The following start-ups have benefited from significant interaction with the Link commercial team and the Link’s entrepreneurship development activities. [Note: the Link does not itself invest in companies, and does not own shares in any of the companies below, although the University of Edinburgh may do.]

 

Alivox

http://www.alivox.com/

Alivox is developing an Automatic language Identification System ( ALiS) to facilitate a fundamental change in telephone call handling and language translation. ALiS identifies a language from a clip of speech. It uses speech and signal processing techniques that figure out the language dependent features and an innovative comparison methodology to relate the speech sample to the closest language set. ALiS claims to be the missing link in the process of Globalization, Internationalization, Localization and Translation (GILT). Future speech applications will need a multilingual GILT capability.

 

CEREPROC

http://www.cereproc.com/

Cereproc is developing a unique range of computer-generated characterful voices. Its new speech creation technologies will enable faster and more cost -effective development of synthesized speech applications, especially in domain -specific environments.

 

Dunedin Arts

http://www.dunedin-arts.com/

Dunedin Arts is a digital content provider. It is "the brain child of three kindered spirits with such a powerful and unique blend of skills, styles and sofware, that they decided to bottle it and sell it to everyone"!

 

Flexpansion

Flexpansion increases text input speed on electronic devices, initially for disabled people, but also with wider applications.

 

GoSpin

GoSpin is creating the ultimate information and services website for travellers that wish to visit Edinburgh (and other cities within the UK).

 

HubDub

http://www.hubdub.com/

Hubdub is an online news aggregator that uses a market mechanism to filter and rank news articles from 1,000s of sources. It allows users to discover high quality news articles related to a story; track running news stories over time; and predict outcomes in competition with other users.

 

Insight Studios

http://www.Insightstudios.co.uk/

Insight Studios is an award winning web design company. Insight offers bespoke website design services, as well as 'Launchpad', a multimedia package aimed at giving small and medium sized businesses a superior online presence at an affordable price.

 

Linear B

http://www.linearb.co.uk/

Founded by Link-funded MSc students Colin Bannard and Chris Callison-Burch in 2002, Linear B develops translations software for any language. The company uses sophisticated machine learning techniques to derive a method for translating between two languages by statistically analyzing example translations. Because its translation software is automatically learned from data, Linear B has a much faster development time than other machine translation providers.

Linguit

The Originally founded in Bad Bergzabern, Germany in 2001, Linguit was re-established in Edinburgh in 2005. The company develops two language technology products, Nuggets and Contesta. Nuggets searches the web to enable users to text a question and receive the answer within 30 seconds. Contesta provides a multilingual Web interface that accepts questions and navigation commands so that visitors never get lost on your portal. Contesta's question-answering capabilities can reduce reliance on call centers.

Mobigolf

Mobigolf is a mobile software application that aids golfers on the golf course. The system primarily acts as score carding application. Advanced features include a golf club advisor utility that advises players which club to select in the current position. A handicap calculator is also included that allows scoring data to be analysed to calculate the user handicap. The next release of MobiGolf will allow golfers to view a live leader board during competitions and scores can be uploaded after each completed hole.

Sententia plans to use AI techniques to help companies integrate their business intelligence (BI) software. The average cost of changing BI providers is over £1m and normally takes around 12 months. The founder has held discussions with a newly-funded Silicon Valley company to complement their existing BI integration software using novel artificial intelligence techniques.
Note: not yet incorporated

Surya

Surya is developing a unique peer-to-peer collaborative search architecture.