  FOREWORD
Dear Reader,
Despite the current economic climate, Loquendo is pleased to have been able to achieve good financial results for 2008 (see Loquendo News), giving us renewed energy and passion to continue evolving and moving forward, putting innovative ideas into reality to increase your business competitiveness.
2009 began with key Product News - new releases of the Loquendo TTS Engine, SDK and VoxNauta Platform - guaranteeing our product portfolio remains rich with innovative features to help you create pioneering applications and deliver an enhanced customer experience at reduced cost.
Loquendo greatly values its partners, and in January launched an important partnership with Virginia-based MicroAutomation, now providing Technical Support and Professional Services for Loquendo products and services in the US and Canada. February saw the launch of Saynergy, a customer care solution developed with Vocalcom and Umanify, followed by Uebbi, a speech-enabled, touch-screen multimedia device for home and office.
|
IN THIS EDITION
Loquendo at Voice Search Conference 2009
|
 Speech In-Depth features an Interview with Loquendo CEO, Davide Franco - he looks at past successes and future directions for the market and for Loquendo, outlining the company’s vision for the future with its partners and clients in the current downturn.
In Standards Corner you’ll find news on EMMA 1.0 - the latest W3C recommendation, already implemented in Loquendo MRCP Server. In International Research Activities you can learn how the LUNA project is pushing the boundaries of natural language interaction.
Loquendo is participating in the Voice Search Conference 2009 - March 2-4, San Diego CA - with sessions each day from Loquendo experts (see Events). Come and see Loquendo speak! Use the Loquendo Discount Code VS5968 during Registration and save up to $500!!
Are you ready for the future? Loquendo provides you with feature-rich technologies which increase cost-effectiveness and help you to create the user experience today’s customers demand! |
| |
SPEECH IN-DEPTH
The featured article this edition is an in-depth interview with Loquendo CEO Davide Franco, first appeared in Speech Technology Magazine, in which he talks about possible strategies for beating the current economic climate, and the role speech technologies will play in ensuring businesses come through stronger and more competitive. It can also be found on TMCnet.com.
>> Read the article.
LOQUENDO NEWS
| |
On Thursday 26th February, the Loquendo Board of Directors approved the proposed financial statements for 2008, demonstrating that, despite the difficult economic climate, Loquendo S.p.A. continues to be profitable. Founded in 2001, Loquendo achieved profitability in 2004 and in every successive financial year, guaranteeing a healthy level of reinvestment in the company’s future in terms of technological research and product development. Even in the current environment, the company has shown itself to be financially sound and reliable, and in a stronger than ever position to support its partners and customers.
|
|
LATEST PRODUCT NEWS
 |
Loquendo TTS 7.6
February 25th, 2009 | With new control tags and lexicon management, application developers can be sure even their most complex messages are read exactly as intended ... >> More |
 |
New Release of Loquendo VoxNauta VoiceXML/CCXML Platform
February 23rd, 2009 | Loquendo VoxNauta 7.1 with new features ... >> More |
|
Loquendo Presents a New Male Finnish Voice
January 26th, 2009 | Scandinavian markets now enjoy 5 different Loquendo voices ...
>> More
Hear Mikko for yourself. Meet the Loquendo TTS family.
|
 |
Loquendo ASR Now in Russian
January 22nd, 2009 | Loquendo launches Loquendo ASR in the Russian language ...
>> More |
LOQUENDO@WORK - SPEECH TECHNOLOGY IN ACTION
Loquendo TTS Powers Uebbi – the New Touch-Screen Multimedia Home Device
by Telecom Italia
February 19th, 2009 | News services, sport, market news and weather forecasts read out for you with expressive TTS ... >> More
Launch of Saynergy – for a Unique User Experience
February 3rd 2009 | First interactive digital assistant with advanced natural language
interaction ... >> More
MicroAutomation & Loquendo Launch Partnership Expanding U.S. & Canada
Speech Service Support
January 29th, 2009 | MicroAutomation provides Technical Support and Professional Services for Loquendo speech products and services in the US and Canadian markets ... >> More
Loquendo Sponsors Master's in Human Language Technology and Interfaces at
University of Trento
January 15th, 2009 | Loquendo continues long-standing support for academic institutions, research and innovation - furthering development and diffusion of speech technologies ...
