Computers 'to match human brains by 2030'

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Computer power will match the intelligence of human beings within the next 20 years because of the accelerating speed at which technology is advancing, according to a leading scientific "futurologist".

Dr Kurzweil is considered one of the most radical figures in the field of technological prediction. His credentials stem from being a pioneer in various fields of computing, such as optical character recognition and automatic speech recognition by machine.[click heading for more]

Telisma And PerSay Partner For Voice Authentication

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Speech recognition provider Telisma and voice biometric company PerSay have announced a partnership in an effort to provide more comprehensive voice solutions for customers. Voice biometric technologies take advantage of the fact that each person's voice is a unique and unobtrusive identifier, like a fingerprint. For contact centers that support banking, telecommunications and other industries, voice biometrics can be a cost-effective way to enhance security and improve customer convenience.

In cases where businesses require what’s known as “triple factor authentication,” voice biometrics can be an important “leg” of the trio, which may also include PIN numbers and a caller’s telephone number identification. [click heading for more]

Voxify raises $15 million

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Voxify, an Alameda, Calif.-based provider of speech recognition technologies for automating customer call centers, has raised $15 million in fourth-round funding. Intel Capital led the deal, and was joined by return backers El Dorado Ventures, Palomar Ventures and Sigma Partners. The company previously had raised around $20 million.

Voxify provides speech self-service solutions built from industry-specific templates and offered as a managed service. Voxify's solutions range from informational responses to customer inquiries to fully transactional reservation systems to interactive outbound calls with secure transactional capabilities. Contact centers are offered flexibility in application customization, control in making changes to meet rapidly changing business needs, and options for hosted and premise-based deployments. [click heading for more]

Nuance Communications' Loss Widens

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Nuance Communications' first-quarter loss widened on the heels of several acquisitions, but the company forecast a strong second quarter.
The Burlington, Mass. speech-recognition software company said first-quarter revenue rose 46% to $195 million, from $133.4 million in the same quarter of the prior year.
Excluding $14 million lost to purchase accounting, revenue was $209.1 million. Analysts were expecting $200 million, according to Thomson Financial.
The company's loss widened to $15.4 million or 8 cents a share, from $1.2 million, or a penny a share, one year ago.

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G2 Speech releases case study on The Netherlands’ first all-speech recognition hospital

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G2 Speech announced today the release of a case study about a cross-the-board implementation of speech recognition at The Hague’s Bronovo hospital in The Netherlands. The Bronovo Hospital was first in the country to implement MediSpeech powered by SpeechMagic in every department. Neurologists, Cardiologists and Psychiatrists are among those now working with speech recognition - which has resulted in the reduction of transcription backlogs by over 90%, according to the hospital. [click heading for more]

The Future of Video is Audio … (Text Actually)

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Let’s face it - we developed a text based internet. All of our systems and tools do a great job of parsing text and building models for targeting and/or dynamic content creation. However, video has not enjoyed the same flexibility and matchability at as granular a level as text-based content due to technical restrictions that prevent us from easily understanding the context of the content. Audio-to-text technology, in theory, should solve all of that. In reality - have you seen any systems that work perfectly yet? [click heading for more]

How Things Work: Speech Recognition

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“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” said Arthur C. Clarke, renowned science fiction author of the 20th century — and even today, we see the truth of this statement everywhere before our eyes.
“Open Sesame!” chanted Aladdin to open the treasure cavern of Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves. Today, we deal with much the same in our daily lives — from phones that dial numbers at the sound of a name, to automated voice-menus in various phone services, voice recognition is a little bit of magic that technology has introduced into our lives.
Voice recognition, however, is a far more tricky business than it sounds. If even real-life, human students have trouble understanding professors’ thick accents, what hope do machines have in this regard? [click heading for more]

What is VoiceXML?

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VoiceXML (VXML) is the W3C's standard XML format for specifying interactive voice dialogues between a human and a computer. It is fully analogous to HTML, and brings the same advantages of web application development and deployment to voice applications that HTML brings to visual applications. Just as HTML documents are interpreted by a visual web browser, VoiceXML documents are interpreted by a voice browser. A common architecture is to deploy banks of voice browsers attached to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) so that users can simply pick up a phone to interact with voice applications. [click heading for more]

Aculab to Demo Telco-Grade VoiceXML/CCXML at ACE 2008

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Aculab, a provider of enabling technology for solution providers and VoIP developers, has announced they will demonstrate the latest version of their VoiceXML/CCXML interpreter software at ACE 2008.

ACE 2008 is the company's annual partner event featuring presentations from industry experts and opinion leaders and offering attendees the opportunity to learn about Aculab's product roadmap and future developments. This year's event will take place from March 31st to April 2nd in Scottsdale, Arizona and will highlight topics like security, intelligent and next generation networks, VoiceXML/CCXML, SIP and a number of other topics.

With Aculab’s VoiceXML/CCXML interpreter software, VoIP developers and PSTN telephony service developers can implement standards-based interfaces for IVR, voice portals, conferencing services, voicemail, and a number of other applications.

Because the software eliminates the need to develop native products APIs, it speeds up the application development process and creates a faster time to market. [click heading for more]