Speech vendors shout for standards.html

Speech vendors shout for standards.html

[Dawes, Stephen]

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Re: Speech vendors shout for standards.html

[Charles Crawford]

	I would love to read about speech vendors shouting for standards, but when 
I tried to open the document, I got some web site without ny about speech.

-- chrlie Crawford.

Re: Speech vendors shout for standards.html

[David Poehlman]

this might be easier to read:
Speech vendors shout for standards
By
Ephraim Schwartz
February 1, 2002 5:41 pm PT

THE BATTLE FOR
speech technology
standards is set to escalate next week when a collection of industry
leaders submits to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) a proposed
framework for delivering
combined graphics and speech on handheld devices.

The VoiceXML Forum, headed by IBM, Nuance, Oracle, and Lucent will
announce a proposal for a multimodal technology standard at the
Telephony Voice User
Interface Conference, in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Meanwhile, Microsoft will counter with its own news, using the same
conference to announce the addition of another major speech vendor to
its SALT (Speech
Application Language Tags) Forum. The as yet unnamed vendor intends to
rewrite its components to work with Microsoft's speech platform.

The announcement will follow the addition of 18 new members to the SALT
Forum, a proposed alternative to VXML's multimodal solution.

New members of the SALT Forum include Compaq and Siemens Enterprise
Networks. Founding members include Cisco, Comverse, Intel, Microsoft,
Philips, and SpeechWorks.

Beyond the issue over which industry-backed consortium has the best
multimodal solution, larger issues are at play according industry
observers, some of
whom preferred not to go on record for fear antagonizing Microsoft, a
powerful partner.

"The Microsoft partnership announcement is about a major
speech technology
company redoing their technology for Microsoft's .Net strategy," said
one industry insider who asked not to be attributed.

Microsoft's speech platform will encourage developers to be .Net
compliant by tightly connecting its SAPI (speech application
programming
interface) Version 5.1, with SALT and Visual Studio. Currently, only
Microsoft's own speech engine is SAPI 5.1-compliant. Ultimately
Microsoft appears to
be making speech a greater part of its .Net plans.

"The SALT component in Visual Studio is in progress. The alpha is out,
beta by middle of the year," said James Mastan, group product manager at
Microsoft
for its .Net Speech Technologies in Redmond, Wash.

As Microsoft upgrades SAPI to be SALT-compliant, independent software
developers wanting to create applications for the Microsoft platform
will also have
be SAPI 5.1- and SALT-compliant as well.

However, SALT is still in its early stages. The first proposed
specification is not expected until later this year. Most mainstream
speech developers are
currently creating Voice XML speech applications built on Java and the
J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) environment, and running on BEA, IBM,
Oracle, and
Sun application
servers.

This week General Magic and InterVoice-Brite announced a partnership to
develop Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR) enterprise solutions for
"J2EE environments,"
using General Magic's VXML technology.

"There is a whole infrastructure being created on J2EE and IBM's
WebSphere, BEA, open source J2EE Web
servers
like Jboss/Tomcat, and on Solaris," said Bill Meisel, president of TMA
Associates in Tarzana, Calif.

Using J2EE Web
servers,
developers can deliver what is called "VXML dynamically."

The power of dynamic VXML on a J2EE platform its ability to access a
company's existing
database
using voice control and deliver responses customized to the specific
caller.

For example, if a sales person called and used voice to access customer
files, that event would trigger access to customers only in that
salesperson's territory.
A business customer ordering office supplies might be identified by the
phone number and a set of customized voice prompts and answers would be
generated
based on past orders.

Until recently Microsoft offered only a simple set of SAPI (speech
APIs). Now through acquisition and internal development it has its own
powerful speech
engine which it is giving away to developers royalty free, said Peter
Mcgregor, an independent software vendor creating speech products.

Microsoft redeveloped SAPI in Version 5.1 to run on its new speech
engine, while simultaneously proposing SALT as an alternative to VXML.
Wrapping it all
up in a marketing context, Microsoft's Mastan called the company's
collection of
speech technologies
a "platform," a term previously not used.

He indicated the next step may be to offer Microsoft's speech platform
as part of its application
server.

"We haven't decided on our go to market configuration but you can think
of it as a
server
that we would sell like any other .Net component. It's a
server
with a bundled set of components made available to build applications on
top of these components," Mastan said.

