Rob's Response Point

Alternatives to analog lines?

I recently received a mail asking me about ISDN PRI.  It's an effective way to get lots of lines into your business.  But in Response Point we're targeting smaller businesses that typically only have 3 or 4 lines, for whom analog lines are the typical solution.  This doesn't mean support other types of lines isn't on our roadmap, just that our initial focus is on the analog line service that most of our customers have.

Response Point and Office Communications Server

Another popular question I've received is along the lines of "how does Response Point relate to Office Communications Server?"

Eric Swift addresses this question in a recent post to the Unified Communications Group Team Blog.

How did we incubate Response Point?

I've had a lot of people ask me "so how did you develop Response Point so quickly"?

Rob Knies recently published a great article about how our team, MSR Incubation, built Response Point.

Response Point demo online

Here's the demo we did at the Small Business Summit last week:

http://metahost.origindigital.com/microsoft/sbs2007/archive/14_productivity_and_mobility_400.asx

BTW, there were a lot of great talks at the conference.  You can find them here: http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/small-business-summit/FY07/SummitVideo/Watch.aspx

My personal favourite was Guy Kawasaki's: http://metahost.origindigital.com/microsoft/sbs2007/archive/03_art_of_innovation_400.asx.

Enjoy!

Response Point - small business telephone system

This morning we announced a new telephone product we built for small businesses, called "Microsoft Response Point": an innovative and easy to use new phone system, designed specifically for small businesses.  http://www.microsoft.com/responsepoint

I'm really proud to be a member of the Microsoft Research incubation team that built Response Point.

From the beginning, we had only one goal in mind: radically simplify the total phone experience for small businesses.  We did extensive primary research of small business customers and built a telephone solution that focuses on this theme. 

1.     (User) We implemented an easy-to-use speech recognition system, to remove the need to memorize extension numbers and arcane keystrokes for doing things like transferring calls.

2.     (Administrator) Our management console allows you to complete phone moves, additions or changes with a few quick and easy mouse clicks. No special phone training or networking expertise is required.

3.     (Owner) Response Point offers a complete phone system at an affordable price that grows with your business.

Response Point is a self-contained VoIP hardware product that will be manufactured by Quanta, D-Link and Uniden.  You just need a LAN, some analog phone lines, and a PC (to run the management console).  You just plug the Response Point hardware into the LAN, then install the Management Console on the PC, and run through some wizards to setup the phone lines and phones.  Then you're ready to make and receive calls.  Easy.

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Some other Response Point posts today:

Our press release: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/mar07/03-19MSResponsePointPR.mspx

Microsoft Small Business Channel Community Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/mssmallbiz/archive/2007/03/19/say-hello-to-response-point-the-new-product-just-announced-by-kevin-turner-at-the-small-business-summit.aspx

Mary Jo Foley: http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=334

PC World: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,129955-c,webtelephonyconferencing/article.html

Jayman Dalal (another one of the Response Point team members): http://blogs.msdn.com/jdalal/archive/2007/03/19/microsoft-announces-response-point-an-easy-to-use-phone-system-for-small-businesses.aspx

"All the cool developers use speech APIs" has moved

I've been unable to post with anything like the frequency I need to to make this blog worthwhile.  Sorry about that.

The good news is that I'm passing the reins for the speech API portion of my blog over to Chuck Opperman, the program manager for the speech APIs (yep, I should have done it ages ago).  Since the blog you're reading has my name in it, and I'll probably use it for other things, please point your RSS readers at Chuck's blog to get more speech API goodness: http://blogs.msdn.com/chuckop/

As for me, I'm totally immersed in this new job in MSR incubation.  Sooner or later I'll talk about the cool stuff we're doing, so check in on me from time to time.

New Speech Server video on Channel 9

http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=208891

Albert, Mithun and Dave talk us through some of the great new capabilities of the next version of Speech Server.

I worked on the initial version of Speech Server (2004), as well as some of the plumbing of the server and API in the upcoming version.  It's great to see what the Speech Server team is delivering.  They've made excellent use of the last couple of years to build an impressive upgrade.

EDIT: I forgot to link to the beta download instructions: http://www.microsoft.com/speech/preview/default.mspx

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As an aside, one of the comments (from jsampsonPC) made me grin:

"I'm an outsider to Microsofts guts, but it seems like every smart programmer on the MS team has a foreign accent Perhaps channel nine should start each show with, "Who are who, what's your position, and what country do you hail from, mate?"  It would be an interesting stat to the [ratio] of foreign/local employees at MS "

I like the suggestion.  The development teams I've been a part of are very cosmopolitan.  It's one of the things I find enjoyable and enriching about working here.

