TravellingWave shows off speech-to-text service

The speech-to-text playground just got a little more crowded.
TravellingWave, a Seattle-based startup, came out of stealth mode touting “breakthrough technology” that transcribes voice into text on mobile devices. The company said it raised an undisclosed amount in a Series A financing round from several wireless and technology executives including attorney Jim Judson and Colin Wong, a Google Inc. employee-turned-angel-investor.
TravellingWave said its “predictive speech-to-text” technology allows users to say a word while pressing a key and type in a letter or two to have the word appear on-screen. The company said it has recently concluded early trials of the system and is poised to deploy with carriers and handset manufacturers next year.
“The mobile marketing industry is finding its voice, and now mobile text input is answering this clarion call with more user-friendly technologies,” said founder Ashwin Rao. “Our investors represent some of the most experienced individuals in the mobile industry, and they have seized the opportunity to forge a new direction for the third screen.”
Speech-to-text is increasingly gaining attention as an alternative to triple-tapping messages on a handset. Longtime speech recognition players such as Nuance are competing against a handful of newcomers such as Jott Networks Inc. and Pinger Inc.