balances (or maybe it'll go into a future book!) - I've kept the bank statements and wire transfer receipts for a company memento! The faith based decision making process I put in place in 2005 - yielded success!

7. Have Faith, have fun, and don't forget - you are a human too!

And humans - make mistakes. Self-awareness, compassion, humility, and forgiveness are the most important things to learn to yield the best out of yourself - and to give the best you you can be - to the world and to yourself. Always apologize when you screw up - and before you send the apology - be sure to have forgiven yourself first! Many religions - Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism, (sorry if I left some out - I've only read scripture from these four) among others - try to teach these concepts in some form or another. The path to success - is littered with mines, some of which might have exploded along the way. The path to failure - is not walking across that minefield.

In other words...

Why does my new mac...?

2007-10-31T11:00:00Z

1. start working within 2 min. of taking it out of the box? My last Windows box (a thinkpad running windows XP SP2 purchased in august 2007) needed 2 HOURS of setup/screens before I could use it.

2. find and connect to my home server (a windows server 2003 box) faster/sooner/more easily than my recent Thinkpad which took futzing with for four hours to get it to connect properly?

3. Make me smile every time I look at it? I get angry looking at my windows boxes now, remembering how much agony it was to set them up to self maintain (defrag & backup every night, migrate to new machines).

4. find all my music and movies and other media content so much more quickly?

6. run an incredible amount faster / boot much more quickly than a similarly speced windows box?

7.cost about the same for nearly the same configuration hardware wise (price difference: $8. that's less than me & Knick Jim going to the taco truck)?

8. not annoy me every time I want to run an executable or asking me always "Am I sure I want to do this?" for every freakin' action?

9. not have ANY 64 bit driver issues? (running Vista 32 bit is like trying to walk with one leg. The OS hogs so much memory you can't get anything done - I refuse to use it. I was about to build a new PC to run Vista 64 bit, but after experiencing this Mac Book Pro - my next desktop is going to be a Mac too.).

I swear, I am only MORE motivated to port Speak With Me's code to the Mac now (and support the iPhone too). We're all equipped with VMWare fusion and if 70% of the car navi market didn't use Windows CE we wouldn't have to support Windows for the long haul. I think that Thinkpad will be my last PC purchase. Windows, you are now going to be relegated to being a second class citizen I dual boot to - or run as a virtual machine so I can kill you any time I want to. This is coming from someone who used to be fanatical about Windows NT 4.0 & Windows 2000. No one is getting Vista in our office for as long as we can avoid it (we may get a contract for a media center pc that requires it, but until then...)!

We had the Mac purchases in mind initially so we can support the iPhone - but I think these will fast become our daily use machines. If you aren't making a product you yourself LOVE to use everyday, make something different. Make something irresistible - make something drool-worthy, make something you are proud of - and WANT to show off and talk about. And don't piss off your users - they are your biggest evangelists.

It's 3:48am - and for the first time since I used the very first macintosh when I was four years old - I have this huge grin on my face that won't go away - and all the inspiration I need to convince everyone on the planet - that the next step in the user interface - is the one that listens to your every word!

Don't be surprised if I stay up this late routinely (actually I had some espresso right before the Earthquake yesterday...), as I am itching to make our stuff work on an iPhone just that much more quickly. I have an HTC TyTN II coming my way this week for Windows CE testing too.. so my thoughts on that device will be coming too...

Ahh... twas a wonderful day for a drive...

2007-09-16T06:33:00Z

Whee - we had fun today at the Santana Row exotic meet - great cars, great friends, and a great drive!

Below are some pics AlexD took :)

I'm in the Blue Audi in the first pic! :)

Going to the Singularity Summit tomorrow in San Francisco...

2007-09-08T04:10:00Z

Who else is going to be there?

http://www.singinst.org/summit2007/