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


To: Rick Rappaport who wrote (3876)10/12/1998 2:59:00 PM
From: Mark Oliver  Respond to of 10081
 
Perhaps OT

First Voice-Dialing CDMA Wireless Phone in United States Using ART Technology Soon to Be Shipped

SIMI VALLEY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 12, 1998--Advanced Recognition Technologies Inc. (ART), a pioneer in voice-recognition technology, announced that the first wireless phone including ART's voice-recognition software will be sold in the United States by Sprint PCS.

The first CDMA embedded PCS wireless phones with ART's smARTspeak voice-recognition software are being manufactured by Samsung Telecommunications America Inc. and distributed by Sprint PCS through its retail outlets.

The Samsung SCH-2000 series of phones are the first wireless telephones in the United States that incorporate ART's innovative smARTspeak voice-recognition technology, so conducive to wireless telecommunications. Up to 20 names or locations can be programmed to take advantage of these voice-dialing features.

With more than 2 million wireless phones already shipped in Asia and Europe with ART's smARTspeak voice-recognition software, ART is now the global leader in providing voice-dialing features to the wireless-telecommunications industry. It allows users to simply say a name, and instantly be connected, without having to lift a finger or look at the keypad.

''The human voice is a tool that is globally intuitive,'' stated Rick McCaskill, executive vice president and general manager of ART.

''When you want to call someone, you are already thinking of their name, and the next natural step is to say their name. smARTspeak-based voice-dialing software takes care of the rest, instantly connecting you to that person. ART is honored to provide this solution to this superior line of Samsung wireless phones.''

''Samsung is pleased to utilize ART's smARTspeak voice-dialing technology in its SCH-2000 phone series,'' said Peter Skarzynski, vice president of wireless sales and marketing, wireless terminals division. ''As the first company to provide a CDMA handset with voice- dialing capabilities, Samsung has integrated a superior technology -- smARTspeak -- into a convenient handset that is extremely easy to use.''

In addition to voice dialing, ART is working very closely with several wireless-phone manufacturers worldwide to incorporate additional voice control to wireless phones as well as ART's smARTwriter handwriting-recognition technology as a natural input method to the wireless phone.

About ART

Advanced Recognition Technologies (ART) develops and markets innovative, technologically superior products for the control of wireless phones, computer applications and electronic devices in response to the spoken human voice or naturally handwritten letters or symbols.

The company is based in Southern California, with an R&D subsidiary in Tel Aviv, Israel, and sales offices in Atlanta; San Jose and Los Angeles, Calif.; Israel (for Europe); Japan; Korea; and Taiwan.

Additional information regarding ART OEM products is available at www.artrecognition.com. Additional information regarding ART retail products is available at www.artcomp.com.

About Samsung

Samsung Telecommunications America, a Dallas-based subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., researches, develops and markets telecommunications and data-communications systems and products throughout North America. STA has five main business groups: Wireless Systems, Wireless Terminals, Networks, Business Communications and Office Automation.

For more information on STA's products and technologies, visit the company's Web site at samsungtelecom.com.

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., a US$13 billion flagship company of the Korean-based Samsung Group, is a world leader in electronics with operations in more than 60 countries.



To: Rick Rappaport who wrote (3876)10/12/1998 3:54:00 PM
From: Mark Oliver  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 10081
 
Rick, I found mention of the deal you question between Lucent and Spyglass. Certainly Lucent has it's eyes on markets that cross over General Magic. The key here for me is that GMGC has enough patents to control their own future and they make a good grab for market share using what seems like a good lead in time to market.

In this particular case, we are talking about Lucent/Spyglass using a phone to browse a web site. I believe this will eventually be added to Portico via Web-on-Call ( genmagic.com ). It appears that GMGC's offering is a direct dial program, where Spyglass is dynamic allowing you to read any website, but then again looking at what they offer in this press release it is in fact limited.