He would not say if Microsoft's speech
server
would be bundled free into its application
server
in the same way as its Mobile Information
Server.

However, becoming Microsoft speech platform-compliant may be a small
price to pay, according to one independent software vendor because of
what he gets
in return.

"I don't have to pay royalties for the Microsoft engine which can save
me as much as $6 to $7 per package in fees," said Mcgregor, a speech
ISV, currently
using the Microsoft platform for development.

"Microsoft finally has a good engine. As good as Dragon and IBM,"
Mcgregor said.

Meanwhile, the competing speech engines from the likes of IBM and Nuance
are not Microsoft SAPI 5.1-compliant. If you want the free engine you
need to be
compliant with 5.1 and SALT, notes the developer.

"Everybody has to play catch up with Microsoft," Mcgregor said.

The issue over which specification of SALT, not due to be released until
sometime later this year, or VXML, whose Version 2 is now out for
review, is better
is an argument that can only be determined by developers. Each side
claims the other's specifications are deficient.

Microsoft's X.D. Huang, general manager, Microsoft .Net Speech
Technologies said that no matter what the VXML Forum claims, VXML will
never be a good platform
for multimodal speech.

"VXML is just not technically good enough and it doesn't matter what you
do. You can beat a dead horse for a long time but no matter how you beat
it is
still dead," Huang said.

IBM's William S "Ozzie" Osborne, general manager of IBM Voice Systems in
Somers, N.Y., has a different point of view.

"I hope that we get to one standard. Multiple standards fragment the
market place and create a diversion. I would like to see us get to a
standard that
is industry wide and not proprietary. What we are proposing to the W3C,
using VXML for speech and x-HTML for graphics in a single program, is
cheaper and
easier than SALT without having to have the industry redo everything
they have done," Osborne said.

However, according to conference organizer, TMA Associates' Miesel, the
debate could be overstated.

Re: Speech vendors shout for standards.html

[David Poehlman]

I swear, I did not read this message before sending my reply.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles Crawford" <ccrawford@acb.org>
To: <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2002 10:12 AM
Subject: Re: Speech vendors shout for standards.html


I would love to read about speech vendors shouting for standards, but
when
I tried to open the document, I got some web site without ny about
speech.

-- chrlie Crawford.


_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: Speech vendors shout for standards.html

[Charles Crawford]

Dave,

	I read through the article and must admit that I really don't understand 
it beyond it appearing to be a fight between IBM and all against Microsoft 
on speech i/o?  Am I right.  What ticks me off about the companies who wine 
all the time about Microsoft is that they talk and talk and don't seem ever 
to have a product.  This is a serious problem.  If they are going to 
compete then damn it; compete!

-- charlie.

Re: Speech vendors shout for standards.html

[David Poehlman]

I agree which is why I suggest that the fast track build on something
other than msaa if they can.  There are some telling remarks in the
article and for lots of reasons, I hope vxml wins out.  It is a good
standard being that it is cross platform and open.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles Crawford" <ccrawford@acb.org>
To: <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2002 12:00 PM
Subject: Re: Speech vendors shout for standards.html


Dave,

I read through the article and must admit that I really don't understand
it beyond it appearing to be a fight between IBM and all against
Microsoft
on speech i/o?  Am I right.  What ticks me off about the companies who
wine
all the time about Microsoft is that they talk and talk and don't seem
ever
to have a product.  This is a serious problem.  If they are going to
compete then damn it; compete!

-- charlie.


_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: Speech vendors shout for standards.html

[Frank Carmickle]

On Mon, 4 Feb 2002, David Poehlman wrote:

> I agree which is why I suggest that the fast track build on something
> other than msaa if they can.  There are some telling remarks in the
> article and for lots of reasons, I hope vxml wins out.  It is a good
> standard being that it is cross platform and open.

I am not sure really what this article was discussing.  Living in a world
where I only use freesoftware I don't tend to follow the big corporate
news unless it's hardware related.  What is this project about and how can
we as a community help them to understand the benefits of open standards
and freesoftware?

