Actually, there is a company already giving dads, grads, and everyone in between the ability to command and control a variety of devices with the spoken word: Motley Fool Hidden Gems recommendation Nuance Communications (Nasdaq: NUAN). And while spouse control is more fantasy than reality at this point, consumers can use their voices to input computer data, make calls on cellular phones, and call ahead for seafood from their cars -- all thanks to Nuance.

Nuance Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: NUAN) today announced that Nuance® speech solutions are being shipped within Ford SYNC™ for twelve Ford, Lincoln and Mercury models for 2008. SYNC, a new factory-installed, in-car communications and entertainment system, is designed to change the way consumers use digital media portable music players and mobile phones in their vehicles.

Nuance Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: NUAN), a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions, today announced that the Dubai Municipality is using Nuance speech recognition and speaker verification solutions to automate and optimize the procedure for reporting environment-related offenses in Dubai. Designed and deployed by Emerging Technologies, the new service will enable Dubai Municipality enforcement officers to quickly and conveniently capture and communicate an offender's details, reducing the time between the offence being committed and a fine being issued.

Nuance Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: NUAN), a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions, today announced that Ford Motor Company integrates Nuance speech technologies to provide drivers with unrivaled levels of safety and convenience when using the car's phone, navigation and entertainment systems. Nuance VoCon® speech recognition and RealSpeakTM Text-to-Speech technologies will be available across Europe for the Ford C-MAX and Ford Focus starting in December, followed later by the Ford Galaxy, Ford Mondeo and Ford S-MAX.

Companies like Google scan their e-mail users' in-boxes to deliver ads related to those messages. Will people be as willing to let a company listen in on their phone conversations to do the same?

Pudding Media, a start-up based in San Jose, Calif., is introducing an Internet phone service today that will be supported by advertising related to what people are talking about in their calls. The Web-based phone service is similar to Skype's online service — consumers plug a headset and a microphone into their computers, dial any phone number and chat away. But unlike Internet phone services that charge by the length of the calls, Pudding Media offers calling without any toll charges.

Dragon said that in an effort to boost efficiency and keep pace with an ever-increasing workload, the FBI will make Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal available to agents and professional support staff across the organization, enabling them to create comprehensive reports, interviews, and other documents by voice, increasing productivity by three times over manual typing.

Speech and imaging software company Nuance Communications Inc. said Tuesday it bought medical imaging software maker Commissure Inc.

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

Nuance said the purchase will help it speed sales growth through its software-as-a-service product offerings.

The company said the Commissure acquisition includes a suite of diagnostic exam software products, as well as an exclusive technology license deal with Massachusetts General Hospital.

Under the deal, Nuance will grant 217,975 shares of common stock as stand-alone restricted stock units to 21 Commissure employees that will join Nuance. Nuance said 50,250 of the units vest over four years and the rest vest over three years.

Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN), a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions, today announced that it has provided Telenor, Norway's largest telecommunications company, with customer care solutions that are uniquely powered by speech.
With Nuance® speech solutions, Telenor's self-service system allows customers to describe their needs in their own words and move directly to their destination, resulting in increased customer satisfaction by addressing the callers' desire to access information quickly instead of via a menu hierarchy.

Now in its ninth year, the event brings together leading companies and speech experts from around the globe, enabling peers to share ideas and best practices for launching effective speech services for both customer care and mobile applications. The conference features four customer care tracks focused on helping organizations support, communicate with and understand their customers, as well as two mobile tracks to present the various solutions that are revolutionizing the mobile user interface for operators, handset manufacturers and mobile content providers. A common theme of "What's Next" unifies the content that will be presented across the two co-located events.

It took a few minutes to sink in, but I realized yesterday that it's been an awfully long time since Motley Fool Hidden Gems recommendation Nuance Communications (Nasdaq: NUAN) bought another company. The speech specialist and serial-acquirer usually has its integration team very busy juggling at least a few integrations at a time.

They are the two defining innovations of the information age, yet thus far mobile telephony and the Internet have remained almost entirely separate. However, the growing sophistication of voice recognition technology may bring about this oft-heralded union.

It is 10 years since Dragon first brought speech recognition to the PC desktop and voice control still has a reputation for being unreliable and inaccurate.

"A system provides search results from a voice search query. The system receives a voice search query from a user, derives one or more recognition hypotheses, each being associated with a weight, from the voice search query, and constructs a weighted boolean query using the recognition hypotheses. The system then provides the weighted boolean query to a search system and provides the results of the search system to a user."