Both systems seem to hold promise, but you have to wonder how great the need is at this time. It looks to me like voice browsing is a vertical market which is also the GMGC approach. Currently, they have customers like the FDA who give users a number to dial into their web site and access information. I tried the demo a while back and found it cumbersome. It seems again that TTS is not pleasing for getting large quantities of information IMHO.

Lucent/Spyglass seem to describe a system that can strip away the content of a web site and just present it as text which would then be read by TTS. Doesn't really sound all that complicated. Imagine doing a search on any subject that comes back with 20 hits, not 25462. Then imagine a TTS reading through all the choices and you choosing one. Then trying to navigate the site with no visuals and find what you want. Sounds like trying play chess without a board. I believe these systems have to be more goal oriented (vertical) or include some visuals to make the system user friendly.

There have been a lot of announcements for Win CE and Palm Pilot that are building a case for an excellent palm based tool that will go very well with combined voice/visual presentation. I think we shall see Portico become an even greater tool when it is integrated into a computer phone.

But we have a product today, Portico, demonstrating function that fulfills a need. General Magic is trying to focus on building a base in function that can address immediate needs and provide the cash flow to go forward. Lucent can afford to have a lot of pie in the sky applications of which many will never see the light of day. GM can not.

Does this announcement mean that Lucent is competing with Portico? No.

Lucent does have strong technology in all areas where GM plans to compete. Lucent has a scary lawsuit with Periphonic based on how they handle Dialog. Again, you have many components to a system like Portico. ASR to convert voice into computer understandable commands, and TTS to get the data back out of the computer to the user. But Dialog is the key to systems like Portico, hence the need to identify Magic Talk for future uses other than Portico. How the Dialog system understands and interacts with the user is key to system usability. Lucent has patents on Dialog and they've said Periphonic is in violation. GM also has a host of patents in Dialog. Is GM's technology strong enough to defend? That is the real question for me.

Maybe I miss something, but I find no serious threat from Lucent/Spyglass announcement at this time. Please let me know why you find it a worry.

Regards,

Mark
Monday October 12 12:59 PM EDT

Lucent, Spyglass team up on voice Web browsing

SAN FRANCISCO (Wired) - A new prototype, developed jointly between Spyglass and Lucent Technologies, allows telephone-based Web browsing using voice control.

The device, on display Monday at a wireless IT conference in Las Vegas, allows users to dial a phone number and then navigate standard Web pages using voice commands, and ''listen'' to voice-synthesized pages.

Though the phone browser's content offerings are so far limited to weather, sports scores, and stock quotes, the companies said that a wide range of Web-based services will eventually be accessible.

The phone browser is a joint product of Lucent's speech-recognition and text-to-speech technologies, and Spyglass Prism, a Web server system that selectively filters Web pages to extract and package content for computing platforms with limited display and interface capabilities.

Spyglass (Nasdaq: SPYG - news) said its system will ignore extraneous text commonly found on Web pages.

''Headlines, related links, advertisements, and the like may add value when a page is viewed on a PC, but it is too much information to deliver via a telephone,'' the company said in a statement.

After buying Mosaic -- the Web's first graphical browser -- in 1994, Spyglass licensed it to Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT - news), which then used the code as the basis for Internet Explorer.

In recent times, Spyglass has positioned itself as a company that develops Web-browsing software for so-called ''constrained environments,'' including handheld PCs, wireless devices, and set-top boxes.

The companies did not say when the technology will be on the market.



To: Rick Rappaport who wrote (3876)10/12/1998 4:20:00 PM
From: Mark Oliver  Respond to of 10081
 
Rick, here is another release that speaks more of the voice based browser from Spyglass. It mentions new standards called WAP. Could be important?

biz.yahoo.com
wapforum.org

Regards,

Mark

PS Nice to see a general rebound and GMGC trading up also. So, as I said last week, there isn't really anything wrong with GMGC to take the stock down. People were just selling everything, especially unproven companies like GMGC. I think we'll do just find give enough time to prove there is system demand and GM's ability to support it.