Unified communication coffeehouse

A year has passed since my last posting. As you know Microsoft Speech Server was incorporated into Office Communication Server 2007. Since that incorporation our team has evolved into the Unified Communications Application Server team. We are still delivering...

Last week I attended Aculab's ACE conference and participated in a panel discussion. It was a useful trip. I spent time learning about Aculab's VoIP plans and their Prosody products. Prior to the panel discussion I had a wide-ranging conversation with...

Two interesting articles caught my eye today: 1.) "Google Talks the Talk for Search " http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1948889,00.asp According to the article, a patent has been granted "..to let the human voice command Internet search engines...

Hey Everyone, Sign up for our MSS 2007 Beta! We'd love to get your feedback and help you business move forward! http://www.microsoft.com/speech/preview/default.mspx Cheers! Chris

Hi All, Today we publically announced our plans for Microsoft Speech Server 2007. It's a great feeling to finally take the wraps off the features we've been working on for you. And it will make this blog far more interesting. :) Check it out: http...

Hi Folks, Marshall Harrison and Brandon Tyler have put together a very nice developer community site around Speech Server. Check it out! [EDIT] Thanks to Richard who pointed out that I missed the URL: http://gotspeech.net/default.aspx Cheers...

I heard something surprising the other day. That no VoiceXML platform could support more than 72 ports, w DTMF and some speech recognition, in an all-in-one configuration. Is this true? What's your experience? Cheers!

Hi folks, I just heard about this contest: www.microsoft.com/speech/evaluation/newsletter/contest.mspx "Brooktrout is calling all developers to give your application a speech makeover. Create a sample application that targets The Microsoft Speech...

After emulating a hibernating animal I'm awake and back to blogging. It's been a very rapid and challenging set of months and I can't to share what I've been working on. But that day is not today. :) Lots of topics have been percolating in my head...

You've got the coolest speech-enabled app in the market. You believe in your ROI model, you've got business buy-off, and you are laying out your development and deployment plan. As a IT manager/technologist it may be easy to overlook one critical action...

ITJungle posted this article: Tech Sector Chips In With Hurricane Relief Cheers! Chris

Every day technologists such as ourselves seek to use technology to improve peoples lives. Over the weekend I was involved in a effort to speech enable an Katrina evacuee application. A number of Microsoft employees, key partners, and service organizations...

At SpeechTek a common question was how speech could be embedded on devices. Speech Server is a server based speech recognition, application control, prompting and speech synthesis platform. You can access this powerful platform two ways: 1) telephone...

Hi All, Following up on our VUI discussion and the "art not yet science" point I made earlier. I was talking with a client who shared this anecdote: The user had progressed perfectly through the system. The final prompt asked if the user needed...

Paul B. kindly asked: "I'm really interested in speech technology but the biggest hurdle I have seen to actually working with Speech Server is the hardware requirements. I don't have a PBX to hook the server into. So what I'd love to see is something...

Hi All, A quick update -- my laptop's hard drive failed on my way here. It should be fixed later today and then I will have several posts ready for your consumption. Cheers! Chris This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and...

I'll be at SpeechTek in New York from August 1-4. Stop by the Microsoft Speech Server booth and ask for me if you'd like to chat. I'll be blogging my experiences at SpeechTek so keep watching. Cheers! Chris This posting is provided "AS IS" with...

One of my tasks is to identify the reference applications that will ship with the next version of Speech Server. Before I prejudice the jury with how we are thinking about reference applications I'd like your feedback. This will be an on-going discussion...

Voice User Interface design -- challenges you to design great VUIs and to consider what skills needs to be adopted in your oganziation to realize the capabilities of speech....

I heard from a number of you after my welcome message. Thanks very much for welcoming me to the blog-o-sphere. I have enabled comments on my posts which was a popular suggestion. Talk with you soon. Cheers! Chris This posting is provided "AS...

Hi All, A bit about me. I’m a Program Manager in Microsoft Speech Server. I see speech as the next enabler of technology: a means to make interfacing with technology easier and simpler every day. This blog, I hope, will get you thinking about Speech enabling...