RT Speaking of...
TTS.............
BeVocal Announces Licensing Agreement With Lernout & Hauspie Consumer Voice Portal Pioneer to Employ L&H RealSpeak(TM) Technology To Provide Text-to-Speech for Location and Travel Services
BeVocal Announces Licensing Agreement With Lernout & Hauspie Consumer
Voice Portal Pioneer to Employ L&H RealSpeak(TM) Technology To Provide
Text-to-Speech for Location and Travel Services
SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 4, 2000 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- BeVocal, Inc., a
consumer V-services pioneer that aims to make the widest variety of
voice-enabled content, commerce, communications and customer service
applications accessible from any phone, announced today that it will license
Lernout & Hauspie's (L&H) (Nasdaq: LHSP; Easdaq: LHSP) L&H RealSpeak(TM)
text-to-speech technology to voice-enable applications for consumers. L&H
RealSpeak(TM), L&H's award winning natural sounding synthetic speech engine,
will enable BeVocal's voice portal service to read aloud any text with a
natural, human-sounding voice, providing consumers with dynamic, personalized
information via mobile phones.
BeVocal will use its patent-pending VocalBoost(TM) Architecture and L&H
RealSpeak(TM) to make a broad range of personalized Web content and services
available from any phone. Millions of callers can dial BeVocal's nationwide,
toll-free number and immediately access voice-enabled information such as
driving directions, store locations, travel reservations, and traffic reports.
The Kelsey Group, a leading voice and mobile commerce consulting firm, forecasts
that the total market for voice portal services and technologies will exceed $12
billion by 2005.
On May 4-5, 2000 in Boston, MA, at the L&H Technology Days event, BeVocal will
join L&H in briefing prospective partners, leading analysts, and members of the
press on emerging trends in speech and language industry. BeVocal co-founder
Amol Joshi will join speech industry luminary Gaston Bastiaens (President & CEO
of L&H), noted inventor Ray Kurzweil ("Father of the Reading Machine"), and
distinguished entrepreneur Janet Baker (Co-Founder & Chairman of Dragon Systems)
on a panel discussion entitled "Speech Beyond the PC." Interested parties should
contact L&H for more information.
Amol Joshi, co-founder and Vice President of Product Marketing for BeVocal,
said, "L&H has proven expertise in providing speech technology to wireless
carriers and automotive companies for location and travel-related consumer
applications. We are pleased to form this agreement with L&H to deliver the
highest quality, industry standard in text-to-speech technology to BeVocal's
callers nationwide."
Gerald Calabrese, Senior Vice President of World-Wide Sales for L&H, stated,
"BeVocal is an innovative company bringing must-have applications such as
driving directions and travel information to wireless phone users. We are
excited to work with BeVocal and to provide them with the industry's most
natural sounding, synthetic voice to meet the enormous consumer demand for
voice-enabled services. Working together, L&H and BeVocal can quickly bring to
market a broad range of useful, consumer-friendly applications." |
