Microsoft Beta to Make ’em Talk

The TAS includes:

• SALT Interpreter, which deals with all the speech interface and
  presentation logic, and also handles interactions between the speech
  application and the telephony components of the architecture
• Media and Speech Manager, which handles requests made by SALT
  Interpreters to SES for speech recognition and prompt playback, and manages
  interfaces with the third-party TIM to deliver audio to and from the
  telephone user
• SALT Interpreter Controller, which manages creation, deletion and
  resetting of the multiple instances of the SALT Interpreter that are
  managing dialogs with individual callers.

“Microsoft Speech Server is unique to the marketplace in that it is the
only speech server that supports both unified telephony and multimodal
applications,” said Xuedong Huang, general manager of the Speech
Technologies Group at Microsoft. “By building our speech technology
offerings upon the open, industry-standard SALT specification, customers
can use speech to access information from standard telephones and cell
phones as well as GUI-based devices like PDAs, Tablet PCs and smart
phones.”

SASDK beta 3
The software giant also refreshed its SASDK with a third beta Wednesday,
updating the SASDK beta 2 released in October 2002. The SASDK is a developer tool based on SALT and designed
to integrate with the Visual Studio .NET 2003 development environment. It
allows developers to write combined speech and visual Web applications in a
single code base.

The new beta includes a host of new features, including:

• Pocket Internet Explorer Bits, allowing Pocket PC access to Speech
  Server applications
• Speech Application Wizard, which allows developers to create a new
  project in Visual Studio .NET 2003 that contains all necessary objects
• Telephony Application Simulator, which simulates Speech Server to allow
  developers to deploy telephony applications on the desktop and interact
  with the application
• Enhanced support for dual-tone multifrequency, or DTMF (the type of
  audio signals that are generated when you press the buttons on a touch-tone
  telephone)
• Speech Application Controls, preset controls which manage responses
  containing digits and letters, like credit card numbers, expiration dates,
  currency amounts, ZIP codes and Social Security Numbers
• Enhancements to Grammar Authoring, providing a flowchart view of
  grammars, the ability to type text for grammar phrases into grammar files,
  a Pronunciation Editor for unusual words, and integration into the Visual
  Studio .NET 2003 environment
• Speech Controls Outline Panel, which consists of a dockable Visual
  Studio menu that shows users the sequence of controls in the speech
  application.

Speech Partner Program
Finally, Microsoft also raised the curtain on its Speech Partner Program
(SPP), which is intended to provide additional revenue and profit
opportunities to partners interested in developing, deploying or reselling
enterprise-grade speech technology solutions based on Microsoft’s
technologies.

The software giant is targeting telephony value-added resellers and
distributors, systems integrators, Web developers, independent software
vendors, and Microsoft-certified partners with the program, giving them
access to industry and Microsoft-specific events, access to special partner
collateral (like advertising templates, sales tools and targeted
demand-generation materials), discounted rates for Microsoft Speech
Technologies training courses, placement in its SPP Resource Directory on
the Microsoft.com Web site, and promotion of their products and services
through Microsoft’s marketing efforts.

To qualify, Microsoft said partners need to complete three training
courses, including Speech Applications: Planning, VUI Design and
Maintenance; Developing Speech-Enabled Web Applications Using the Microsoft
Speech Application Software Development Kit; and Deploying and
Administering Microsoft Speech Server.