IBM develops virtual deaf interpreter
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Here's a productive twist on the animated characters known as avatars that carry out fantasies in virtual computer worlds. IBM Corp. researchers have developed an avatar that can translate spoken words into sign language.
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A group of students working for IBM develops technology that automatically converts the spoken word to British Sign Language.
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IBM&#39;s motive is not altruistic. By making the software open-source, IBM hopes that other programmers will make improvements, thus speeding the development of speech applications and allowing
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IBM has unveiled virtual resources to help business partners more quickly build and deploy on-demand business applications tailored to customer requirements across all vertical industries.
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IBM and Honda have teamed-up and developed a hands-free and natural sounding in-vehicle speech recognization system. This system will be integrated in Honda&#39;s Acura RL 2005 model and will be offered as an optional accessory in Honda Odyssey 2005 model.
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IBM has contributed speech technology to the Apache Software Foundation. By releasing its source code IBM hopes to bring a quick end to battles over competing, proprietary standards; solidifying the industry behind VoiceXML.
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(InfoWorld) - Speech-enabled applications have been around for some time, but they have never reached the level of adoption that proponents of the technology have predicted over the years. IBMÂ is out to change all of that. In New York on Tuesday, the company showcased a host of applications -- both prototypes and commercial -- that its research labs and partners have built incorporating voice recognition and speech technologies. While IBM has been doing research for about 10 years in the speech area, speech-enabled applications have come a long way since the company first introduced dictation technologies to the medical industry, Dr. David Nahamoo, chief technology officer of speech technology at IBM Research, said. And IBM's partners, some of whom were on hand at the event in IBM's Manhattan office to show off applications using IBM ViaVoice technology, are a big part of why speech technology is moving forward, he said. "We're working with partners to make a lot of things happen so we can accelerate the delivery of useful products and offerings in the marketplace," Nahamoo said. Another thing IBM did about a year ago to accelerate the company's ability to offer speech-enabled applications that are "truly useful" to the average person was to integrate its speech research into its core software group, said Dan Miller, an analyst with Opus Research in San Francisco. "[This] means they're willing to bring solutions that involve the full line of WebSphere middleware and application servers along into solutions that indeed involve speech," he said. IBM's long-standing tradition of innovation also brings credibility to speech-enabled applications and could inspire more people to use them, Miller added. At Tuesday's event, companies such as Navigation Pioneer Electronics and All Media Guide showed how they are using Embedded ViaVoice speech-recognition technology in commercial applications. For example, Pioneer's AVIC-Z2 new car navigation system provides detailed driving directions that go beyond the usual "turn left at the next street" with the help of Embedded ViaVoice, said Ted Cardenas, product planning manager, Navigation Pioneer Electronics. "It will actually tell you the street name," he said, adding this is safer because the driver does not have to look at the screen to double-check the street name. The AVIC-Z2 system also learns a driver's driving habits, and will only map out directions that avoid certain freeways and streets if a driver tends to do the same thing, Cardenas said. All Media Guide, which provides information about music, musical artists, songs, and albums for Web sites, online music stores, and other entertainment outlets, has teamed with IBM and Avoca Semiconductor to allow users to interact by voice with their personal media collections, said Zac Johnson, product manager for All Media Guide. Avoca's speech-enabled user interface is called the Media Control Platform, within which is IBM Embedded ViaVoice. All Media Guide provides the engine within the platform that lets people use voice capabilities to find artists and songs they want to listen to, he said. For example, a user can tell the system it wants to hear Bruce Springsteen, or "Play The Boss," using his nickname to identify him, Johnson said. The technology can work with a variety of devices on which users store their digital media, such as PCs, iPods, or MP3 players. IBM faces its stiffest competition from Nuance Communications in the speech technology market, but another big software competitor, Microsoft, also is moving into the space, Opus's Miller said. In particular, Microsoft is focused on embedding voice into its Office Communication Server collaboration software, he said. This will provide some interesting competitive offerings down the road as IBM also is doing the same with its Lotus/Sametime collaboration suite, Miller said. "I think those companies are really pushing each other to innovate in that area," he said.