>> More |
 |
| STANDARDS CORNER
EMMA 1.0 is now W3C Recommendation
February 18th, 2009
W3C published a new standard to enable interactions beyond the familiar keyboard and mouse. EMMA, the Extensible MultiModal Annotation Markup Language, promotes the development of rich Web applications that can be adapted to more input modes (such as handwriting, natural language, and gestures) and output modes (such as synthesized speech) at lower cost.
Read W3C Press Release and Testimonials.
Workshop on Speaker biometrics and VoiceXML 3.0
March 5-6, 2009
The goal of this workshop is to identify and prioritize directions for SIV standards work as a means of making SIV more useful in current and emerging markets. The Voice Browser Working Group is considering following three activities: Identify application requirements for SIV in VoiceXML 3.0; Identify SIV standards relevant to VoiceXML 3.0; Integrate existing and in-process standards with VoiceXML 3.0.
The main outcome of the workshop will be the publication of a document that will serve as a guide for meeting the above goals.
If you intend to participate, send an email to member-sivws-submit@w3.org |
|
INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH ACTIVITIES
 The COMPANIONS Project
See the Companions Project January newsletter.
 LUNA Project (Spoken Language Understanding in Multilingual Communication Systems)
Discover how LUNA is pushing the limits of speech technology to give users of automatic dialogue systems a richer and more productive experience. See this short video about the project, on youtube.
Go to this feature on LUNA, published in two parts by ICT Results:
1) It’s like software understands, um, language
2) Polish and Italian get advanced language recognition system
EVENTS
|
ISS World MEA 2009
JW Marriott Hotel Dubai,
Dubai, UAE
February, 24-27, 2009
Wednesday, February 25,
2009
10:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.
Track 2 - ISS World Criminal investigation and Intelligence Gatheringe Investigations
"Automatic Language Identification Tools for Effective Investigations"
(Luciano Piovano, Loquendo)
|
|
Voice Search Conference 2009
San Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina, San Diego, California
March 2-4, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
4:00 p.m. - 5:15 p.m.
A105 Advanced applications and technology
"PLS, a New Standard for Pronunciation Lexicons"
(Paolo Baggia, Director of International Standards, Loquendo)
4:00 p.m. - 5:15 p.m.
B105 Call center technology and application execution
"Loquendo’s Best of Breed Speech Technologies and TTS/ASR Samples"
(Rosanna Duce, VP International Sales, Loquendo)
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.
B202 Delivery platforms and services
"Loquendo TTS Director: the Next Generation in Authoring Tools for Speech Synthesis"
(Davide Bonardo, Senior Software architect, Loquendo)
1:15 p.m. - 2:05 p.m.
K5 Sponsor forum: Product announcements and features
"Emotion in Speech Technologies"
(Paolo Baggia, Director of International Standards, Loquendo)
3:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
B204 Approaches to application development
"Emotion in Speech Technologies"
(Paolo Baggia, Director of International Standards, Loquendo)
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
3:15 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.
K8 Key messages from the conference: New paradigms or more of the same?
(Rosanna Duce, VP International Sales, Loquendo)
|
|
EXPOELEARNING '09 - International Congress and Professional Showroom
Palacio de Congresos de Barcelona
Barcelona, Spain
March, 19-20, 2009 |
|
2009 ESRI Worldwide Business Partner Conference (BPC)
Wyndham Hotel and Palm Springs Convention Center
Booth 224 - Palm Springs, California, USA
March, 22-24, 2009 |
WHITE PAPERS
>> Towards IMS: The Potential of VoiceXML for Multimedia Applications
>> Speech Technologies And Multimodality: The Solution For New Advanced Services
>> SSML 1.0: an XML-based language to improve TTS rendering
|
|
