Otter announces Otter for Education at Educause, the first version of Otter voice notes for universities.
Otter
October 31, 2018
New features include inline photos, call recording, advanced export, and 6,000 minutes of transcription time per month
LOS ALTOS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AISense announced today general availability and a new, premium version of Otter Voice Notes, a smart note taking app available on iOS, Android and the Web. Otter creates much smarter voice notes that combine audio, transcription, speaker identification, inline photos, and key phrases. Collectively, these features provide a new capability that empowers business people, journalists and students to be more focused, collaborative and efficient in meetings, interviews, and lectures—or wherever important conversations happen.
“We believe that Otter strikes a chord with the millions of people that record meetings, calls and lectures who can now efficiently organize, search and share these conversations in a way that they never thought would be possible.”Tweet this
Since its launch at the end of February, Otter has been recognized as defining a new category of productivity app. It is used to record and transcribe conversations in real time that can be quickly searched and shared. Through its proprietary and unique AI, Otter automatically separates and identifies speakers and highlights key words and phrases.
In addition to making Otter generally available, AISense is also announcing Otter Premium. Pricing for the premium version is $79.99 billed annually, or $9.99 billed monthly. Otter Premium includes 6,000 minutes of transcription time per month and unmetered storage. Students with an .edu email address can subscribe at a discounted price of $2.99 per month. The standard version of Otter, which has been substantially upgraded since launch, will remain free, and includes 600 minutes of transcription time per month.
"We are building this release of Otter based on feedback of thousands of engaged users who told us how much they value the Otter experience and suggested enhancements," said Sam Liang, AISense founder and CEO. "We believe that Otter strikes a chord with the millions of people that record meetings, calls and lectures who can now efficiently organize, search and share these conversations in a way that they never thought would be possible."
While it only launched commercially this year, AISense’s technology, that powers Otter, is already processing over 10 million minutes of speech monthly. A focus on conversational dialog and continuous learning has enabled AISense to extend its leadership in accuracy for word error, speaker identification, and punctuation resulting in substantial improvements in overall legibility. While the system trains the algorithms from user data in an aggregated and anonymized way, security and privacy is top of mind. All data is encrypted and when it is deleted by the user no copy is kept in Otter.
Otter has also added many enhancements since its initial launch at the end of February, which are available in both the premium and free versions:
- Inline Photos - available now, this feature lets users snap a photo of a whiteboard, a presenter or other relevant content and add it inline to the note in the Otter app providing new visual context. Otter will be the one application that can serve as a repository for all essential content derived in meetings, lectures or interviews.
- Call Recording will be available as an Android exclusive later this month. Integrated call recording enables Otter to satisfy the needs of millions of users who rely on dedicated recorder applications while providing a whole new level of functionality.
- Text export to the clipboard or directly into other apps.
- Audio export as MP3 files.
- Notifications to remind you to record an upcoming meeting and inform you that someone has shared a conversation with you.
- Rematch speakers to identify and label the speakers automatically, after manually tagging a few voice samples of each speaker in a conversation.
- Manage local storage so you can control how much space Otter uses to store local copies of the audio recordings.
Otter Premium includes all the above features, along with:
- 6,000 minutes of recording time per month for users instead of 600 free minutes that are included in the free version.
- Advanced Export Options will roll out in June, will enable inclusion or exclusion of speaker labels and timestamps, exporting text in txt, pdf, and vtt formats, and exporting audio as mp3, m4a, and wma files. Data export will enable Otter to fit into the workflow, and integrate with tools used by professionals in a number of verticals.
How it works & Uses
The initial focus of Otter was to capture and summarize meetings. Since launch Otter has found use in universities as a solution to extend access for students that have challenges focusing in a classroom or taking notes. Journalists and other media professionals are finding that Otter is an invaluable tool used to organize interviews and their own thoughts, and to capture direct quotes to use in their articles. Investment professionals use the product extensively in their process to capture company pitches and feedback.
Legendary investor Tim Draper was an early adopter and maintains that “Otter is like a super-power that assures I forget nothing and can be even more intently focused in conversations with entrepreneurs. The addition of inline photos is something I advocated for when I first used the app and its inclusion means that I will only need one tool to take notes in any meeting, and since the app is tied to my calendar, I never even have to write who was in the meeting or what company I met with. Otter is awesome!”
In addition to gaining the attention of individual professionals and students, senior enterprise and educational institution buyers have reached out after discovering Otter. Along with continuing to improve the core Otter application for end users, future product enhancements will include adding features to support account management and data ownership for organizations of all types.
Download Otter from the Apple App Store, Google Play Store, or on the Web at otter.ai.
About AISense
Founded in 2016, AISense is on a mission to transform everyday voice conversations through Ambient Voice Intelligence™, a proprietary technology that gives people the power to store, search, share and analyze their voice conversations the same way they can with emails and text messages. The startup is based in Silicon Valley with a team of experienced Ph.Ds and engineers from Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Nuance. To date it has raised $13 million in funding. Follow AISense on Twitter and learn more at aisense.com.
Otter.ai Contacts
press@otter.ai
+1 415-498-0785
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