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SpeechWorld
August 2004


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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