GOOG-411's "Biddy-Biddy-Boop" Sound Backstory 194
Chris Albrecht writes "The bippedy-bippedy-bippedy sound you hear when using 1-800-GOOG-411 is actually a senior voice designer at Google. (Here's the sound.) The technical term for that noise is the 'fetch audio,' and it's more complicated to design than you'd think. For the first time, the voice of GOOG-411 talks about how he came up with it, how important that sound is, and how people now ask him to 'perform' it."
Twiki? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:free phone call? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:free phone call? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:free phone call? (Score:4, Informative)
"senior voice expert"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"senior voice expert"? (Score:5, Informative)
> "senior voice expert"?
> that gives me flashbacks to the
Ummm, obviously you don't work in telecom.
Almost every automated system has the equivalent of a voice expert or a speech scientist whose job is to do things like this.
Every time you call an IVR or reach an automated speech system, someone's worked at it to make it not just functional, but also usable and friendly.
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Every time you call an IVR or reach an automated speech system, someone's worked at it to make it not just functional, but also usable and friendly.
Give it a rest. It's only the audio equivalent of an hourglass cursor.
Re:"senior voice expert"? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:"senior voice expert"? (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, the audio hourglass cursor first created by the senior hourglass expert was green-lighted by the Senior VP for Cursors, but nixed by the Chief Audio Officer or CAO. External audio/cursor mediation consultants were brought in and a compromise was reached by which the same sound would be re-recorded, but this time under the auspices of the CAO's handpicked Special Cursor Liaison Officer to the office of the Senior VP for Cursors.
<caseykasem>and that boy grew up to be ... Paul Allen.<caseykasem>
Re:"senior voice expert"? (Score:4, Interesting)
Brilliant! Someone should recommend Casey Kasem tags to the W3 committee next meeting. I can think of thousands of uses.
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Hey, W3C, how about adding the caseykasem tag to the spec?
No really, do it.
No, no, no, no, no. Do it.
Do it, come on.
Do it.
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You really need to be more careful. The entire rest of the page was rendered in a warm and fatherly voice thanks to you. Normally that wouldn't be a problem, but I kept thinking, "Get back to the music already!"
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I'm guessing you're the sort of unperceptive mouthbreather who doesn't mind using Windows, and can't understand why others so resent its interface. Or is it some tasteless Linux derivative you prefer? In any case, people like you should never be in charge of designing user interfaces.
Re:"senior voice expert"? (Score:4, Insightful)
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When they work well, which is about half the time for me, they're fantastic, but when they don't work well they don't work at all.
I seem to recall that Verizon's system is the worse at understanding me, and I had bad luck with American Express yesterday. On the other hand, Earthlink works well 90% of the time, and same for T-Mobile.
Re:"senior voice expert"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sometimes, the best sounds are ones that were made in the most simple manner, with a stoned guy in front of a mic going "biddy biddy boop" for example.
Re:"senior voice expert"? (Score:5, Informative)
Secondly, a speech scientist or a voice expert is quite different than a sound engineer - the latter's task includes making sure that the IVR has the same or similar sounding voice patterns all over, that the accents and terms used are standard, simple and understandable to that region, that the TTS (text to speech, if used) is set to configurations that are acceptable to the target audience and that volumes and amplitudes are all normalized (this one is probably the only thing that a sound engineer could also probably do).
Also, a speech scientist works on the voice recognition piece of things, including deciding which language models to use, designing the grammars for recognition, utilizing various tools to tune the recognizer, using various machine-learning techniques to help evolve the language models (e.g. SLMs [wikipedia.org]) and so on.
On top of this, you have to do usability analysis to see how best your system is working out. If a lot of people are zeroing out, or if there is an alarmingly high percentage of recognition errors, then there is something wrong with your system. Also, the ease of use in accomplishing a thing is also considered (e.g. how many steps does it take to get a task done and can you minimize this somehow?). Additionally, you have to ensure that unique elements being used in your IVR (e.g. the biddy biddy boop) is understandable in the context to the target audience.
Other task include determining where voice is appropriate and where DTMF would work and finding ways of notifying the user of what's going on at the background without resorting to Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata for the 37th time (which could be a challenge in its own way).
