Proving that business makes for strange bedfellows, Tellme Networks Inc has won investments from former Netscape Communications Corp CEO Jim Barksdale and former VP and member of Microsoft Corp’s executive committee Brad Silverberg. Details of the private round of seed funding have not been disclosed. Tellme has appointed Silverberg and former Netscape CFO Peter Currie to its board of directors. Founded in February 1999, the company says it is building a consumer service that will improve and broaden the usefulness of the telephone the way the web increased the power of the personal computer. Observers speculate that the killer app is a combined speech recognition and natural language search utility that will make online information accessible via a phone.
