December 1998

Sony Electronics' Trinicom Video Conferencing System
SpeechWorks' SpeechWorks 4.0
Natural MicroSystems' QX 2000 Series Boards

When Elias Chavando first moved to the United States from Mexico, he could not afford to return home to visit his family members. During those early years Chavando, who later became president of Los Angeles-based TVO Communications, decided that video conferencing would be an ideal way for him to see his mother. His company recently set up 10 public video conferencing rooms in California and 15 in Mexico to allow family members to speak "face-to-face." TVO's research shows that Mexicans in the United States spend $3 billion per year on long distance phone calls.

The impact that efficient video conferencing equipment can have on everyday life extends well beyond personal use. It can be utilized for interactive medical care and education, as well as government communications. But technology must be adaptable to existing equipment, and offer high-quality audio and video. For TVO's project, rooms were connected in real time via satellite, to bypass Mexico's limited ISDN access. When the same parameters are used for medical communications, professionals can not only share information with their colleagues, they can extend their services to help patients in other nations.

Because of their flexibility and ability to benefit people throughout the world, we have chosen to give an Editors' Choice award to three new TriniCom products from Sony Electronics. The TriniCom 5100Plus, 3000Plus, and Digital Meeting System video conferencing tools have the adaptability to be used by business, the medical community, government agencies, and those who want the convenience of communicating face-to-face from their own living rooms.

The three systems are being targeted for telemedicine applications relating to pathology, dermatology, cardiology, and psychiatry, mainly for clinical consultation and teaching practices. The TriniCom products can be easily integrated with existing medical devices and healthcare information systems including MedRx's popular TeleMedRx Store and Forward platform. They can support such peripherals as digital storage devices and recorders, video presentation stands, digital cameras, and printers. Medical professionals will be able to launch up to three communications techniques simultaneously to view, annotate, manipulate, and collaborate on the materials in real time.

The Digital Meeting System enables government information managers to add new features to their existing networks without disruption. The system, about the size of a VCR, can be easily connected to a 486 or higher notebook or desktop PC, or any VGA display. It can be used for meetings, presentations, and satellite office collaboration and runs as a peripheral, without any hardware requirements. The system is H.320 and T.120 compatible, allowing users to access other standards-based video and data conferencing systems worldwide. It requires one ISDN line and has a wide variety of display options for use in large media centers and auditoriums or on individual workstations.

The TriniCom 5100Plus includes Sony's Quartet built-in four-site multipoint conferencing feature, high resolution graphics, and storage and annotation capabilities. It is compatible with the latest ITU compression algorithm, the H.263, for improved video quality and motion handling at 128 kbps, a common transmission speed. It also includes Sony's TrakCam auto-tracking camera featuring 30 frames per second video quality at 384 kbps. The 3000Plus comes with a video/audio processor including full duplex audio, as well as the TrakCam. It is compatible with H.320 and H.263 standards and offers three models which support ISDN bandwidths from 56 to 384 kbps.

TVO used TriniCom products along with Hughes Network Systems' inTELEconference to set up its public videoconferencing rooms. The company plans to expand service into Latin America as well as distribute Sony systems throughout North and South America for public and private use. And while leaving home to use a public room for communicating may seem strange, TVO says only 10 percent of Mexican homes have a telephone. Perhaps the infinite possibilities offered by these new videoconferencing products are best described by TVO's name, which means "I see you" when pronounced in Spanish.

Anyone who has studied history, biology, or geology knows that change - whether it affects cultures, species, or the shape of the earth - happens relatively slowly. Geologic change is perhaps one of the slowest moving forces, but on a relative basis, even changes in human ideas and culture happen slowly. New perceptions arise and are mulled over: experts and dilettantes alike try on the new shoe to see how it fits. For those who are not intimately involved in the process of change, however, sometimes it can seem like a new idea or paradigm bursts on the scene suddenly, out of nowhere.

This analysis also holds true for technology, although the pace of change in technology has accelerated significantly in the past 50 years. Discussing the rapid advances in technology recently put one of our editors' in mind of the science fiction books he read as he was growing up. Often in these books, people spoke in natural language to computers and the computers answered directly and with personality. Sometimes the computers even were able to think; sometimes they were capable of good and evil.

