Joe Calev's WebLog

From now on, I will follow a different approach with my Speech Server related posts. Rather than having tutorials (many of which are also in the docs and sample apps), I will discuss actual questions that were posed to me through this blog and during...

I am going to digress from the MSS Beta for a day so I can add a long awaited post. One of the many things I find interesting about life is in retrospect it is not continuous. We do not remember every second of every hour of every day in our life. We...

Recently, I was posed with the question of how to do answering machine detection using Microsoft Speech Server 2007 Beta. The idea is an app makes an outbound call and reaches an answering machine. If we reach an answering machine, we want to take different...

OK, so most of you probably know this already but the Microsoft Speech Server Beta was released on Monday. This Beta includes several tools that until now I was not allowed to blog about publicly. The two most interesting tools are a Windows Workflow...

Due to a larger than normal amount of input about normalizing prompts, I have decided to talk about it some more. The standard and most agreed upon method of prompt normalization is called RMS - which stands for "Root Mean Square". It works like this...

Some time ago one of the program managers and I sat down with a customer exasperated that we do not support normalizing prompts within our Recording Editing and Design Studio. We were quite puzzled because we do actually support normalizing prompts. ...

I must apologize to everyone for the long period of silence. One of the difficulties with shipping a Beta is it is very time consuming - I had to spend most of my time making sure everything was of a high quality and less time with my blog. But the...

In general in telephony apps, you will interact in two ways with the caller. 1) You will speak to the user, giving them information or instructions 2) You will ask the user for more information Of course, there are other methods of interaction...

Today we are going to discuss making outbound calls using Microsoft Speech Server 2007. There are basically two types of calls in Speech Server - inbound calls and outbound calls. I discussed inbound calls in a previous post where I covered the Hello...

One of the most exciting features in Speech Server 2007 is the SDK. The SDK is dramatically improved over Speech Server R2 and contains several new tools and scores of new features. Some of the features I am still unable to discuss but one that I can...

The Core API is what made me so excited about the launch of Speech Server several months ago. Personally, I found it difficult to use either SALT or our speech controls to write an app. It just did not seem natural to me - when I look at graphical elements...

Finally, after a long period of silence I have something to talk about. Microsoft Speech Server 2007 has been announced publicly along with a number of the features it will ship with. You can find the full press release here . For me, the most interesting...

Do you want to help make the world Speech-enabled? Microsoft Speech Server is doing just that by providing the best tools for developers of Speech applications around the world. The MSS Application Tuning Tools team needs a superstar S oftware D esign...

Another question that one may have about travelling with small children on a plane is whether to use a car seat. As I mentioned in my last post, if your child is under one, you can use the basinet on the plane. If your child is between one and two, I...

As you may imagine, travelling with one or more small children on an international flight takes some planning. The first question you may have is how many seats to book. The following are my suggestions based on taking an 11 month old to Italy and a 10...

So now you've figured out where you want to go. It's time to look at a stroller for your little one(s). Since my son Eitan was born, we have owned three different double strollers and two different single strollers. The following are the pros and cons...

In my last installment I discussed considering travelling abroad. I will now discuss what countries you should consider when travelling with small children. There are several prerequisites I have when choosing to travel abroad. 1) The country must...

When travelling with small children, your first decision obviously needs to be "where should I go?". Having travelled with our children in both the US and abroad, it may sound strange, but it is much easier for us to travel abroad with them than in...

It often annoys me when people consider the birth of a child as the end of their life. Too often I hear 'I want to get a chance to travel before having children' or I see people with children become complete recluses. My wife and I currently have two...

Starting tomorrow I will be OOF for two weeks visiting the remote jungles of Peru. You can read my itinerary here . I will also spend some time seeing Macchu Picchu and Cuzco. This trip was booked almost a year ago and some time ago I blogged about it...

Watching images from New Orleans, I am still having difficulties grasping what is going on there. I think as an American it is hard to believe words like 'refugee' and 'Americans' in the same sentence. Too often we are used to accepting them as a fact...

As some of you may know (but I did not until recently), there is a software package out there that helps you automate your home by Automated Living . Their product is called HAL and I found a length web page describing an implementation of it. The system...

In my previous post I outlined a 'morning of the future'. Obviously that is the end goal and will take quite a long time to become reality. The issue really becomes tricky when wiring home appliances to the system. What I will focus on first is the speech...

In one of my previous posts I mentioned that I will be implementing Speech Server at home in order to automate my home. The end goal of this, which I hope to reach in the far future, is a home of the future where everything is automated. The following...

It's funny how having kids can change your perspective on things. While perusing cnn.com I came across a story on the situation in Niger . I remember when I was younger the negative reactions I had when a commercial would appear showing starving children...