So, no, I doubt if you could equate a sound engineer with a speech scientist. Most of the speech scientists [jhu.edu] that I work with would probably feel insulted by that term.
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I never thought I'd beg to have my call transferred to India.
Function? Usable? Friendly? On what planet? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, except for the system used by the Cable TV, credit card, bank, telco, computer tech support, university admissions, etc. company. 'Cause those systems seem like they're designed with the sole purpose of making it as difficult as possible to actually speak to a human being. The end result is I'm typically about as happy as Alanis Morissette on a blind date by the time I get to speak to someone with a funny accent who knows even less than I do about the subject matter.
Try telling the vr system what you really think (Score:3, Funny)
I try to maintain pristine language, really I do, but on a really bad day I had to talk to Sprint customer service and the automated voice system really started to get on my nerves the second or third time I had to talk to it and I let slip a few choice non-G-rated phrases. I was transferred to a person faster than any other method I'd tried before or come up with since.
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Every time you call an IVR or reach an automated speech system, someone's worked at it to make it not just functional, but also usable and friendly.
Given the quality of the automated voice interction I always get from telecoms I think every one of these people should be fired and some competent "senior voice specialists" hired. Functional, usable and friendly!? You gotta be kidding. Barely functional, annoying and irritating I say.
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Senior Voice Interface Engineer
http://www.linkedin.com/in/billb [linkedin.com]
No sound (Score:2)
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It's quite quiet.
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Re:Turn up your Mac (Score:5, Funny)
The fix is of course simple and entirely intuitive, as are all things on a Mac.
a) open iTunes
b) In the Window menu, choose Equalizer
c) Crank the Pre-amp setting to 12
Now all of the audio on your Mac will not only be loud enough to hear, it will be louder than the same audio on a PC, which can only be turned up 10
Re:Turn up your Mac (Score:5, Funny)
Somehow, "This one goes to twelve," doesn't have quite the same ring as, "This one goes to eleven."
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-
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Somehow, "This one goes to twelve," doesn't have quite the same ring as, "This one goes to eleven."
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Huh? (Score:3, Informative)
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Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Similar to garbled cell phone noise (Score:2)
I mean WTF, why don't they just play the Jeopardy theme or something like that. Then everyone would be going around humming the "Google Theme" and we'd have a gen-yoo-wyne meme on our hands.
More proof it's 1999 again - already, co-workers are flipping Google stock instead of working (and losing thousands of dollars last week.) Time to sell everything!
Just cook it. (Score:2)
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Swedish Dirty Talking (Score:5, Funny)
No wonder his sister got bitten by a moose.
Re:Swedish Dirty Talking (Score:4, Funny)
Pffft, I'm Swedish , and our language sounds nothing like that, *bork* *bork* *bork*.
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Not when it's my own.
If you don't know what this is about (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOOG-411 [wikipedia.org]
Basically, GOOG-411 is an experimental Google telephone service. Users can call and use speech regocnition to do local business search. I think American phones have letters on the number buttons, so 1-800-GOOG-411 means 1-800-466-4411.
Re:If you don't know what this is about (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If you don't know what this is about (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems on topic and valid to me to point this failing out the to the editor of the article. It is good that people remember Slashdot reaches every country everywhere (um, except N. Korea and maybe China -- it's probably secretly censored and monitored by the UK too, and archived by the Germans). Remember folks, those tubes are trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific too.
Obviously, in South Korea, only old people read Slashdot.
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I am an American and I have no freaking clue what they're talking about. GOOG-411? I'm assuming that's some sort of information number that google does, but like the vast majority of Americans I'm sure, I've never used it.
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US-centric vs bad journalism (Score:2)
Just an idea.
Oh yeah and don't use overlong sentences like I do.
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Re:If you don't know what this is about (Score:5, Funny)
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Someone had better tell the French [google.com].
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Wait for the pedants to link to Dictionary.com entries saying both versions are valid.
lol (Score:3, Funny)
how does it sound slowed down (Score:5, Funny)
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happy days
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkSb9upLpXM [youtube.com]
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Ovaltine?
It's a crummy commercial!
