November 8th, 2007
BARCELONA, SPAIN and TURIN, ITALY – November 8th, 2007 - Umanify, a start-up company developing innovative interactive digital assistants, and Loquendo, the global speech technology company, announce that Loquendo’s Text to Speech and Automatic Speech Recognition engines have been chosen to power Umanify's umanServer Enterprise 2.6 conversational agents platform.

Umanify enables the creation and development of Interactive Digital Assistants (IDA) capable of assisting customers in a natural and direct way, using lifelike speech and facial expressions. Users can interact with the device as they would with a human agent and not a single button, mouse or screen needs to be touched in order to get the information they require or to get a number of tasks done.

These assistants have a physically realistic human appearance with emotional expressions and facial gestures based on human anatomic models. Umanify’s real-time facial animation technology is an exclusive and worldwide innovation. The IDAs physical aspect and user interface look&feel are completely customizable and adjustable to any aesthetic. All that’s needed is a picture or 2D drawing of the character and the real-time facial engine will do the rest. They understand and now also listen and speak thanks to Loquendo's award winning automatic speech recognition and speech synthesis technologies, Loquendo TTS and Loquendo ASR.

IDAs make use of the innovative technological power of Umanify to create a human user interface, flexible and adaptable to any technological environment and business area (mobiles, Internet, home automation, CRM, e-care, self service, e-commerce, education, medicine, leisure, automobiles, etc.).

Umanify’s assistants are capable of creating a new user experience, much richer in natural and direct interactivity: talk, listen, gesticulate and the IDA will look follow and react, answer and serve at all times thanks to its assistive technology.

These IDAs assist your customers efficiently, 24/7, cutting down on costs since the first day, increasing customer loyalty and satisfaction and improving your business image.

Umanify technology implements a natural dialog manager and knowledge engine that makes it possible to answer queries (frequent questions, doubts, specific information searches, etc) that are spoken by the users in natural language. This is a quick, entertaining and easy way for the user to get answers. For businesses, it is a way of offering a direct and automated, first class assistance to clients. The virtual assistant responds instantly with Loquendo's expressive and natural-sounding voices, making web navigation or mobile application use a far more enjoyable experience.

"We chose Loquendo for the natural expressivity and high level of intelligibility of its voices, not to mention the reliability of its automatic speech recognition technology. Their developer tools were excellent, and the integration of their speech engine in our assistants server platform was fast and easy" says Francisco Martin B., CEO and founder of Umanify.

"We are delighted to be partnering with Umanify, a company which we firmly believe will revolutionize the IDA market in Spain and around the world" said Rosanna Duce, VP International Sales at Loquendo. "At Loquendo, the emphasis is on the highest quality, lifelike technology - a value which is shared by Umanify."

The IDA is compatible with Adobe Flash Player for web applications and also runs in real-time in J2ME MIDP 2.0 mobile phones like Nokia, Sony Ericsson or Blackberry. Currently Umanify is developing a native version for Apple iPhone and will develop a special version for the recent Open Handset Alliance and Android OS from Google.

Visit one of Umanify online assistants for yourself on the website of ICEX (Spanish government customer): http://www.icex.es/icex/cda/views_icexv3/asistenteVoz/asistenteVoz/0,6457,,00.html

Loquendo ASR is the speaker-independent speech recognition engine that reliably recognizes large scale vocabulary continuous speech, even in challenging environments. Full standard compliance and a complete set of tools with powerful features make Loquendo ASR one of the most robust speech recognition engines on the market. Loquendo TTS is the only speech product on the market with an emotional component, known as Gilded TTS, delivering truly lifelike synthetic speech to make any speech application natural-sounding, expressive and easy to use. Loquendo speech technologies are currently available in 21 languages and 54 voices.

The superiority of Loquendo speech technologies has earned Loquendo a number of prestigious industry awards, including the SpeechTek 2007 Market Leader & Best Speech Engine Award.

About Umanify
Umanify is a start-up company, created in 2002, specializing in interactive digital assistants.
We develop assistive solutions that combine photorealistic and dynamic characters that speak more than 20 languages and interact directly with the users in real time and in a natural language, eliminating the
barriers to information access. We have created a new user experience, much richer on natural interactivity: the IDA, or Interactive Digital Assistant.

For Mobile phones or web applications and in sectors like customer service (auto service, contact center, helpdesk, etc.), citizen help, e-commerce, e-learning, e-banking, home automation, etc, an IDA assists
in an effective and continuous way to your customers, cutting down on costs since the first day, increasing customers loyalty, increasing their satisfaction and improving your business image.

For more information about Umanify, please visit www.umanify.com.

About Loquendo - Vocal Technology and Services
With over 30 years experience in speech technology, Loquendo is at the forefront of the global speech market. Loquendo TTS, Loquendo ASR, Loquendo Speaker Verification and the Loquendo VoxNauta are high-quality, high-performance technologies that guarantee systems integrators the best solutions whatever the application. Loquendo technologies are available standalone, or integrated into Loquendo MRCP Server, or within Loquendo VoxNauta Platform.

Loquendo is the only speech technology vendor that provides a complete product line from desktop PCs and telephony servers to navigation and handheld devices, guaranteeing the same portfolio of languages and the same core engine in all these environments.

Many enterprises and carriers worldwide have recognized the Loquendo difference and our advanced technologies power millions of calls every day in the telecommunications and enterprise markets across the globe.

Loquendo is a Telecom Italia company headquartered in Turin, Italy, with offices in the U.S., Spain, Germany and France, and a worldwide network of partners. For more information about Loquendo, and to hear demonstrations of all Loquendo voices, visit www.loquendo.com.