As the editor grew older, this idea of actually speaking to a computer seemed like a distant dream - as much as putting a man on the moon must have seemed to someone growing up in the 1940s. His father would bring home stacks of old data entry cards for him to draw on and use for bookmarks, and he explained that these were used to "talk" to computers. There were computer languages and there were human languages, and the chasm that separated them appeared unbridgeable.

Now it seems that the day when a human being can interact comfortably and naturally with a computer using spoken language is not so far off. One company that is playing an active role in bridging that gap between human and computer and making speech recognition a reality is SpeechWorks, formerly ALTech. SpeechWorks recently released version 4.0 of its SpeechWorks solution for speech-enabled services. Speech recognition technology is meant to make it easier for humans to interact naturally with computers. SpeechWorks 4.0 is designed to do this, and to simplify the development and tuning process for speech application developers.

Included in this version of SpeechWorks is a set of tuning tools that analyze caller data to improve the speech interface and allow developers to track caller responses. With these tuning tools, both developers and managers are able to assess the effectiveness of the speech recognition engine and tune it to achieve maximum call completion rates.

Additional features of the 4.0 version include additional DialogModules, SpeechWorks' proprietary name for predefined internal building blocks that speed application development in such areas as recognizing telephone numbers, ZIP codes, and currency amounts. SpeechWorks 4.0 also expands its support for a variety of languages and dialects, and it provides a platform integration interface that allows third parties to use their preferred telephony hardware environments when developing applications by supporting a wide range of telephony cards, DSP resource boards, operating systems, and IVRs. An example of this can be seen in SpeechWorks's recent partnering with NEXTLINK Interactive's IVR platform to provide extended menu choices for customers.

While it still may be some time before our reminiscing editor can walk through his apartment door at 7:00 p.m. and say, "Computer, make me some coffee, and I'll have dinner in a half-hour," it could be that SpeechWorks is working on this right now. If it means not having to make dinner, we all hope they are.

The theme of Natural MicroSystems' recent Partner Alliance convention in San Francisco was "Open Up," and this would seem to be a most timely pronouncement. With the newly released QX 2000 Series, Natural MicroSystems introduces a whole new family of standards-based, low-density boards for telephony applications. In keeping with the theme of the conference, these boards are open in more ways than one.

First, and most clearly, there is the series' openness to standards. The QX 2000 Series fully supports the H.100 bus specification, easing the process for developers interested in integrating open telecom buses and H.100-based products into their applications. Similarly, the series allows developers to take advantage of Multi-Vendor Integration Protocol (MVIP) when building applications, opening up to allow the inclusion of other manufacturers' media processing boards in fully integrated systems.

Additionally, the QX2000 boards are fully compatible with Microsoft's TAPI - in addition to NMS's CT Access. This means that developers used to working in Windows can use an open, standard API to develop applications that combine value and real-time performance. The boards are also designed around the Texas Instruments TMS320C54x DSP, which utilizes the PCI bus for faster data transfer.

Then there is the openness of the ports on these new boards. The QX 2000 Series boards support a full range of mixed media applications on each port. NMS calls this a "universal port" feature, and this capability allows developers to build multiple functions initially on a single board, or to expand applications in the future without requiring the addition of extra boards.

Finally, there is the openness of NMS's international approach - a kind of global vision that demonstrates NMS's ability to keep up with the changing times. The QX 2000 supports CTR21, a Common Technical Regulation approved by the European Council of Ministers in July 1998, which defines a harmonized standard for analog PSTN access throughout the EU and Switzerland. In supporting this standard, the QX2000 allows manufacturers and developers to undergo a single lab test to demonstrate compliance for all participating countries. This significantly increases the speed with which new applications can be approved and marketed throughout the EU.

Presently, the QX 2000 series comprises three boards: NaturalFax 2000, QX2000/100, and QX2000/200. The first two boards are currently available, with a list price of $1,595 and $995, respectively. The QX2000/200 is scheduled for availability early in 1999.