SpeakingPal Selected as Semi-Finalist in Ericsson Application Awards

2011-05-31 13:57:10 (GMT) (WiredPRNews.com - Business, Education, Press Releases)

TEL AVIV, Israel (WiredPRNews.com) SpeakingPal, a young startup company that develops English teaching mobile programs aimed at improving speaking skills, has been selected among five finalists in the ‘company category’ for the Ericsson Application Awards. The award is for development of an application based on the Android platform that addresses the theme “Connected Things” and makes use of at least one Ericsson Labs API.

SpeakingPal has developed “PresentationPal”, an application that helps speakers practice the English sentences they need for their presentations before having to perform in front of a live audience. The application uses Ericsson’s text-to-speech for reading sentences or notes from the user’s presentation slides, and allows the speaker to practice saying each sentence using SpeakingPal’s mobile speaking skill builder. The application provides instant feedback on how well each sentence and word was spoken. Using automatic speech recognition combined with an easy user-interface, PresentationPal allows anytime, anywhere and instant practice on user-provided material for any type of presentation.

“We are very excited to be chosen as one of the semi-finalists by the Ericsson team”, says Eyal Eshed, CEO and co-founder of SpeakingPal. “Millions of people the world over must give presentations in English, the international language of business and acedemia. However, you want to be sure that your audience understands what you say, especially if your native language is not English. We believe that PresentationPal fulfills a need that we have not seen addressed by any other product in the marketplace. PresentationPal allows ‘just in time’ assistance for presenters to practice their speaking skills on their own material before they need to speak in public for lectures, conference presentations, sales pitches and so on.” Ariel Velikovsky, CTO and co-founder of SpeakingPal, says, “The use of Ericsson’s speech-to-text coupled with SpeakingPal’s unique automatic feedback system is an innovative use of mobile speech technology that addresses a real need.”

SpeakingPal is the first m-learning company to use mobile speech technologies for allowing users to develop higher-level speaking skills for presentation purposes.

About The Ericsson Application Awards
The Ericsson Application Awards is a global awards program open for mobile application developers to gain exposure within the telecom world and reach out to customers via Ericsson distribution channels. The award has two categories: one for students and one for small-to-medium enterprises. More information can be obtained at the Ericsson Application Awards website.

About SpeakingPal
SpeakingPal, is a pioneering mobile learning company that brings English Language Learning to the mobile phone with a unique focus on speaking skills. SpeakingPal turns the mobile phone into a virtual English tutor by allowing users to simply speak into the phone and get instant feedback. SpeakingPal’s products utilize Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) to provide a uniquely engaging and highly interactive educational experience. Its patent-pending technology combines mobile client applications, cloud computing, and distributed systems with expertise in linguistics and ASR. SpeakingPal’s innovative solution delivers mobile English language training of the highest caliber to the global market.

The company website is: www.speakingpal.com.

Contact Information:
Shaunie Shammass
SpeakingPal Ltd.
#6 Hanehoshet Street, Tel Aviv, Israel, 69710
Tel: +972-54-4588402
www.speakingpal.com
SOURCE SpeakingPal Ltd.