VoiceXML: What's Everyone Talking About?
Though not a new technology, VoiceXML which allows you to create applications that make Web-based information accessible via voice is gaining steam as more corporations shift to an IP-based infrastructure.
VoiceXML can help that automation take place. Though not a new technology, VoiceXML is gaining steam as more and more corporations shift to an IP-based infrastructure. Basically, VoiceXML is an XML grammar (and not specifically a language) to create applications that make Web-based information accessible to users via voice and telephone.
Connecting the Dots
There have been many efforts to bridge the gap between computer and telephone-using consumers. The greatest distance is between WAP (Wireless Application Protocol), a text-based technology, and VoiceXML, which use voice technology. In some ways the two technologies are similar in terms of how they are implemented, but while WAP is purely text that's appropriate for a PDA or cellular phone, VoiceXML builds on a familiar ground already used in the customer-service world: voice. There have been proprietary voice-recognition systems (or Interactive Voice Response systems, as they were once called) used for decades now, so customers are familiar with them. VoiceXML builds on this popularity with tools to bring Web content directly to the consumer.
Similarly, we're seeing voice portals some national, some localized rise as a business model. Most of these voice portals are powered by VoiceXML to some degree. Basically, these voice portals empower users to access Web data (like listings, stock quotes, phone numbers, and directions) via a natural-language interface. The numbers are with voice portals: There are more than a billion telephones in use around the world, while Internet access is limited to only 250 million PCs or so. And while PDAs may someday displace cell phones to an extent, it's still hard to imagine a scenario more user-friendly for a consumer than being able to call in a question to a VoiceXML-based system.
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