Voice and VoiceXML

Authentify and Purdue University Post Speaker Verification Results

Avery — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 17:45:00 -0800

On February 6, at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, Andy Rolfe of Authentify and Dr. Stephen Elliot of Purdue University presented the results of a study on Authentify's implementation of voice biometrics/speaker verification. It should be noted that this study should not be considered to be a statement on voice biometrics on the whole, but on a specific implementation of a a single vendor's hosted authentication solution. read more »

All Users

A Security Flaw in Windows Vista Speech Recognition Feature

daniel — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 20:05:07 -0800

According to a recent article in Information Week the speech recognition feature in Microsoft's new OS, Windows Vista, contains a major security flaw. Apparently, pranksters were able to execute commands on a PC from a remote location through the use of audio files hosted on a website. For example, the audio file can say shut down, copy and delete and these commands were executed by the PC. There were even some reports that a person was able to create a recording that downloaded and executed a file from the Internet. Now that can be scary! read more »

All Users

Delivering a speech for PR is a lot easier than delivering PR for speech

daniel — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 21:27:34 -0800

I have been tracking the number of publicly announced speech recognition deals for the past two years and the results are midly disturbing (for those in the speech market). In 2005, there were approximately 160 publicly announced customer wins; in 2006 there were only 95. That's almost 50% less. Now here's the half-full, revenue figures and port shipments from vendors clearly indicate that the speech market has grown in 2006. In 2005, I projected that the number of publicly announced customer wins would eclipse that of those in 2005 but I was wrong. Now as an analyst I try to be accurate in my assumptions and methodologies but I know that I cannot divine the future with precision (as much as I would like). So I'm left to ponder and analyze what has happened in the market in retrospect and analyze that data and apply that to future forecasts. Here are my conclusions for the lack of PR for speech in 2006... read more »

All Users

The Markster is No Longer CEO of Digium

Avery — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 18:10:19 -0800

Giga Om is reporting that Mark Spencer, the originator of the open source PBX Asterisk is stepping down as CEO of Digium.

Digium was founded by Mark Spencer back in 1999 as a consulting company to contain consulting revenue he was generating while at university. This company, Linux Support Services, grew into Digium - which was created to provide support and associated hardware for Asterisk. read more »

Voice and VoiceXML

HeyKirusa?

Dan Miller — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 18:25:19 -0800

My "speech article" seeking 'bots didn't even catch the press release announcing that Kirusa has acquired the intellectual property assets of HeyAnita. It is a fact, though. As usual, the financial terms are undisclosed. Oh well, another one bites the dust... just when the notion of a speech enabled portal is gaining legs again. read more »

Voice and VoiceXML

Voice and Voice-XML... inextricably linked?

daniel — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 21:12:09 -0800

Yes and no.

Voice-XML is the World Wide Consortium’s (W3C) standard markup language based on XML used for creating voice user interfaces that use advanced speech recognition (ASR) and text-to-speech (TTS) technologies. From that perspective yes. But when you look at most of the Voice-XML deployments in the market today they are DTMF.

Why? read more »

All Users

Voice Biometrics Conference

Avery — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 19:45:07 -0800

Start: 05/01/2007 - 00:00

End: 05/02/2007 - 00:00

Timezone: Etc/GMT

Washington DC
http://www.voicebiocon.com

Voice and VoiceXML

SpeechTek West

Avery — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 19:44:13 -0800

Start: 02/21/2007 - 00:00

End: 02/23/2007 - 00:00

Timezone: Etc/GMT

San Francisco at the San Francisco Hilton
http://www.speechtek.com/west

Voice and VoiceXML

Avaya Tenders Offer for Ubiquity

Avery — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 22:01:33 -0800

Avaya tendered a $144 million offer for UK SIP software provider Ubiquity. With this, Avaya takes a large step towards filling part of the void left by Lucent's merger with Alcatel and takes another stab at long standing rival Nortel.

Ubiquity produces key components required when building carrier IMS networks: a SIP Application Server, development tools and a series of prepackaged applications. Strategically, if this goes through, it marks the beginning of a new Avaya. read more »

Voice and VoiceXML

Predicting the Future

JohnH — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 17:17:47 -0800

Most technology marketing people I know love lots of data. Most are engineers by training, so they’ve been taught to crave it. I’m an engineer too, but somewhere along my career journey I stepped out of bounds. I still crave data. I just don’t trust most of it anymore. Especially marketing data. read more »

Voice and VoiceXML

An Exercise in Branding: To the losers go the spoils

Avery — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 21:49:05 -0800

Typically, when a company goes through a big acquisition, you end up with either a hybrid hyphenated name or a new name all together - or the acquired company just gets enveloped in the new parent's name:

De-Branding

Genesys + VoiceGenie = Genesys
Verizon + MCI = Verizon
Intervoice + Edify = Intervoice

Hyphenated names:

Alcatel + Lucent = Alcatel-Lucent
St. Paul Insurance + Travelers = St. Paul Travelers Group

New Names: read more »

Voice and VoiceXML