Updating speech samples for beta 2

When beta 1 shipped, we published this article in MSDN Magazine.

We've made some minor tweaks to the API for beta 2, and I figure what better way to illustrate them than to walk through the samples in that article and update them for beta 2.

First, the install.  I installed two pieces of software:

1. Vista beta 2.
2. Visual C# Express Edition

I didn't need to install WinFX (it's part of Vista and installed by default in beta 2).  I didn't need to install the SDK.

One of the most frequently asked questions in beta 1 was "how on Earth do I add a reference to System.Speech?".  The answer then was to first install the SDK, then add a reference to "Speech", not "System.Speech".  Ack!  Sorry about that.  It now works as it should.  I just went into the "Add Reference" dialog in VC# and double clicked on System.Speech.

Today's updated sample is the first sythnesis sample from the article.  The only real change is that we dropped "SpeakText()" and overloaded "Speak()" to take a string.  Pretty simple.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.Speech.Synthesis;
namespace Synth_sample_1
{
   class Program
   {
      static void Main(string[] args)
      {
         SpeechSynthesizer synth = new SpeechSynthesizer();
         synth.SelectVoice("Microsoft Anna");
         synth.Speak("Speak text has been replaced by an overload on speak.");
      }
   }
}

Well, that's all for today.  More soon...

A ring tone adults can't hear

Have you heard about this?  http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/12/technology/12ring.html?ex=1307764800&en=2b80d158770dccdf&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

The irony is that it's an offshoot of a "teenager repellent" security device. 

Poetic.

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(Okay, not quite speech related.  But certainly audio and communications related.)

Recent ZDNet article on speech

http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/software/applications/0,39020466,39274587,00.htm

A high-level tour around speech synthesis and recognition.

Please Mr. Skype, may I have a SIP?

Happy 1st birthday, Skype Developers' Program: http://about.skype.com/2006/06/skype_developers_program_hits.html

Let's face it, who doesn't like Skype?  And major kudos to them for deploying such a successful application and platform.

You know what I'd love to see?  I'd love Skype to offer SIP & RTP interoperability, so I can use any of the plethora of available VOIP software, hardware and APIs to interoperate with it.  That would be cool.  I could just buy a generic SIP phone, provision it with whatever Skype needs for billing, etc, and hey presto.  If I bought some fancy VOIP call center software, I could point it at Skype just as I would any other VOIP provider.

Maybe it's just a matter of time before Skype does this?  Maybe it would dilute their advantage so they won't do it?  Maybe there really is some special sauce in their own signaling and media techniques that wouldn't work in SIP & RTP?  I don't know.  But I think it would be awesome for the rest of the industry if they did this.

It's been a while

I stopped working in ernest on speech APIs around September last year (i.e. the PDC timeframe), to focus on some of our natural language technology instead (it's all part of the same team).  Anyways, that's why I've been lazy about posting anything on speech for the last 6 months.  Shame on me. :P

Speech and NL are both cool technologies and it's a fun area to work in.  But I've developed a hankering for doing some v.1 product work again.  So about a month ago I joined my friends over in MSR Incubation (MSR = Microsoft Research).   Pretty kewl  :-)

I figure I'll keep the blog titled "all the cool developers use speech APIs", because it's true.  And I love speech.  And I love the speech APIs we're shipping in WinFX and Vista.  And besides, you do want to be cool don't you?  ;-)  And I'll start posting regularly again.  Promise.

BTW, I really like Thierry Fontanelle's CorrecteurOrthographiqueOffice blog, which talks about some of the great NL stuff we're continually working on and shipping.  Go check it out.  Last week he posted about the new spelling technology going into Office 2007.

Cheers

Answers to speech API questions

Answers to questions from Michael Latta:

Q: Can the WinFX Speach Recognition API be used in XP? It is complaining that that component can not be used. I am using TabletPC edition which I thought has recognition features. Does the WinFX API only support Vista?

Yes, it works on XP (including Tablet) and Vista.

I'd like to figure out what's going on.  Can you mail me some more details (or post feedback here, or post to the newsgroup).  Thanks.

Q: Is there a forum / newsgroup for speech?

microsoft.public.speech_tech

MSDN Magazine article on speech in Vista

Okay, so I haven't been completely idle: http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/06/01/speechinWindowsVista/#void

(Thanks to Robert Stumberger, Rob Chambers, and the other folks here at Microsoft who helped put this together).

No speech API posts from me for a little while

After the PDC I moved into a new job on our team and I've been heads-down coming up to speed.  Hence no blog posts lately.  Hopefully I'll come up for air soon.  Thanks for your patience.

Philipp's also posting about speech API stuff.