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Weblicon technologies founding member of the Voice Commerce Committee VASCom/ Online Organizer have learnt to talk
Car reads e-mails
Berlin 25th March 2002. – When car drivers want to read their latest messages, they don’t have to look out for the next car-park anymore. A VoiceXML interface of the Online Organizer provided by weblicon technologies AG turns the Personal Information Manager (PIM) into a personal assistant that also reads out your e-mails en route. With its voice-control Online Organizer, weblicon is the youngest founding member of the Voice Commerce professional association, VASCom (Voice Application Standard Committee). It is the aim of this initiative, also supported by IBM and Lufthansa Services, to promote the acceptance of speech dialogue systems amongst the industry and consumers.
Carsten Brinkschulte, CEO and founder of weblicon, has a new girlfriend: Mary is 23 years old, studies psychology, has a cheerful voice and is always accessible despite her two jobs on the side. What is more, she also knows all the new messages in his in-box at any time of the day and night. Mary is no computer voice, she lives in Berlin and works as a speaker for speech dialogue systems. Brinkschulte has never seen Mary, as she is one of five voices, called ‘voice skins’ lending the weblicon organizer a voice.
It was a team of specialists from linguistics, phonetics, computer science and audio productions that taught the Personal Information Manager (PIM) to speak. It takes just one call to the webli-con Organizer office, and the PIM turns into a speaking assistant, reading out and processing messages. There are no cumbersome number menus and prompting yes-no questions. The voice recognition system is independent of the speaker, identifying fluent speech as well as thick dialects and is able to give answers.
Technologically, a VoiceXML-interface in the flexible weblicon architecture makes the Personal Information Manager (PIM) speak. The access by the caller goes through the mouthpiece of a voice gateway, integrating voice recognition, text synthesis and CTI technology, thus connecting the telephone network with the Internet.
Currently, the market for voice commerce and voice applications is still being developed, however, the forecasts are all positive: the American Kelsey Market Research Group forecasts a turnover volume of voice-controlled Internet services at Euro 7.4 billion in the USA for the year 2005. Market researchers of the British Ovum assure that the voice portal in the UK will earn more than Euro 29.5 million per year already in 2005.
Weblicon-founder Carsten Brinkschulte is convinced of the breakthrough of voice commerce, ‘The standardisation of the interfaces between the individual components and voice applications will add a new dimension to the Internet applications. Already today, some 75 percent of all mobile phone users are in favour of voice-controlled services’. The desire for respective voice applications is even higher among users who are on the go much in their job. ‘Always on’ is the motto of the mobile office. The flyweight mobiles, Palm PDAs and pocket PCs fit into every nook and cranny. This change in paradigm has consequences, people are not bound to their offices any longer but rather the office to the people. Routine tasks, time management and address administration are delegated to intelligent Personal Information Managers.
The PIM of weblicon administers everything you need to get organised mobile, appointments, addresses, tasks and messaging such as e-mails, SMS, Group-SMS and Multi-Media-Messaging. For the data to be up to date at all times, weblicon provides for the synchronisation with mobile end devices by means of the SyncML-server technology based on the international SyncML standard and integrated into the online organiser. Thus, the users can sync their data with the Palm PDA, with MS Outlook or Outlook Express and over the air with the PocketPC and all SynML-enabled mobile phones.
Company brief:
weblicon technologies AG – set up in Berlin in June 2000 by a founding team around CEO Carsten Brinkschulte – develop and license web-based applications (Weblications) for portals, ISPs, ASPs and telcos. These personal-information-management products are integrated seamlessly into existing networks of servers, applications and databases. The weblicon PIM offers a complete organizer and messaging solution with address book, diary, ToDos, e-mail, SMS, Group-SMS and MMS. Participation of the venture capital shareholder PEPPERMINT.Financial Partners makes it possible for weblicon as the first technology supplier in Europe to synchronise the data “over the air”, based on the SyncML industrial standard. A Voice-XML interface makes the PIM extra mobile. The product was awarded the ‘Usability 2010’ certificate for its simple user prompting. The Online Organizer is one of the most successful products and is being used, for instance, by the Dutch KPN Mobile and the German capital portal berlin.de.
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