Mobile portal CrossJunction.com is now speech-recognition enabled, allowing its subscribers to surf the Internet live from any telephone - just by speaking.
With this latest capability, CrossJunction.com has become the world's first integrated mobile portal to feature speech recognition capabilities, according to its developer, Viztel Solutions.
"This speech recognition is the first step for the portal's initiative to develop speech-enabled products and services for the Asian market," Viztel CEO, Lau Kin Wai, said in a statement.
Lau explained that Viztel would continue to provide leading-edge technology to give it an advantage in the voice portal market. "CrossJunction.com is already voice-enabled, allowing users the option to hear their e-mails over the telephone. With speech recognition, users can now request for information over the telephone by speaking naturally into the mouthpiece."
Subscribers can dial a number from any telephone to surf the Internet live for information such as restaurant listings and reviews, cinema listings and movie reviews, horoscopes and stock information.
Non-subscribers can register for a temporary user ID and password through the telephone and start surfing immediately. This way, users without PCs or WAP devices can surf the Internet for information.
The speech recognition engine should also be capable of recognising different accents and pronunciation. For instance, one can say "restaurant" into the mouthpiece and when prompted again, say "list" or "review" to access information on restaurant listings and reviews.
Lau believes that speech recognition technology is making rapid inroads into the WAP and mobile Internet market. Viztel, he said, is positioning itself strategically to bite into the value of mobile-commerce and consumer e-commerce in the Asia Pacific region, which is forecasted to grow to US$46.538 billion in 2004 from US$1.545 billion this year.
Plans in the pipeline include developing customisable speech recognition to enable the private label voice portal under its CrossJunction.com Corporate edition. Running on the Application Service Provider (ASP) model, the Corporate edition is targetted at the huge potential ASP solutions market.
The communication technology provider will also be developing new speech recognition enabled products and services for the regional market such as Singapore, Hong Kong and China.
It is currently collecting speech samples for Hong Kong Cantonese and Hong Kong English in preparation to launch the first bilingual speech recognition integrated mobile portal in the world.
