An concise article examplifying VoiceXML from A-Z.

Companies that want to broaden the range of features in telephony-based applications now have more options through speech recognition, but the new technology will require the development of greater levels of expertise. With Version 2.1 of VXML (Voice XML), the World Wide Web Consortium is about to standardize a number of improvements that consolidate several common vendor implementations of features that previously weren't inside the scope of VXML. This will allow developers to build more robust applications and handle exceptions more effectively. Version 2.1 of VXML is currently under final review by the W3C (www.w3c.org/voice).

Until fairly recently, the web has primarily delivered information and services using visual interfaces, on computers equipped with displays, keyboards, and pointing devices. The web revolution had largely bypassed the huge market of customers of information and services represented by the worldwide installed base of telephones for which voice input and audio output provided the primary means of interaction.

The emerging world without wires has fostered a growing number of small and mobile devices (everything from PDAs to smart phones) capable of accessing data and running applications. The trouble is, while devices are getting smaller, human hands and fingers are not.

The Voice Browser Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft of the Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) 2.1. Fully backwards-compatible with VoiceXML 2.0, the draft standardizes eight additional features implemented by VoiceXML platforms.

Ten to midnight -- it's your partner's birthday tomorrow, and you've forgotten their gift! Suddenly, a thought comes to mind: she's always wanted to see a musical in the big city. "Barry," you say, for that is the name of your web agent, "buy two tickets for Cats in London for tomorrow." A short pause, then Barry responds: "Please confirm; Cats the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, in London the capital of the UK?" "Correct," you reply. "Understood." The next morning a print-out awaits your attention, comprising a receipt for your tickets and a map with directions to the theatre.

The SALT (Speech Application Language Tags) specification pairs speech with HTML, XHTML, and XML. The specification boasts a 70-member consortium of backers including industry heavyweights Microsoft, Cisco, and Intel. The group submitted SALT 1.0 to the W3C. SALT is not a W3C standard, though. SALT was submitted to the W3C's Voice Browser working group, which will consider it as a part of the next VoiceXML standard. This article will touch on the SALT/VoiceXML relationship again near the end.

When I'm at the airport and my flight is cancelled, I call my travel agent who gives me travel alternatives. But copying down new itineraries—flight numbers, confirmation numbers, addresses, and telephone numbers—can require several frantic minutes of repetition and scribbling. However, if my travel agent could send me instant messages, the interaction would be quite different. Instant messages would help me decipher complicated lists of choices. When we finished, instant messages would contain my entire itinerary.

Learn the entirety of VoiceXML from the perspective of its Document Type Definition (DTD). You will begin with a brief overview of the language, moving into an examination of each individual language element type.

Get all the necessities of VoiceXML, beginning with a brief overview of the structure of the language. You will see several abstract element types that will be used as a shorthand as you examine each language element type individually.

Continue your study of the VoiceXML language with more language elements. You will visit aspects of the language from "phoneme" to "vxml."

So it's 2001 and most VoiceXML applications do not quite sound like Space Odyssey's Dave and HAL. But there have been giant leaps in speech recognition technology and voice services over the last several years. While the computer has not attained the sophisticated processing power of a human, if you understand the rules of user interface design and you know the limitations of the technology, you can create effective human-machine speech dialogues.

Welcome to "First Words" - the VoiceXML Review's column to teach you about VoiceXML and how you can use it. We hope you enjoy the lesson.

VoiceXML is a language for creating voice-user interfaces, particularly for the telephone. It uses speech recognition and touchtone (DTMF keypad) for input, and pre-recorded audio and text-to-speech synthesis (TTS) for output.

In August 2002 the VoiceXML Forum's Education Committee conducted an on-line survey on VoiceXML. Our objective was to try to gauge the interest level within the VoiceXML community on the various ongoing and proposed activities within the Forum so that we can better calibrate our efforts with the interests of the Forum's membership and beyond.

This article will focus on static VoiceXML pages in order to demonstrate some of the concepts, but readers should keep in mind that they can also use their favorite server-side technologies to build compelling dynamic applications.

Describes the VoiceXML application for a commercial Airlines flight tracker that delivers voice query searches of current flight status for 2000 in-air flights per day, using the TellMe Networks deployment environment, perl, javascript and server-side search of dynamic data inputs. The piece also covers general principles of usability and programming.

Enhancing VoiceXML Application Performance By Caching. By Dave Burke,. Figure 1: The VoiceXML architecture model. Why bother with Caching?

Welcome to First Words, VoiceXML Review's column that teaches you about VoiceXML and how you can use it. We hope you enjoy the lesson.