Last week we learned that mytalk and portico (still) use FONX acuvoice TTS.
FYI, this news release states that the competition:Webley uses LHSP TTS
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Monday July 12, 08:59 AM Eastern time
Company Press Release
Lernout & Hauspie''s RealSpeak Natural Sounding TTS Ships;
Telephony Developers Seize Solution for Diverse Needs
BURLINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 12, 1999--
Technology to be Employed by Webley, MessageBlaster.com and 4th
Peripheral Award Winning L&H RealSpeak(tm) Technology
is One of Several New Solutions to Help
Position Company as Full-Range Telephony Vendor
Lernout & Hauspie (NASDAQ:LHSP) (EASDAQ:LHSP) (L&H(tm)) announced today
that just weeks after its award-winning L&H RealSpeak(tm) text-to-speech (TTS)
technology began shipping, several telephony developers have contracted to build a diverse
range of applications using the solution. L&H RealSpeak is a new de facto industry standard
in TTS technology that reads aloud any text with a human sounding voice and represents a
breakthrough in terms of voice quality and intelligibility. The contract agreements come
shortly after Intel and L&H announced plans to form a joint venture to develop telephony
and e-commerce solutions using L&H technology. Combined, these recent events
demonstrate L&H's growing commitment to become the premier speech and language
vendor for the telecommunications market.
Telephony application developers Webley, MessageBlaster.com and 4th Peripheral all
recently signed contracts to build applications employing L&H RealSpeak. The applications
provide a diverse range of capabilities, including unified messaging from Webley,
speech-enabled Internet-based messaging from MessageBlaster.com and voice access
for Web pages from 4th Peripheral. Other companies that have recently signed contracts to
deploy L&H RealSpeak include Edify, Heartland Information Services and
Transcomputing. L&H cites this immediate demand for the solution as evidence of the
overwhelming need for high-quality, natural sounding text-to-speech in
telecommunications applications.
"L&H has recently put in place a number of leading edge technologies and solutions for the
telecommunications market," said Gaston Bastiaens, president and CEO of L&H. "Our
combined offerings provide the broadest range of technologies available for
telecommunications use today. We believe we are well positioned to lead this market and
the overwhelmingly positive response we've received affirms this belief."
In addition to the shipment of its L&H RealSpeak technology, L&H has recently emerged
as a leading speech and language technology vendor for the telecommunications market by
reaching a number of strategic milestones over the past several quarters. L&H RealSpeak
rounds out the company's suite of telephony solutions, extending from a new large
vocabulary recognizer to small recognizer engines to text to speech technology -- each
available for a variety of platforms, languages and environments. The combination of these
products enables L&H to offer a complete solution to telephony developers and vendors
looking to voice-enable the next generation of call centers, IVR applications and other
telephone-based services. Strategic alliances with industry-leading companies like Intel,
GTE and Motorola have further bolstered L&H's position in the telephony market, as has
the recent contract to speech-enable Korea's largest automated stock quote service
through a partnership with Bumil. L&H's RealSpeak technology was also named Best of
Show during CTI Spring 99, one of the premier events in the rapidly growing
datacom/telecom convergence industry.
"The growth of automated services over the telephone is accelerating, paralleling the
self-service phenomenon of the Internet. This growth has created a demand for better
automated voices, and the new RealSpeak text-to-speech technology addresses that
need," stated William Meisel, president, TMA Associates, a speech industry consulting firm
in Tarzana, CA.
According to the company, the natural sounding voice provided by the L&H RealSpeak
TTS engine will not only enhance end user's experience with speech enabled applications,
but will also increase application productivity. The applications currently under
development include:
--Webley's full-featured unified messaging personal assistant service enables users to
make calls and send and receive all kinds of messages via the Internet and by phone.
Webley is upgrading their feature platform with L&H RealSpeak. Its primary application
will provide natural sounding voice to read aloud users e-mails from any phone. In the near
future, L&H RealSpeak will enable Webley customers to receive stocks and travel
information services as well browse the Web by phone.
"Listening to email over the phone and sending an audio reply is one of Webley's most
popular features for 'road Warriors.' Up until now customer usage was limited by 'machine
like' sounding pronunciation. With L&H RealSpeak, we anticipate customers will use this
greatly improved feature as part of their routine'," said Hal Poel, senior vice president
marketing, Webley.
--L&H RealSpeak will read aloud voice pages, e-mail and fax messages for the
Internet-based outbound group messaging service from MessageBlaster. The
MessageBlaster service, which makes it possible for on-line users to simultaneously send
one or many time-sensitive messages to unlimited numbers of people in the way they
prefer supports voice, e-mail, pager and fax messaging as well as postal mail and overnight
delivery.
--4th Peripheral's 4eXtenxa Servers allows consumers and corporate Intranet users to
employ mobile, land-line phones and personal digital assistants (PDA's) to access Web
content. 4eXtenxa is also used in deploying automated call centers, IVR systems, and other
telephony-to-web infrastructure.
About Webley Systems, Inc.
Webley Systems is a leader in Unified Communications and Messaging due to its natural
speech recognition driven personal assistant, Webley. Webley is a fully featured Personal
Assistant integrating customers' Messages over the phone and Internet. The feature set
include voice-activated dialing, follow me service via one number, conference calling, fax
mailbox, and the capability to allow users to listen to e-mail over the phone. Via a personal
web page, customers can upload their contact lists automatically from their PIM and
retrieve messages. Webley markets directly under it's own brand and provides private label
functionality to all types of service providers. Webley, a privately held company is based in
Deerfield, Illinois and can be found at www.Webley.com.
About MessageBlaster
MessageBlaster.com provides a unique network service in the emerging field of Internet
based outbound group messaging. The first of its kind communications service makes it
possible for on-line users to simultaneously send one-to-many time-sensitive messages
to unlimited numbers of people in the way they prefer - e-mail, voice pager, fax, postal mail
overnight delivery. It also allows users to track the receipt of messages and receive
recipient responses. The service is targeted at small-to-medium sized businesses that lack
both human and network resources. Founded in 1998, MessageBlaster.com is based in
Billerica Massachusetts and can be found on the Web at messageblaster.com.
About 4th Peripheral
4th Peripheral Technologies is a CyberExtension company. The company focuses on
extending and integrating the Internet, intranets, and data warehouses by providing remote
access from handheld devices (wireless telephone, land-line telephone, PDA, etc.) using
the company's proprietary 4eXtenxa voice-product family. For more information, please
visit 4th Peripheral at gofourth.com |
