Speech Technology eWeekly - November 01, 2005

Speech Technology News

SunRocket Selects Angel.com to Deliver Interactive Voice Response System for Call Center

MCLEAN, Va. - SunRocket, an Internet phone service provider, selected Angel.com to build and host its voice-automated sales and member services phone application.

Excell Services Celebrates Three-Year Automation Milestone

TEMPE, Ariz. - Excell Services' Voice Automation Service for Directory Assistance has been deployed for three years.

Aculab Releases Media Resource Control Protocol (MRCP) Client

MILTON KEYNES, U.K. - Aculab launched a media resource control protocol (MRCP) client for use with its Prosody media processing resource product range and IP telephony PCI card.

Camtronics Medical Systems and East Coast Communications Deploy Speech Enabled Auto Attendant from SpeechSwitch

MATAWAN, N.J. - Camtronics Medical Systems has installed a Speech Enabled Auto Attendant from SpeechSwitch, Inc.

Red Lion Hotels Selects Voxify Automated Agents to Help Manage Reservations and Loyalty Program Calls

ALAMEDA, Calif. - Voxify Automated Agents will soon begin handling contact center calls for Red Lion Hotels, the flagship hotel brand for Red Lion Hotel Corporation.

Entertainment UK Selects Oritor

From Ping Wales - Entertainment UK selected Oritor to launch its new services offering 24-hour access to stock and delivery information, using voice applications.

Avaya and SAP Partner

BASKING RIDGE, N.J. - Avaya signed a strategic alliance agreement with SAP America, Inc., to market Intelligent Communications-enabled business applications that bring together people and business processes.

Scansoft Merger Creates New Speech Giant

From LEGALIT - ScanSoft and Nuance have closed their merger - a deal that aims to create a dominant player in the speech technology industry.

Interstar Technologies Selected for Membership in Avaya DeveloperConnection Program

BASKING RIDGE, N.J. - Interstar Technologies, a developer of fax capabilities for Internet protocol (IP) telephony networks, has been selected for membership in the Avaya DeveloperConnection program.

Edify Releases Edify Voice Interaction Platform Release 9.5

Edify released the Edify Voice Interaction Platform Release 9.5 with enhanced support for hardware- and software-based Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). The new release supports speech recognition engines.

Diaphonics Appoints John Gibbons as Vice President of Sales

Diaphonics has appointed John Gibbons as vice president, sales.

MacSpeech Releases ScriptPak for PowerPoint 2004 and iTunes version 6

SALEM, N.H. - MacSpeech released a new ScriptPak for Microsoft PowerPoint 2004 as well as a new ScriptPak for iTunes version 6.

Sioux Falls School District Releases Results of Pilot Program Using TestTalker

Sioux Falls, S.D., School District released the first year results of its pilot program, which is designed to improve test scores.

Premier Assistive Technology Uses Cepstral's Voices in Universal Learning Device

JOLIET, Ill. & PITTSBURGH - Premier Assistive Technology released a universal learning device based on MP3 hardware.

Voxpilot Incorporates Loquendo's Speech Technology

TURIN, Italy, and DUBLIN, Ireland - Loquendo's multilingual synthetic speech and automatic speech recognition engines are now integrated with the Voxpilot Open Media Platform v2.5.

Las Cruces, New Mexico School Administration Expands Its Investment in Learning Systems Group Technology

PALO ALTO, Calif. - The Las Cruces, New Mexico School Administration has expanded its investment in Learning Systems Group technology.

Nexidia Launches New Business Unit to Expand into Rich Media Search

ATLANTA - Nexidia formed a media business unit in order to address audio-video search and content management using Nexidia's core phonetic search technology. Nexidia also announced that former Good Technology and Yahoo! executive, Drew Lanham, has joined the Nexidia executive team.

SBC/AT&T Merger Receives Clearance from U.S. Department of Justice

SAN ANTONIO, Texas and BEDMINSTER, New Jersey - The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has cleared the merger of SBC Communications Inc. and AT&T after a review of the merger's potential impact on the market, requiring that the combined company permit competitors access to facilities in certain specified commercial buildings across the SBC 13-state region.

Brooktrout Plans Environmental Directive for its Voice and Fax Products

NEEDHAM, Mass. - Brooktrout Technology, Inc. released new products in its TR1000 voice processing board family that are telephony platforms that meet the European Union Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive.

Nightingale Speech-Enables EMR Solution with Dragon NaturallySpeaking Medical from Nuance

BURLINGTON, Mass. - Nightingale, a provider of ASP-based solutions to Canadian health care providers, has selected Dragon NaturallySpeaking Medical to enable speech recognition within its Nightingale electronic medical records (EMR) solutions.

Braintree District Council Selects Telephonetics ContactPortal

Braintree District Council has implemented the Telephonetics ContactPortal as part of its "Customer First" program.

FCC Approves Mergers of SBC Communications with AT&T and of Verizon Communications with MCI

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Federal Communications Commission approved two major telecommunications mergers.

