Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : General Magic -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: litespeedv who wrote (2977)	7/29/1998 11:37:00 AM
From: Mark Oliver	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 10081

I attended the ASAT 98 speech recognition show yesterday and Dr. George White gave a talk with the help of Mark Campbell. The attendees were a very interesting mix of people. When asked how many had heard of Portico and GM, over half raised their hands. It was clear that they were impressed with the demo. Afterwards, there were many people trying to ask questions. I was able to learn a few more things, some of which you all probably know. - Portico will synchronize with many popular address/appointment systems. At least 8 names were mentioned, so it is not dependent that a user change their software to conform to Portico. That is great news as the start up will go pretty smoothly and people won't have to change there ways. I had thought Starfish was the only software of use, it is not. - A user pays no long distance call charges for calls routed through Portico. It's just deducted from user monthly minutes followed by usage charges. Calls are limited to the US and Canada. - "Follow me" is a service where Portico routes all incoming calls to you where ever you are. The caller dials your special 800 number. They will have a delay while Portico asks if you want to take the call, or make an arrangement to call back later, just as a secretary would do. These calls will be deducted from monthly usage. No, it's not really amazing, but if people use the service, it will take a lot of minutes. - Any contact to Portico via the internet, for synch of data or message search or whatever is not deducted from you usage. - Agent technology is used in the Network Operations Center. It handles call service management, contributes to failsafe architecture, and allows hot swapping of to the servers. Agents also are used to filter e-mail. - Planning 7 voices to choose from. - Security was actually a big challenge. They didn't elaborate, but they had to develop various mechanisms to make the system work. Mark mentioned that their most active user this month used 4300 minutes. Going beyond the General Magic demo, there were many speeches given about bringing various levels of SR to the mainstream market. At first glance, it seems like the ASR is the most important feature, but when it all comes down to making a total system, the ASR, and TTS for that matter, just plug-ins. For most of you this is old stuff, but this was the first time I have seen clear demonstrations about the complexities of dealing with human communication. It is quite amazing and not trivial. In particular, Victor Zue of MIT outlined all the problems normally encountered and it was clear Portico is very impressive. I would not think a new competitor could quickly duplicate their work. This is a huge project. Also heartening was a demo of a next generation TTS (Text To Speech) program that MIT was developing. It was so clear and easy to understand, you could hardly tell it was a computer. I find that promising as I've never liked Accuvoice's TTS, but clearly Portico is using about the best quality currently available. Again, TTS is a component that could be changed as can SR when better systems are available. I also saw great demo's on TTS in other languages. There was a company, Elan, who had a very good program for French. It seemed much smoother than ones I had heard in English, but then my French is not perfect. They said France Telecom had been in talks to make a Portico version in French. He thought it wasn't going anywhere as GM wants to get up in the US first. If you are familiar with Minitel, phone cards and other telecom projects France has pioneered, it is not surprising they are interested in Portico. While the components of a system are available for more languages, it is clearly not easy to port the system to new languages. Don't expect quick announcements for new languages. Anyway, just a few of my impressions from ASAT 98. For those in the SF Bay Area, the show is ending today. It's at the Fairmont in San Jose. Regards, Mark