Biographical Information

Articles by Brian Lewis

Good Vibrations

There may be no greater enemy to speech recognition than noise. It either directly or indirectly causes most speech recognition errors. Errors brought on by noise can be the most persistent and difficult for the recognizer to eliminate. While most dictation software can eventually learn the idiosyncrasies of a particular speaker and learn to produce the right word, errors caused by noise are often too irregular to be countered and can so distort the final response as to render it beyond the understanding of the most sympathetic "best guess."

If You Don’t Do It, Somebody Else Will

This year has been one of dramatic strides for Philips, as they became one of the world’s leading companies in the speech recognition industry, particularly in the telephony market. Obviously, the person in charge of all this is generally busy, but we were able to get Paul Celen to sit long enough to discuss the speech industry with us, and Philips’ role in it both now and in the near future.

SPEECH RECONNAISSANCE

Is speech the technology that will take computing power beyond the desktop? Can information be retrieved, processed, manipulated and passed along, without stopping at a desktop? There are a number of companies looking very closely at speech recognition as a means to give people access to valuable information whenever they like. The benefits are enormous and the need is obvious to anyone who has ever struggled with a keyboard in cramped quarters, had a brilliant thought pass through their mind without being recorded, or needed to have specific information NOW.

SPEECH PROFILES: Voxware Brings Speech Recognition Into the Warehouse "Battlefield"

The recent acquisition of Verbex Voice Systems by Voxware Inc. brought Voxware’s president and CEO, Bathsheba J. Malsheen, Ph.D., back into the speech recognition field in a very big way.

How Speech Makes OXYGEN

Will speech recognition be the "Oxygen" of the next generation of computing? Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology envision a world where computing devices will be as ubiquitous as oxygen.

SPEECH RECONNAISSANCE:

Speech has become an accepted technology in many industries and would appear, for all its problems, to have a bright future in both its short term and long term outlooks. The short term excitement is generated by upcoming industry trade shows, and in the long term, researches at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are pursuing a vision of information technology that puts speech technology at a central point for the 21st century.

SPEECH RECONNAISSANCE

This issue of Speech Technology magazine contains the first Vendor Web Guide, which will give you a comprehensive list of "who’s who" in the speech industry. A listing of the web sites of over 150 companies involved in the speech industry, the vendor guide gives our readers a reliable reference guide they can use throughout the year. It provides a comprehensive list of manufacturers, developers, VARs, systems integrators, services and publications serving the speech industry as it relates to computers, telephones and embedded systems.

Speech Reconnaissance:
Making the Case for Speech

Will 1999 finally be the year of speech recognition? Or will Y2K issues distract the computer world’s attention to the point where this remarkable technology will remain on the back burner for another year?

Speech Reconnaissance

This year the speech industry continued to make the technological advances that will soon make speech recognition a mainstream business and personal productivity tool. This year’s SpeechTEK exhibition and conference was the largest ever and attracted more national media attention to the speech industry than any event in the last several years.

SPEECH RECONNAISSANCE

As industry leaders and analysts prepare for the fourth annual SpeechTEK ‘98 conference and exhibition, scheduled for Oct. 27 and 28 at the New York Hilton, the technology itself continues to gain acceptance from a wider audience.

What are VARs and Resellers Doing to Regain Margin as Product Prices Drop?

Even veterans of previous high technology price wars were surprised at how quickly the cost of continuous dictation software dropped after Dragon first introduced Naturally Speaking a little over a year ago, at what was then a breakthrough price intended to get speech into the mainstream - $695.

IBM Announces ViaVoice 98

IBM recently announced the release of ViaVoice 98, the next generation of IBM’s best selling speech recognition software, which features numerous innovations designed to make speech easier and more natural.

SPEECH RECONNAISSANCE

The upcoming SpeechTEK 98 show promises to be the largest ever, with many new products and applications being demonstrated. Our article on page 50 gives you a sneak preview of what to expect at the industry’s leading conference and exposition, to be held Oct. 27-28 at the New York Hilton.

Speech Reconnaissance: Which Came First?

Whether financial interest develops technology or if technological developments attract investment is a classic chicken-or-egg situation. Which does come first?

Mergers, Alliances and Acquisitions: Mergers Shape Speech Industry

Just as the banking world has seen huge mergers, the speech industry has seen new partnerships, mergers and acquisitions which promise to shape the for years to come.

Market Analysis: Telephone Present a New Face

William Meisel, a well-known speech industry consultant, has just completed a comprehensive market study of telephone speech recognition entitled The Telephony Voice User Interface: Speech recognition, Text-to-speech, and speaker verification over the telephone. Brian Lewis, the editor of Speech Technology magazine, talked to Meisel about the report.

Speech Reconnaissance: Natural Language

With last year's breakthrough releases in continuous speech products, one of the major challenges of speech technology was achieved. For some who have been chasing this dream for many years, 1997 was the culmination of an intensive effort.

The Next Level For Speech

Advancing speech recognition to the next level has always been the goal at IBM's researchlabs in upstate New York. Once, this meant simply getting machines to merely recognizespeech.

SPEECH RECONNAISSANCE: Wearable Computers

Our goal with this column is to spot emerging trends in speech recognition, to be a little ahead of the curve in an extremely fast paced industry. For that reason we could not resist a trip to the First Annual Symposium on Wearable Computers held in October in Cambridge, Mass. near the MIT campus.

SpeechTEK '97 Draws Corporate Buyers to New York

SpeechTEK '97 showcased many new developments in the speech field and showed how the technology is advancing and moving into new markets. Following are two reports on the show. The first, by editor Brian Lewis, details the interest of corporate buyers in a variety of vertical markets. A second report from Peter Fleming and Robert Anderson discusses how many of the advances in speech dictation and recognition products were received.

Dictation Products Break Through With More on the Horizon

Predicting the next technological breakthrough in any industry is often extremely difficult. But right now interpreting the near term future of speech recognition is pretty obvious. If the truth be known, it may not require a much more complicated thought process than a rooster goes through upon seeing the first light of the rising sun.

Letter from the Editor

In today's business climate, competing in the global market is more important than ever. Companies are finding that this is truly a world of opportunity for those who can deliver reliable, cost effective products and services to any corner of the globe.

Letter from the Editor

Speech technology continues to gain acceptance among developers and end users, and this issue of the magazine strongly reflects that trend. Speech now has implications in many different markets, including the computer telephony industry and assistive technology, which we examine in this issue.