Nuance Names Winners of Its Sixth Annual Best Practices Competition

BURLINGTON, Mass. - Nuance Communications, Inc., formerly ScanSoft, Inc., named the winners of its annual Best Practices Competition, awarded at its annual conference, Conversations 2005.

Nabaztag, WordQ, MagneticTime.com and Mobile Speak Pocket Select Acapela

Nabaztag, WordQ, MagneticTime.com and Mobile Speak Pocket selected Acapela's speech solutions.

MacSpeech Appoints Softline as UK Distributor

SALEM, N.H. - MacSpeech appointed Softline UK as a new distributor for their speech recognition products for Mac OS X.

Selectron Technologies Standardizes on Envox CT ADE to Create IVR Solutions for Government Agencies

WESTBOROUGH, Mass. - Envox Worldwide's CT Application Development Environment (Envox CT ADE™) has been chosen by Selectron Technologies to power its IVR and call center management solutions.

Intervoice to Acquire Edify

DALLAS & ATLANTA - Intervoice, Inc. signed an agreement to purchase Edify Corporation from S1 Corporation, Edify's parent company.

Convergys Receives Frost & Sullivan Award for Innovation in Voice Recognition

Frost & Sullivan named Convergys the recipient of its 2005 Award for Technology Innovation in the field of voice recognition technologies.

Holly Connects Expands Internationally

SYDNEY and PHOENIX - Sydney-based company, Holly Connects, managed services and large enterprises, expanded to North America.

Kurzweil Educational Systems Names Winners of Kurzweil 3000 Software Awards

BEDFORD, Mass. - Kurzweil Educational Systems, Inc. named the winners of its second annual Kurzweil Educational Systems Kurzweil 3000 Software Awards. Kurzweil Educational Systems Also Joins National Center for Learning Disabilities in Recognizing Educator for Excellence in Classroom

Volt to Acquire Germany-Based Varetis for 21 Million Euro

BERLIN - Volt Information Sciences agreed to acquire Varetis Solutions from Varetis AG for approximately 21 million euro ($24.8 million).

Lab9 Solutions Chooses Sensory Speech Engine for Wireless Handset Application

Lab9 Solutions has released a new wireless handset application powered by Sensory's FluentSoft speech technology engine.

Wyndham Welcomes Guests With a New Voice

According to Amit Desai, vice president of products and co-founder of Voxify, "Clearly, the shorter the time it takes to get an application up and running, the better it will be for the bottom line, but speed should not compromise quality of service. Wyndham found that the right choice is one that maximizes customer satisfaction for simple and complex types of calls alike, but can be deployed swiftly and painlessly."

Convergys and ClickFox Form Alliance for Application Hosting and Product Expansion

CINCINNATI - Convergys Corporation partnered with ClickFox, Inc.

DemandVoice Enters Speech Industry

Mark Rayburn has started a new speech company called DemandVoice, a standards-based IVR hosting service provider focused on operations, customer service, partnerships, and technology.

Nexidia Releases UK English Language Model for Audio Search and Analysis

ATLANTA, Ga. - Nexidia released its UK English language model for audio search, retrieval and analysis.

Envox Worldwide Appoints Two New Vice Presidents

Sam Waicberg joined Envox Worldwide as vice president of sales for the Americas where he will be responsible for developing and implementing the overall sales strategy for the company. In addition, Tony Lenox accepted a new position as vice president of worldwide customer service & support.

NCT Releases ClearSpeech Noise Reduction Technology for Enea's OSEck Real-Time OS

SAN JOSE, Calif. - NCT released its ClearSpeech noise reduction technology for Enea's OSEck real-time operating system.

Nuance and Intelleca Active in South Africa

BURLINGTON, Mass. and GHENT, Belgium - Discovery Health, MultiChoice, MTN Banking and Airports Company SA in South Africa selected Nuance Communications, Inc. and Intelleca Voice & Mobile, a South African provider of voice solutions to provide their speech recognition solutions.

EDF Energy Launches Virtual Call Center Provided By Fluency Voice Technology

LONDON - EDF Energy launched a speech recognition service for customers wanting to provide meter readings and pay their energy bills.

Holland's Ministry of Justice Encourages Deployment of Persay's Biometric Speaker Verification

Holland's Ministry of Justice passed a new law encouraging the deployment of biometric speaker verification technology, provided by Persay Ltd., to monitor 'hooligans' banned from attending soccer games.

Time Warner Cable Expands Relationship With Convergys

CINCINNATI - Time Warner Cable expanded its software licensing agreement with Convergys Corporation.

Wizzard Software Supplies AumTech with AT&T Natural Voices for Server to Incorporate into Speech Applications

PITTSBURGH - AumTech, Inc. incorporated AT&T Natural Voices Server from Wizzard Software into their Carrier Grade Advanced Telephony Environment (CGATE) VoiceXML Platform.