-- 
     Frank Carmickle
phone:     412 761-9568
email:     frankiec@dryrose.com

Re: Speech vendors shout for standards.html

[Thomas Ward]

I agree totally. MSAA is the worst possible solution. ----- Original
Message -----
From: David Poehlman <poehlman1@home.com>
To: <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2002 12:27 PM
Subject: Re: Speech vendors shout for standards.html


> I agree which is why I suggest that the fast track build on something
> other than msaa if they can.  There are some telling remarks in the
> article and for lots of reasons, I hope vxml wins out.  It is a good
> standard being that it is cross platform and open.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Charles Crawford" <ccrawford@acb.org>
> To: <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
> Sent: Monday, February 04, 2002 12:00 PM
> Subject: Re: Speech vendors shout for standards.html
>
>
> Dave,
>
> I read through the article and must admit that I really don't understand
> it beyond it appearing to be a fight between IBM and all against
> Microsoft
> on speech i/o?  Am I right.  What ticks me off about the companies who
> wine
> all the time about Microsoft is that they talk and talk and don't seem
> ever
> to have a product.  This is a serious problem.  If they are going to
> compete then damn it; compete!
>
> -- charlie.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

Re: Speech vendors shout for standards.html

[David Poehlman]

It's about a war among players in industry and how much money they can
make by capturing market share.  It's hard to justify free in that
context.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Frank Carmickle" <frankiec@braille.uwo.ca>
To: <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2002 12:40 PM
Subject: Re: Speech vendors shout for standards.html


On Mon, 4 Feb 2002, David Poehlman wrote:

> I agree which is why I suggest that the fast track build on something
> other than msaa if they can.  There are some telling remarks in the
> article and for lots of reasons, I hope vxml wins out.  It is a good
> standard being that it is cross platform and open.

I am not sure really what this article was discussing.  Living in a
world
where I only use freesoftware I don't tend to follow the big corporate
news unless it's hardware related.  What is this project about and how
can
we as a community help them to understand the benefits of open standards
and freesoftware?

--
     Frank Carmickle
phone:     412 761-9568
email:     frankiec@dryrose.com


_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: Speech vendors shout for standards.html

[Frank Carmickle]

On Mon, 4 Feb 2002, David Poehlman wrote:

> It's about a war among players in industry and how much money they can
> make by capturing market share.  It's hard to justify free in that
> context.

Well we will see about that.  I think that in the end freesoftware will
reign supreme in market share, accessibility, features, and stability.  I
believe that this will happen through hardware vendors that ship boxes
with accessible Gnu/Linux systems.  People will figure out that money can
be made from free software.  Support costs can go down and stability can
improve.  This lowers cost for all involved.

So Dave when are you going to start using the Gnu/Linux system?

-- 
     Frank Carmickle
phone:     412 761-9568
email:     frankiec@dryrose.com

Re: Speech vendors shout for standards.html

[David Poehlman]

Hi Frank,  I guess when it pays <grin>  I agree with you and have been
saying this.  In the context of this particular little war though, free
has no place is what I meant to say.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Frank Carmickle" <frankiec@braille.uwo.ca>
To: <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2002 1:25 PM
Subject: Re: Speech vendors shout for standards.html


On Mon, 4 Feb 2002, David Poehlman wrote:

> It's about a war among players in industry and how much money they can
> make by capturing market share.  It's hard to justify free in that
> context.

Well we will see about that.  I think that in the end freesoftware will
reign supreme in market share, accessibility, features, and stability.
I
believe that this will happen through hardware vendors that ship boxes
with accessible Gnu/Linux systems.  People will figure out that money
can
be made from free software.  Support costs can go down and stability can
improve.  This lowers cost for all involved.

So Dave when are you going to start using the Gnu/Linux system?

--
     Frank Carmickle
phone:     412 761-9568
email:     frankiec@dryrose.com


_______________________________________________
Speakup mailing list
Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: Speech vendors shout for standards.html

[Victor Tsaran]

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Steven, thank you for those very informative articles.
Vic

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Dawes, Stephen 
  To: Speakup@Braille. Uwo. Ca (E-mail) 
  Sent: Monday, February 04, 2002 3:51 PM
  Subject: Speech vendors shout for standards.html


  <<Speech vendors shout for standards.html>>  



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Re: Speech vendors shout for standards.html

[Victor Tsaran]

Did you open the .html file in Lynx or IE? It opened fine in IE.
Vic

----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles Crawford" <ccrawford@acb.org>
To: <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2002 4:12 PM
Subject: Re: Speech vendors shout for standards.html


