• Weds, May 4, 2005, 12:00 AM
  Alba Dobi, one of Loquendo’s key Sales Managers, will be running a Seminar on Developing efficient self-service applications whilst cutting costs and optimising customer relations.
  
  
  
• Thus, May 5, 2005, 10:15 AM
  Massimiliano Ferrero, Loquendo’s EMEA Area Manager will be presenting Loquendo Voice Portals: the user’s best friend. This presentation will include several customer testimonials.
  
  
  

IN-DEPTH

In recent years, speech technologies have reached a level of maturity that allows the development of highly effective vocal services. At the same time, the rapid evolution of mobile devices and their limited dimensions have introduced usability constraints.
This White Paper provides an outlook on the state of the art of multimodality and aims to give a perspective of possible services. It also presents a brief description of Loquendo’s research projects in the field of multimodality.

>> Go to the article.

STANDARDS CORNER

• W3C Celebrates Ten Years Leading the Web in Europe
  June, 3 2005
  The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) will celebrate its ten years of presence in Europe on Friday, June 3, 2005, at the CERAM in Sophia Antipolis, France. This half-day celebration will give Members and invited guests the opportunity to reflect upon the progress of the Web, its role as a unifying force in Europe, and the policies that shape the role of the Web in the daily lives of Europeans.
  This event is part two of the W3C Tenth Anniverary series. W3C celebrated the first part, the tenth anniversary of the founding of the World Wide Web Consortium, on December 1, 2004 in Boston (MA).
  
  
• Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces Working Draft Published
  April 25, 2005
  The Multimodal Interaction Working Group has released the first public Working Draft of the Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces. This document describes a loosely coupled architecture for multimodal user interfaces, which allows co-resident and distributed implementations, and focuses on the role of markup and scripting, and the use of well defined interfaces between its constituents. Visit the Multimodal Interaction Working Group home page.
  
  
• W3C Voice Browser and Multimodal Interaction WGs rechartered
  February, 2005
  Both the Voice Browser and Multimodal Interaction working groups of W3C have recently been rechartered. This means that both the groups will be active until January 2007 and new companies are welcomed to be active members of these groups. The only condition is that the company has to be a member of the W3C Consortium.
  
  

LOQUENDO Products

• Loquendo Optimises Speech Recognition Performance With Loquendo ASR 6.6
  April 27, 2005
  Loquendo announces the release of Loquendo ASR 6.6. The new version of the Automatic Speech Recognition engine marks yet another step in Loquendo’s commitment to continuously improve the performance and functionality of speech recognition technology.
  The following are some of the new features included in Loquendo ASR 6.6. They are all valuable means of enabling a more powerful use of speech recognition for voice application development:
  • The barge-in functionality has been significantly improved as regards speech input detection to allow the interruption of text-to-speech playback.
  • Loquendo ASR now ships in a variety of tiers, providing integrators with greater licensing flexibility.
  • The compilation process of very large grammars has been further optimised.
  >> More
• Loquendo TTS Awarded Best Innovation in Multi-Lingual Speech Synthesis
  March 11, 2005
  AVIOS-SpeechTEK recognized Loquendo’s Speech Leadership by awarding Loquendo TTS text-to-speech engine the “Best Innovation in Multi-Lingual Speech Synthesis” Prize at AVIOS-SpeechTEK West 2005, in San Francisco.
  At SpeechTEK West, Loquendo unveiled the new emotional version of the Loquendo TTS engine. Loquendo is the first speech market player to offer its customers the possibility to make their vocal messages as expressive as human conversation. >> More
• Loquendo TTS New Release Of Male UK English Voice
  February 23, 2005
  Loquendo is delighted to present the new emotional release of Simon, Loquendo's male UK English Text-to-Speech persona. Today, Simon is more lifelike than ever. He is Loquendo's third emotional Text to Speech voice, along with Dutch personas Saskia and Willem.
  Loquendo TTS software has been enriched with a repertoire of "expressive cues", which enable TTS users to enliven their voice prompts. The release of emotional Simon is another important step towards expressive synthetic speech. >> More

Clients & Partners

• Loquendo's Market Share Increases According to Analyst's Firm Preliminary Report
  March 18, 2005
  Loquendo announced that Gartner, Inc. has cited Loquendo as one of the international speech market's major players. Gartner reported that the volume of Loquendo's worldwide port shipments increased by approximately 26.7% during the year 2004 in its latest market statistics report, "Speech Recognition Telephony Software: Worldwide, 2004 (Preliminary) ".
  "Loquendo is rapidly increasing its market presence leveraging the outstanding quality of its multilingual speech technologies," said Marco Romagnoli, Managing Director of Loquendo S.p.A."The international reach and technical excellence Loquendo provides is being recognized by an increasing number of customers and partners around the world. We believe these figures reflect the growth of Loquendo's share in the international speech market". >> More
• Loquendo and Kirusa Announce a Strategic Partnership to Deliver Multimodal Solutions
  March 16, 2005
  Loquendo and Kirusa, the leading provider of multimodal platforms enabling wireless applications delivery, announced a strategic partnership leveraging Loquendo's multilingual speech technologies to deliver enhanced multimodal solutions to customers across the globe.
  The partnership between Loquendo and Kirusa enables carriers and enterprises to offer their users an even richer multimodal experience by introducing quality voice services that drive customer loyalty and new revenue generation. >> More
• Loquendo joins VoiceXML Forum board of directors
  February 22, 2005
  Loquendo announced that it has joined the VoiceXML Forum’s Board of Directors. Loquendo will join existing Board members in providing strategic direction and leadership to the organization.
  Loquendo will be represented on the VoiceXML’s Board of Directors by Paolo Baggia, who is also Loquendo’s representative in the W3C Voice Browser and Multimodal Integration WGs. >> More

Events

• Voice World Europe 2005,
  London, Olympia Conference Center, 3-5 May 2005.
• SpeechTEK 2005,
  New York, Marriott Marquis, 1-4 August 2005.