TriAxis Selects Carrius Compleat-200 Service Delivery Gateway

TriAxis, a provider of voice, data, and cable television triple play services to master planned communities and condominiums, has selected Carrius Technologies' Compleat-200 Service Delivery Gateway as its services gateway.

MacSpeech Releases iListen Transcription Solution DS-2 and Plantronics .Audio 85 USB Stereo Headset/Microphone

SALEM, N.H. - MacSpeech released a series of new additions to its speech recognition product line.

Showcase Technologies Partners With Loquendo

TURIN, Italy and GIRARDEAU, USA - Showcase Technologies, a developer of real estate marketing products, has selected Loquendo text-to-speech (TTS) technology to enhance the company's online real estate viewing experience.

Duo Talks up Speech Recognition Software

From Globe and Mail - According to Matthew Ingram, "Both Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. have launched search engines for sound and video, but they are in their early stages. A small Toronto startup called SimonSays Voice Technologies Inc. believes that it has the solution to indexing sound and video easily: A speech recognition engine it says is second to none."

The Swiss Library for the Blind & Visually Impaired Selected AT&T Natural Voices for Talking Catalog from Wizzard Software

PITTSBURGH - The Swiss Library for the Blind and Visually Impaired (SBS) has selected AT&T Natural Voices from Wizzard Software to power their talking catalog.

NPR's Neva Grant Plays Match Maker With Automated Voices

From PBS National Public Radio (NPR) - NPR's Neva Grant chaperones two phone-automated voices on a "date."

XoVox Communications Releases XCommunicator5

SHEFFIELD, U.K. - XoVox Communications Ltd. released their latest version of XCommunicator, version 5.

Jack Longinotti Joins Voxify as CFO

ALAMEDA, Calif.— Jack Longinotti has joined Voxify as VP of finance and CFO.

Empirix Survey Shows Four out of Five Contact Center Pros Report That Technology Problems Regularly Impact Productivity

BEDFORD, Mass. - Empirix Inc. released the results of a survey conducted at the recent Annual Call Center Exhibition (ACCE) conference on call center technology and management.

Carlson Leisure Travel Services Selects Fluency Voice Technology to Deploy Enterprise Speech Recognition Applications

LONDON and NEW YORK - Carlson Leisure Travel Services (CLTS), a division of Carlson Leisure Group (CLG), has deployed a Fluency speech recognition IVR application.

linguatec Personal Translator Uses the Voice of SVOX

MUNICH and ZURICH - linguatec GmbH entered a strategic partnership with Swiss text-to-speech specialist SVOX AG.

Channel Access and PIKA Technologies Sign Distribution Agreement

LOS GATOS, Calif. - Channel Access LLC signed a distribution agreement with PIKA Technologies.

Envox Worldwide Signs Agreements with New Value-added Distributors

WESTBOROUGH, Mass. - Envox Worldwide entered into new sales and support agreements with value-added distributors (VADs) throughout the world.

NCT Passes Texas Instruments Compliance Tests

NCT's ClearSpeech Voice Recognition Enhancer product has passed the Texas Instruments DSP Algorithm Compliance Tests for TI's C55x architecture and has been accepted into TI's eXpressDSP program.

MAPTelecom and Kirusa Partner

MONACO, and EDISON, N.J. - MAP Telecom and Kirusa partnered to bring Kirusa's Voice SMS application to mobile operators in the Middle East and North Africa.

ProCAT Chooses Wizzard Software and IBM's ViaVoice SDK to Speech Enable WinnerVR Transcription Software

PITTSBURGH - ProCAT has chosen Wizzard Software and IBM's ViaVoice Speech Recognition (ASR) Software Development Kit (SDK) and runtimes for their WinnerVR real time transcription software.

Vicorp Group Appoints New VP Sales Americas

Marvin Yanof has joined Vicorp as VP of Sales Americas.

Avaya Voice Portal 3.0 and Dialog Designer 3.0

Nancy Jamison, principal analyst at Jamison Consulting, explains, "Avaya Voice Portal 3.0 enables IT staff to lower total cost of ownership (TCO) by re-using existing software components and applications, and is architected to take advantage of industry standards…Avaya Dialog Designer 3.0 [is] an Eclipse-based application development tool that allows designers to more easily and efficiently create new speech applications."

Houghton Mifflin Chooses AT&T Natural Voices Spanish TTS from Wizzard Software to Provide Voices for Reference Book

PITTSBURGH - Houghton Mifflin Company has licensed AT&T Natural Voices for Server as the Spanish voice behind their reference book, The American Heritage^® Spanish Dictionary.

Viecore Moves Its Corporate Headquarters

Viecore moved and expanded to a new corporate headquarters in Mahwah, N.J.

The Philadelphia Police Department Selects NICE Solutions

RA'ANANA, Israel - The Philadelphia Police Department (PD) has selected NICE to capture and analyze its emergency communications.