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I downloaded the MP3 and piped the audio output into my printer. Ended up with a copy of Da Vinci's "Last Supper" [slashdot.org].
If my phone made that noise... (Score:3, Funny)
Google - we expect much better from $600/share.
Easier method suggestion. (Score:5, Funny)
I hear something different (Score:4, Funny)
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsP3cJIplfA [youtube.com]
Next week on Googledot... (Score:5, Funny)
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No joke.
thanks for the subversive advertising (Score:3, Interesting)
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Google: News
Apple: Major Announcement
Microsoft: Astroturfing
Everyone Else: Advertisement
What the Flip? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do they have a "Biddy-Biddy-Boop" Sound?
Why would I want to know the Backstory?
How is this in any way important, newsworthy, or even interesting?
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Even as a
What a waste of time. This damn Google worship is really starting to piss me off.
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Obligatory Spaceballs (Score:5, Funny)
YouTube video [youtube.com]
Dark Helmet: Now what is it?
Radar Technician: I'm having trouble with the radar, sir.
Dark Helmet: What's wrong with it?
Radar Technician: I've lost the bleeps, the sweeps, and the creeps.
Dark Helmet: The what?
Colonel Sandurz: The what?
Dark Helmet: And the what?
Radar Technician: You know. The bleeps. [makes bleep sound effect]
Radar Technician: The sweeps. [makes sweep sound]
Radar Technician: And the creeps. [makes creep sound]
Dark Helmet: [to Colonel Sandurz] That's not all he's lost.
I think I can live with it (Score:2)
So that's what that was. (Score:5, Interesting)
Same thing with the business name - if you say something like "Restaurant", that's easily parsed, but if you say something specific like "Bed Bath and Beyond", it could take up to 3 seconds to parse, search for, and find your match. You'll hear the sound, and then the list of results.
I don't know why the Johnny Carson theme (or similar) could have sufficed, because the sounded reminded me of logging onto AOL at 56.6 Kbps. Or make up a Google Jingle or something.
I use GOOG-411 at least once a week nowadays, and the feature to text message you details of what you're looking for has proven (mostly) invaluable while I've used it. There's the problem that sometimes, Google's information on businesses just isn't up to date. But that's a Google-wide issue.
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what the!? (Score:2)
Just like Tell Me? (Score:5, Interesting)
That sound is also a sure sign that you're dealing with Tell Me designed system -- for example Fandango uses their back-end, some banks and some other interactive voice systems.
Of course Tell Me was bought by Microsoft so now it's inevitably evil
Yawn (Score:2)
Summary of the article (Score:2)
HIstory of the dial tone (Score:2)
Coming up next, a history of the dial tone.
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this is fucking stupid (Score:2)
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too self-consciously created for it's purpose (Score:3, Insightful)
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What he said.
Foreign Cities (Score:2)
With google, it's free, the response system is interactive (it doesn't charge me for a miss, and it presents more than just one option), and it ha
No more bandwidth for google? (Score:2, Interesting)
Someone's bragging about this? (Score:2, Interesting)
Mainly because it sucks balls and I don't care if it's free if I find it frustrating and gladly pay $1.50 for the information I need quickly without hassle.
But I while I was drinking some espresso trying to use Goog-411 to get a specific cab company that is one of the major providers here in sf and getting listings for every other major cab company, and even smaller ones, but not the one I specifically asked for and then telling it to go back, try again etc et
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Obviously, you cared enough to read it and post a comment.
It's not until you read the story and listen to this supposedly wonderful "sound" that you realise how lame and pointless the whole thing is. Nothing against the sound- it's mildly unusual, and an interesting enough attempt- but certainly nothing that warrants a front page, mainly because the accompanying story provides no insight into it beyond "it was meant to be the test sound, but we kept it on". Not living in the US, I wasn't familiar with "Google 411" so wondered what the deal with this sound was.
T
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FTFA :>"that cool "bippedy-bippedy-bippedy" sound it makes while searching."
> "I care enough to point out how stupid that mp3 sounds."
It sounds like a crank call from some 10-year-old.
Dark Helmet was right - "Evil will triumph because good is dumb." We now have proof that "Google is Evil" - they've automated the crank phone call.
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- The Daily Tabloid