LR firm Vocool Technologies hopes to lead the field in voice apps

Typing and texting aren’t going the way of the old yellow pages phone book yet, but the next generation of search and content programming is going to let your voice do the walking.

That’s the premise that three entrepreneurs in the Little Rock Tech Park are hedging their bets on as they accelerate their startup, Vocool Technologies.

Pronounced “Vocal” Technologies, founders Mike Steely and Jake Stanley and marketing executive Jason Jersey are developing Next Generation Voice Applications (NGVA) for Amazon and Google voice platforms. Think of their offerings as developing apps for an iPhone, except these are voice-activated and work through Amazon’s Alexa, which resides on Echo devices, or Google’s equivalent virtual assistant. As early entrants in the space, Vocool is hoping to position itself to take advantage of early and rapidly evolving opportunities.

Vocool recently launched a radio content management service to connect local radio stations to more than 40 million smart speaker users in homes in the U.S. The tech group is hoping to convince these media outlets that there’s a new base of consumers hungry for their content and they’re looking for an easy way to access it other than a tuner in a car.

Rather than write a longer story about Vocool and its efforts, Talk Business & Politics went to their tech park offices for a conversation. You can listen to Steely, Stanley and Jersey below.