Hi Mark, I thought you would enjoy this article, speech recognition gaining mementum....
Voice recognition may become the next UI
By Ephraim Schwartz and Steven E. Brier
InfoWorld Electric
Posted at 5:14 AM PT, Nov 15, 1997
When certain Comdex exhibitors speak, the entire industry listens. This year, the talk from Microsoft and IBM is about voice-enabling applications from databases and help desks to word processors and spreadsheets.
The convergence of high-speed processors, low-cost memory, and a commitment from two industry giants promises to change the user interface of the operating system and applications as we know them.
Next week at Comdex, Microsoft will announce an alliance with Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products "to work together to speed the implementation of speech technology in the operating system," said Gaston Bastiaens, president and CEO of Lernout & Hauspie, in Burlington, Vt.
"We can expect sometime in '98, or shortly thereafter, the beginning stages of speech recognition technology as the impending interface," said Greg Tapper, an analyst at Giga Information Group, in Santa Clara, Calif.
Corporate users can't wait.
"For data mining for people, who don't have the necessary skill set to understand the programming conventions needed to access data, it would be super if a program is smart enough to understand the spoken word," said Alan Boehme, the director of strategic planning at DHL, in Redwood City, Calif., and a member of InfoWorld's Corporate Advisory Board.
"Once it is enabled in the OS, it will open the gate for thousands of applications that will have speech as the interface model. Today in order to do that you need a lot of know-how in-house," Bastiaens said.
During Comdex, Microsoft and its partners, as well as developers working with IBM's well-recognized speech-research division, will announce new products.
Olympus will announce that the company has incorporated IBM's ViaVoice software into the DP 1000 handheld dictation unit. The DP 1000 stores as much as one hour of voice dictation on a PC Card-compatible flash memory card, which can download the dictation into a PC where it is automatically converted to text.
"This is a major application for speech technology," said W.S. "Ozzie" Osborne, general manager of IBM speech systems, in Boca Raton, Fla.
Lernout & Hauspie next week will launch Voice Express Plus, a package that combines the company's previous voice command and control program with continuous speech recognition, Bastiaens said.
Both Bastiaens and Osborne see speech-recognition technology as a way of lowering support costs in a corporate environment.
"You don't have to learn a syntax. With a natural-language engine, you can get into a dialogue with a help desk application," Osborne said. "A user can go through n number of levels before he has to call the help desk," he said, adding that a major help-desk company will incorporate speech recognition into its package in 1998.
"It will put more pressure on corporations to make their data more customer friendly and customer ready," Boehme said.
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Regards, Michael |
