Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

Re:Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were ... by dangrossman on Thursday May 20, 2021 @06:59PM (#27228504)

Before smartphones and before cheap GPS, I got spoken turn-by-turn directions while driving from Tellme.

1-800-TELL-ME launched in 1999/2000. You told it your address and the destination address, and it read you the directions one at a time. E.g. after you made the first turn, you'd ask for the next one and it'd tell you. It did not need any GPS this way, it's like talking to someone sitting next to you reading the map for you.

Microsoft bought Tellme in 2007 for $800 million.

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Re:Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were ... by atatatat on Thursday May 20, 2021 @07:10PM (#27228597)

And did what with it?

And why?

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Re:Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were ... by dangrossman on Thursday May 20, 2021 @07:14PM (#27228643)

To do the same thing Google was doing that year when they launched GOOG-411:

Using the interactive phone calls to train their speech recognition systems, so that they could eventually use what they learned to develop things like Google Assistant, Cortana, Windows Voice Recognition, etc.

Tellme was taking 2 billion calls a year when they were acquired. They had all the training data Microsoft could want to compete with Google in that area.

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Re:Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were ... by grzm on Thursday May 20, 2021 @07:11PM (#27228612)

> In early 2012, Microsoft divested itself of Tellme Networks' interactive voice response (IVR) service and the majority of its employees to [24]7 Inc. The service was moved to a non-toll-free number.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tellme_Networks

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