The speed of speech

bits & bytes

FIRST WE HAD e-commerce, then m-commerce; now we have v-commerce. And if you guessed that the "v" stands for voice, you're right. The major trend this year-for wireless and wired users alike-is speech recognition technology. In fact, Allied Business Intelligence predicts that

Although the industry is still in its infancy, companies are racing to get an assortment of voice recognition tools for v-commerce and other voice applications onto the market. Here, a sampling of the recent debuts:

Onstar's Virtual Advisor offers...

A hands-free voice interface linked to location-specific advice and Internet content in selected General Motors vehicles. The product is based on General Magic's magicTalk platform and hosted in a network center to provide drivers with news, weather, sports, stock quotes, and their e-mail.

Additional services, such as restaurant reservations or tickets to events.

PIPEBEACH's speechWeb offers...

A speech portal that creates dialogues from Web pages by reading text with synthesized speech and plays recorded audio files and audio streams.

A personalized newscast, Web mail, teleticket booking, online shopping, and tourist guides.

Philips Speech Processing SpeechPearl 2000 offers...

A speech recognition engine that is integrated into third-party voice processing platforms to provide an interface for directory assistance, Internet voice browsing, personal call assistants, and control of unified messaging.

A 200,000 word vocabulary in 20 different languages and switching between vocabularies and languages.

Lernout & Hauspie's Voice Xpress series offers...

Continuous speech dictation software available in U.S./UX English, German, French, and Spanish. It allows users to create documents, edit and move text, access commands within Microsoft Office, and launch programs and control the desktop.

A special edition of the software for medicine, law, and public safety, with vocabulary tailored to each field. For example, L&H Clinical Reporter and PowerScribe enable dictation/report generation for a number of specialties including pathology, radiology, and emergency medicine.