> I would love to read about speech vendors shouting for standards, but when
> I tried to open the document, I got some web site without ny about speech.
>
> -- chrlie Crawford.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
>

Re: Speech vendors shout for standards.html

[Victor Tsaran]

C'mon. MSAA is a good API, I believe, it is just in the hands of proprietor.
But that's different.
I wish there would be a SAPI for Eloquence or IBM ViaVoice, for that matter.
When people write localized speech synthesizers, the only real API they can
use is MS SAPI.
Victor

----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas Ward" <tward@bright.net>
To: <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2002 6:45 PM
Subject: Re: Speech vendors shout for standards.html


> I agree totally. MSAA is the worst possible solution. ----- Original
> Message -----
> From: David Poehlman <poehlman1@home.com>
> To: <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
> Sent: Monday, February 04, 2002 12:27 PM
> Subject: Re: Speech vendors shout for standards.html
>
>
> > I agree which is why I suggest that the fast track build on something
> > other than msaa if they can.  There are some telling remarks in the
> > article and for lots of reasons, I hope vxml wins out.  It is a good
> > standard being that it is cross platform and open.
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Charles Crawford" <ccrawford@acb.org>
> > To: <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
> > Sent: Monday, February 04, 2002 12:00 PM
> > Subject: Re: Speech vendors shout for standards.html
> >
> >
> > Dave,
> >
> > I read through the article and must admit that I really don't understand
> > it beyond it appearing to be a fight between IBM and all against
> > Microsoft
> > on speech i/o?  Am I right.  What ticks me off about the companies who
> > wine
> > all the time about Microsoft is that they talk and talk and don't seem
> > ever
> > to have a product.  This is a serious problem.  If they are going to
> > compete then damn it; compete!
> >
> > -- charlie.
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
>

Re: Speech vendors shout for standards.html

[Victor Tsaran]

Frank, I would agree with you if I didn't know basic principals of
capitalism. Let's be realistic!
Vic

----- Original Message -----
From: "Frank Carmickle" <frankiec@braille.uwo.ca>
To: <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2002 7:25 PM
Subject: Re: Speech vendors shout for standards.html


> On Mon, 4 Feb 2002, David Poehlman wrote:
>
> > It's about a war among players in industry and how much money they can
> > make by capturing market share.  It's hard to justify free in that
> > context.
>
> Well we will see about that.  I think that in the end freesoftware will
> reign supreme in market share, accessibility, features, and stability.  I
> believe that this will happen through hardware vendors that ship boxes
> with accessible Gnu/Linux systems.  People will figure out that money can
> be made from free software.  Support costs can go down and stability can
> improve.  This lowers cost for all involved.
>
> So Dave when are you going to start using the Gnu/Linux system?
>
> --
>      Frank Carmickle
> phone:     412 761-9568
> email:     frankiec@dryrose.com
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
>

Re: Speech vendors shout for standards.html

[Frank Carmickle]

On Mon, 4 Feb 2002, Victor Tsaran wrote:

> Frank, I would agree with you if I didn't know basic principals of
> capitalism. Let's be realistic!

Ok.  How am I not being realistic?  As far as I can see if you and I
create software for each other that we each like then we will use that
software and not someone else's.  You are the problem with why
freesoftware isn't moving ahead not the companies who want to sell you
poorly written software which you can't change to your liking.  If you
don't buy there software they can't sell it to you can they?  
-- 
     Frank Carmickle
phone:     412 761-9568
email:     frankiec@dryrose.com

Re: Speech vendors shout for standards.html

[Janina Sajka]

Charley:

VXML is a product, and it's an open standard. 

On Mon, 4 Feb 2002, Charles Crawford wrote:

> Dave,
> 
> 	I read through the article and must admit that I really don't understand 
> it beyond it appearing to be a fight between IBM and all against Microsoft 
> on speech i/o?  Am I right.  What ticks me off about the companies who wine 
> all the time about Microsoft is that they talk and talk and don't seem ever 
> to have a product.  This is a serious problem.  If they are going to 
> compete then damn it; compete!
> 
> -- charlie.
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

-- 
	
				Janina Sajka, Director
				Technology Research and Development
				Governmental Relations Group
				American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)

Email: janina@afb.net		Phone: (202) 408-8175

Chair, Accessibility SIG
Open Electronic Book Forum (OEBF)
http://www.openebook.org