Russian voice technologies available to foreigners

The Voice Navigator solution developed in the Speech Technology Center (STC) is the first such system developed for the Russian language. The Navigator is able to question callers and transfer calls depending on the answers received.

The Voice Navigator capabilities were demonstrated at the exhibition ‘Call Center World Russia/CIS 2008’. The acoustic vocabulary database of the system is aimed at men and women of 18-65 age group, who are the main clients of call centers. STC tells CNews a platform supporting MRCP v2.0 and VoiceXML, including recording, synthesis, speech recognition and verification, will be finished by summer.[click heading for more]

Speech recognition saves Aussie Post A$500,000

Australia Post has invested in a speech recognition system for incoming calls, reducing call costs by 80 percent and allowing Post staff to be transferred to more complex tasks.Implemented in June, the Inference Communications speech recognition system answers calls requesting information such as the location of post offices, postcodes of suburbs, trading hours and passport application enquiries.
Australia Post's NSW contact center receives 10,000 calls a day, according to the company, 1,500 of which are now answered by the speech recognition system.
The average call time with a human operator was 135 seconds, NSW Australia Post customer contact center manager Eddie Sayad said, while the average call time with the speech recognition system is now 89 seconds, with customers tending to ask fewer questions to the automated system. [click heading for more]

Voice Technologies wins £2m Scottish digital dictation contract

[nik's note:]

Hospitals in Scotland now no longer need to go through the potentially time-consuming and costly tender process to set up digital dictation or speech recognition systems.
Healthcare digital dictation and speech recognition integration experts Voice Technologies have been selected as the supplier for the National Framework for Scotland by National Services Scotland.
This means implementing these solutions has become significantly easier. Services available for through the National Framework do not need to be tendered for, making procurement processes simpler and cheaper.
Voice Technologies were selected above numerous other providers because of their proven track record in deploying successful systems in NHS trusts across Scotland, developing innovative solutions, delivering tangible improvements through their commitment to customisation and extensive customer support. [click heading for more]

SpinVox raises $100 million from Goldman, others

SpinVox, which converts voicemail messages into text and sends them to a recipient's inbox or phone, has raised more than $100 million in funding from a Goldman Sachs Group Inc unit and other institutional investors, the company said on Wednesday.
This third round of funding values London-based SpinVox "in excess of $500 million," co-founder and Chief Executive Christina Domecq said in an interview.
SpinVox plans to use the money to expand its presence in North America and introduce voice-to-text services in more languages, she said.
SpinVox has deals with 12 cell phone carriers globally, including Canada's Rogers Mobile and Alltel Wireless, the fifth-largest U.S. carrier, and plans to double that number this year. [click heading for more]

Industry Giants Try to Break Computing’s Dead End

Intel and Microsoft plan to finance two groups of university researchers to start over and design a new generation of computing systems intended to break the industry out of a technological cul-de-sac that threatens to end decades of performance increases in computers.
If the research efforts succeed, this would enable the development of new kinds of portable computers and would help computer engineers tackle areas as diverse as speech recognition, image processing, health care systems and music. For example, a music professor at the University of California, Berkeley, David L. Wessel, envisions a new era of digital musical instruments that would begin to match the rich versatility of acoustic instruments like violins and pianos.[click heading for more]

Vicorp and Telesoft Technologies Partner to Speed Advanced VoiceXML Solutions to Market

Telesoft Technologies today announces a partnership with Vicorp to speed the next generation of automated self-service speech solutions to market. Vicorp's xMP products run seamlessly on Telesoft Technologies VoiceXML compliant OKEFORD Media Platform. The xMP products have a graphical interface that enables simple drag-and-drop methodology to rapidly build a voice call flows. The tools allow the flow to be quickly defined, built and tested as well as allowing for creation and re-use of a library of routines.[click heading for more]

Telesoft Technologies and telisma Deliver Speech Enabled Carrier-Grade Next Generation IVR

Telesoft Technologies today announces a partnership with telisma, a leader in multi-language Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) technology, to provide operators and VAS customers with a next generation IVR Media Platform. The OKEFORD Media Platform from Telesoft Technologies is a powerful Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system capable of handling the very high call volumes of telecom carriers and the largest call centers. Handling up to 3360 simultaneous user calls and 500,000 call attempts per hour the OKEFORD platform has the highest size / performance ratio on the market today. [click heading for more]

Look, GOOG-411 Users, No Hands!

Google's free local search service will soon be available over Bluetooth headsets, courtesy of a hookup between the search giant and speech recognition software maker Sensory, the companies said March 18.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Sensory will use its BlueGenie Voice Interface software client to connect to Google's voice search servers, Sensory CEO Todd Mozer told eWEEK.[click heading for more]

Thought-To-Speech Interface Gives Voice To Voiceless

[nik's note: This is not exactly "speech technology" in the general context of this blog, but it is certainly related and, I feel, interesting enough to highlight here...]

A new thought-to-speech technology promises to give voice to the voiceless, to silence cell phone yellers, and to provide a discreet way to query search engines while in public.
At the Texas Instruments Developer Conference in Dallas last week, Michael Callahan, CEO and co-founder of Ambient Corp. of Champaign, Ill., demonstrated Audeo, a way to convert the deliberate nerve impulses that precede vocalization into digital information that can be turned into synthesized speech. [click heading for more]

Digium® and I6NET Announce Partnership to offer VoiceXML browser technology into Asterisk

Digium®, Inc., the Asterisk® Company, and I6NET Solutions and Technologies announce today their partnership. I6NET’s VoiceXML browser and software technology enables the creation of interactive voice and video applications. This product is the first complete VoiceXML browser add-on for Asterisk.

[click heading for more]