June/July 1998

Magazine Features

Application Development: Just The Facts

The information age is quickly becoming the age of information overload. We often just want to get the gist of a news story, document or meeting, rather than have to read or sit through the whole thing. However, while we intuitively know what the gist is, it is difficult to define what processes are needed to automatically extract the gist from a source.

Biometrics: Detecting the "Goats"

Biometrics have been applied in a variety of ways for many years. In basic terms, biometrics is the science of measuring unique physical characteristics - the tiny swirls etched in the skin of a fingertip, the pattern of blood vessels, the micro-visual pattern on the retina, the geometry of the hand or a finger, the style of handwriting, facial appearance or the pattern of the voice. These measurements are then matched against previously recorded information to determine a person's identity.

Financial Applications: Speech Delivers For Brokers

In September 1994, a New York-based service bureau providing telephone and Internet transactional services to banks and brokerage houses worldwide, ushered in the age of real-time, online stock trading. Since then, digiTRADE's list of customers has grown to include brokerages and financial institutions like Bear Stearns, Chase Manhattan, Citicorp, T. Rowe Price, and others.

Language Models: Making Sense of Speech

The general public knows it will take a few days to get to know a new car. They will drive gingerly, carefully checking mirrors and self consciously touching the gas pedal until they know the feel of the machine. But due to unfortunate, often repeated references to Star Trek, 2001, A Space Odyssey and other science fiction stories, the general public has no such tolerance for speech recognition dictation. <@SM>

Market Analysis: Telephone Present a New Face

William Meisel, a well-known speech industry consultant, has just completed a comprehensive market study of telephone speech recognition entitled The Telephony Voice User Interface: Speech recognition, Text-to-speech, and speaker verification over the telephone. Brian Lewis, the editor of Speech Technology magazine, talked to Meisel about the report.

Mergers, Alliances and Acquisitions: Mergers Shape Speech Industry

Just as the banking world has seen huge mergers, the speech industry has seen new partnerships, mergers and acquisitions which promise to shape the for years to come.

Speech On The Web: Speech Combines Telephone and Internet

Lucent Technologies is driving the convergence of the Internet and telephone networks to make accessing a business' services a better experience for customers through a choice of natural interfaces. The Natural Information Interface, demonstrated at the Council on Competitiveness' National Innovation Summit at MIT in March, combines advanced speech technologies with flexible Web and phone interfaces to create a true convergence of telephone and internet applications, making it possible for users to converse naturally with an automated system.

Speech Reconnaissance: Which Came First?

Whether financial interest develops technology or if technological developments attract investment is a classic chicken-or-egg situation. Which does come first?

Forward Thinking

A Cornucopia of Standards

Whoa! How many standards does this industry need? Seems like I receive e-mail on a weekly basis about a new standard. -- An application developer responding to the recent announcements of biometric API standards.