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New Microsoft program smoothes transition from Chinese to English.
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3D Connexion introduces a new peripheral that helps users navigate virtual 3D spaces.
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Partners who use IBM's WebSphere Application Server Community Edition or the vendor's DB2 Express-C database will be able to directly tap IBM staff for advice on integration, scalability, testing and support issues and won't have to pay for the privilege.
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HAMISH ROBERTSON: Staying with computers, that world was opened up to many people, especially those with disabilities, by the invention of voice recognition technology.
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New voice recognition program, shown at Macworld Expo, borrows technology from Dragon Naturally Speaking.
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Multi-function phones, webcams and other new technological innovations have transformed the lives of the hard of hearing, delegates at an international congress of the deaf said Tuesday.
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(InfoWorld) - IBM and Cisco will announce today at the Spring 2007 VoiceCon conference in Orlando, Florida, a joint effort to create an industrywide unified communications and collaboration platform. The expectation is that a single open platform, rather than a potpourri of platforms offered by multiple vendors, will entice a large number of developers to design communications services for the enterprise. In the first step toward that end, IBM and Cisco have pledged to base the new platform, called UC2 (Unified Communication and Collaboration), on Eclipse and OSGi (Open Services Gateway initiative) technologies. In addition, both companies unveiled a series of upcoming offerings jointly developed by the two companies using an open set of APIs from Lotus's Sametime collaboration application and communication APIs from Cisco. Among the solutions planned for later this year are click-to-call and voice mail integration to allow Sametime users to send instant messages to and from Cisco Unified IP phones. Another jointly developed offering will include federated presence information, call history conferencing, and video telephony. The federated presence solution will take information stored in Cisco's IP network, such as availability and location, and share that information with a Sametime client. "If you are looking at a Sametime client, you can see if the phone is not busy and if the person is in, say, building 21 on the third floor," said Barry O'Sullivan, vice president of IP Communications at Cisco. According to Adam Gartenberg, offering manager for the UC2 Software division of IBM Lotus Software Group, the growth of unified communications services has been impeded by a lack of a consistent programming environment. On the other hand, the ubiquity of Eclipse will encourage the large Eclipse community of developers to design communications services that extend the client capabilities of ERP and CRM applications to remote users. "The UC2 platform is extensible, allowing developers to create plug-ins or mini applications to access applications remotely," said Gartenberg. For example, a developer might extend an expense approval application in SAP by creating an applet that makes it available in an instant messaging environment. There is also no doubt that enterprise-level companies are eager to see what unified communications can do for them. Ray Repic, chief technical architect at Coca-Cola Enterprises, says he likes the idea of leveraging his existing technology to create incremental value. Repic already uses Lotus SameTime and Cisco's IP telephony. "There's nothing we need to purchase," said Repic. In addition Repic said he is eager to get it up into Coca Cola's prototyping lab.Â  "We need to understand how we can use voice as an application," Repic said. As part of the announcement, Cisco also said that it will develop future versions of its Unified Personal Communicator on the new UC2 client platform. Also planned is a certification program to certify that the solutions developed on UC2 platform meet the specifications laid out by IBM and Cisco. However, despite the cooperation between Cisco and IBM and the stated reasons for it, analysts see Microsoft as the elephant in the room.Â  "The unified communications battle will come down to Cisco versus Microsoft," said Yankee Group analyst Zeus Kerravala. Some users have held off on the technology because they are waiting to see what Microsoft will do with it, he said. Meanwhile, Nortel Networks, which last year announced a partnership with Microsoft in this area, hasn't ended up with much of an advantage that other telephony vendors don't have, Kerravala said.
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Magnification software to help visually impaired people use mobiles has been developed by a Spanish firm.
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How does version 8 of Dragon NaturallySpeaking dictation software stack up?
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IBM's Rational unit in June will unveil a Web site offering access to open source tools and standard specifications that can help improve collaboration among dispersed software development teams