2003 Speech Solutions Winners
And the winner is…
By Mike Terry
Each year Speech Technology Magazine (STM) recognizes significant contributions and achievements of individuals and companies involved in speech Technology. The Speech Solutions Awards and the Top Ten Leaders Speech are selected by the magazine's readers in an online poll. The Speech Solutions Awards were given to those companies whose solutions or products made significant impact in the market over the past year. The Top Ten Leaders in Speech are recognized as the ten most influential people in the speech technology industry, as viewed by our readers. Also, for the first time, STM awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award for a person in the industry who our readers felt has made a great contribution to the development and furthering of the technology. The awards were presented at the 8th Annual SpeechTEK Exposition and Educational Conference.
Speech Solutions Awards
Best TTS Solution/Desktop - AT&T Natural Voices, Desktop Edition
The Desktop Edition offers a way to integrate TTS capabilities into any desktop application. The smaller footprint and reduced system requirements make these packages well-suited for application developers, small businesses and individual users.
Best TTS Solution/Telephony - SpeechWorks, National Weather Service
NOAA Weather Radio is a nationwide network broadcasting continuous local weather information directly to the public. Speechify TTS is the new male and female voice of National Weather Radio.
Best Verification Solution - Nuance, Verifier 3.0
Nuance Verifier 3.0 uses voiceprints to deliver high security and secure access at a low cost without the use of passwords and PINs. Companies can use it to deliver a range of solutions, from secure facilities access to the protection of sensitive data.
Best Embedded Solution - SpeechWorks, Speech2Go
Awarded for embedded ASR for Infiniti and Jaguar. Speech2Go is a continuous, speaker-independent speech recognition engine designed specifically for use in automotive and mobile devices.
Best Voice Platform - Tellme Networks, Voice Application Network
The Tellme Voice Application Network combines carrier-grade network infrastructure, the VoiceXML application platform, and the Voice Advantage suite of voice technologies to answer millions of calls every week for Fortune 500 clients.
Best Persona - SpeechWorks, Julie, the voice of Amtrak
SpeechWorks introduced Julie, the voice of Amtrak's 1-800-USA-RAIL line, in Fall 2001. Julie receives over 27 million calls per year from travelers requesting train status information and booking reservations.
Best ASR Solution/Desktop - IBM, ViaVoice
ViaVoice desktop products leverage the results of 40 years of IBM speech recognition research and development, and over 150 voice technology patents. ViaVoice can free users from dependence on the mouse, keyboard and stylus for many applications.
Best ASR Solution/Telephony - Nuance, Nuance 8.0
Nuance 8.0 is designed to enable accurate, scalable and easy-to-deploy voice solutions ranging from automated directory assistance, product ordering and customer care to industry-specific applications. Best Input Device Solution - Clarity, CVC
Clarity's Clear Voice Capture (CVC™) software improves the quality and accuracy of voice-based interfaces, speech recognition engines and communications systems. It restores the quality of voice signals in noisy environments.
Most Innovative Solution - Phonetic Systems, Fonecta Deployment
Fonecta has deployed a country-wide completely voice automated directory assistance service that consists of 6 million+ Finnish residential, business and mobile listings as well as reverse directory look-ups. Phonetic Systems' Voice Search Engine™ powers this service.
Top Ten Leaders in Speech
Steve Chambers, SpeechWorks
Chambers, Sr VP of Sales and CMO, manages the strategic and tactical global marketing and sales initiatives that have helped drive SpeechWorks' worldwide sales and resulted in impressive market share gains.
Ron Croen, Nuance
Croen, a co-founder of Nuance, is the president, CEO and chairman of the board. Prior to that he served as a consultant to SRI International, as well as managing director of European Operations and VP and general counsel of The Ultimate Corp.
Eric Doggett, Glenayre
As CEO he has more than 15 years experience in the telecommunications and wireless industries. His leadership has guided divisions of Nortel, Compaq's Tandem Computers and now Glenayre Technologies to the forefront of their respective businesses.
Dr. X.D. Huang, Microsoft Corp
Dr. Huang is general manager of the Microsoft .NET Speech Technologies Group and serves on the board of the Speech Application Language Tags (SALT) Forum. Dr. Huang is responsible for the development of the company's .NET Speech platform, the .NET Speech software development kit (SDK), and related .NET Speech components.
Dr. James A. Larson, Intel and W3c Voice Browser Working Group
Dr. Larson is the manager of Advanced Human Input/Output at Intel and co-chair of W3C Voice Browser Working Group. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Portland State University and Oregon Graduate Institute, as well as the author of VoiceXML: Introduction of Developing Speech Applications. Dr. Larson also served as the co-program chair of SpeechTEK 2002.
Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, Microsoft Corp
As corporate vice president of the Natural Interactive Services Division at Microsoft Corp., Dr. Lee is responsible for the development of the technologies and services for making Web interaction and navigation simpler and more natural.
Mike McCue, Tellme Networks
Mike co-founded Tellme in early 1999. He serves as president and COO, setting overall strategy and corporate direction for delivering voice applications to Fortune 500 clients. Prior, Mike was the VP of Technology at Netscape.
W.S. "Ozzie" Osborne, IBM Pervasive Computing
Ozzie Osborne, VP of Alliances and Operations, IBM Pervasive Computing Division, leads IBM's key strategic alliances and partnerships with service providers, device manufacturers, network equipment providers and other technology developers.
Stuart Patterson, SpeechWorks
Patterson, president and CEO, has nearly 20 years experience in the online services market. His previous experience includes positions at Voxware, Hewlett-Packard and France Telecom.
Robert P. Schechter, NMS Communications
Schechter, chairman, president and CEO, joined NMS in 1995. Schechter also serves as a director on the boards of Infinium Software, Moldflow Corporation and MapInfo Corporation.
Lifetime Achievement Award
Dr. Victor Zue, MIT
Dr. Zue is the director of the MIT Laboratory of Computer Science. His research interest is in the development of spoken language interfaces to make human/computer interactions easier and more natural. He is also the first holder of the Delta Electronics Chair endowed for senior researchers. Dr. Zue has consulted for many multinational corporations, and he has served on many planning, advisory and review committees for the US Department of Defense, the National Science Foundation and the National Academy of Science.