Edify Announces Developer Network
Edify Corporation (an S1 subsidiary company that supplies voice and speech
solutions) has announced two events: the launch of the Edify Developer
Network and the availability of an open-source version of the Edify
Virtual Attendant (EVA). The Edify Developer Network allows developers to
take advantage of tools and open-source applications and share creative
ideas to shorten development cycles and improve system functionality.
Through the Developer Network, it's Edify's intent that developers
gain access to information and applications that better enable them to
reduce development time and costs. In addition to developer discussion
forums, the Edify Developer Network includes an application-sharing area
with real-world examples, tutorials, sample code and other resources to
assist community members with complex development projects. Additional
development tools are available in the download area and include
documentation, patches, updates, utilities and other materials to help
support the development of applications using Edify and its supported
third-party vendors. Within its Developer Network, Edify provides free
access to EVA, the open-source version of its virtual auto-attendant. As a
prepackaged application built on top of the Edify platform, EVA provides
automation of one of the most repetitive tasks at any organization '
transferring calls to the appropriate party. EVA's speech interface
creates a conversation in which the caller simply asks for the person or
department to whom he or she wishes to speak. EVA enables companies to
transfer callers to the right department or geographic location without
spending time in a queue, resulting in quicker interactions, accurate
information and improved customer satisfaction. The Edify Developer
Network is located at http://developer.edify.com,
and it is available to Edify direct customers and partners.
Edify's co-founder and CTO, Ken Waln, recently wrote an article
called 'Speech Recognition For The Contact Center' for Customer
Inter@ction Solutions': read the full text at http://www.tmcnet.com/cis/
0504/cccrm2.htm.
SALT Forum Advances Mobile Content Delivery With Enhancements To
Scalable Vector Graphics Specification
The SALT Forum, comprised of a group of companies that collectively aim to
accelerate the use of speech technologies in multimodal and telephony
systems, has published a SALT profile for the World Wide Web
Consortium's (W3C) Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) markup language. This
new SVG profile supplements the SALT 1.0 specification, which was
contributed to the W3C by the SALT Forum and already included profiles for
use with the XHTML and SMIL specifications. SVG is an XML-based
language for describing advanced graphics, enabling developers to deliver
a visually rich user interaction experience in their Web applications. By
adding SALT to SVG, developers are better able to enhance the user's
experience with interactive spoken interfaces coupled directly to the
visual interface. The SVG specification, which has reputedly captured
the attention of Web developers, has the ability to render higher quality
graphics on displays of varying size and resolution (a tricky feat until
now), along with a more lightweight design that reduces computational
requirements. This has understandably piqued the interest of manufacturers
of cell phones, PDAs and other portable devices. SVG with SALT can provide
the means to build more sophisticated mobile applications for these
devices with speech interfaces that are accessible without looking at or
touching the equipment. SVG with SALT can be used to provide speech
'hot spots' within a graphic or to provide spoken commands for
scrolling and zooming the display. It can also be used to embed
descriptive services for the visually impaired directly within a graphic,
streamlining the workflow process.
For more information, visit www.saltforum.org.
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