Our guest is Gerd Graumann, President of Speech Technology Group,  who provide advanced TTS and ASR speech technology.

Using Text-to-Speech online, site visitors can now listen to anything you have posted on your website. With a simple click of a button, your content is instantly converted to audio and played back. This is but one of many applications, where the new generation of natural TTS voices can help. IVR is another example, where TTS plays a significant role. A high quality TTS voice combined with an affordable license model not only sounds good, but can be a significant contributor to the success of a project.

Examples of these highly natural voices are at www.speechtechnologygroup.com

The speech synthesizer can be integrated using a wide variety of interface options, such as MRCP, API or Web services, whether you are looking to deploy an embedded, mobile, desktop, server or cloud based solution.

In this session, we will be discussing improvements in TTS technology and  launch an unusual contest that should make you smile.

Michael Cullen of Criticall 911 joins the call to discuss their real world application of this technology.

A look back at 2010 in VoIP (4+ hours of VUC)

Here are a few things to get you thinking in advance:

• Apple’s Antenna-gate
• Apple’s Facetime over 3G
• Asterisk 1.8 Launches
• Amazon EC2 as a DOS platform
• Cisco launched UMI video conference device
• More HDVoice capable phones
• Skype Outage
• VoIP on mobile devices
• or perhaps something more personal…..

Come one, come all. Bring your story.

From e4 Strategies one HD-capable Gigaset DE380 IP R SIP phones (shipment to North America only)

Congratulations to wolrah, our winner!

As we approach the US Thanksgiving holiday we are given pause to reflect upon our many blessings. While many of us exist in a wideband realm where clarity of voice leads to universal understanding, there remain a great many who suffer through the narrowband reality of the past. These poor folk suffer not only a startling lack of clarity, they are typically tethered, bound to their toil by wires.

Gigaset Communications aims to give a hand to some poor unfortunate soul, bestowing upon them the gift of clarity*. This gift takes the form of a Gigaset S675IP SIP/DECT starter system. To further aid in the mobility of the downtrodden they also offer the S79H expansion handset, enhancing the basic set.

These tools, HDSP capable…or HDVoice capable for the followers of Plcm….promise to uplift up their users with both clarity of voice and mobility of action. Such outstanding clarity that they might understand The Words.

However, such clarity will not be bestowed upon the idle or laggard. It will be granted only to the one who proves themselves most worthy at the appointed time. A question will be asked. These gifts will be given to one of those who answer the question correctly.

Look to the mailing list. Watch for the signs. Then be on the call Friday, November 26th.

*For regulatory reasons this offer is restricted to North American listeners only.

In the past 2 weeks, thanks to our friends and sponsors, VUC peeps have won cool prizes

Last week’s Howler Technologies giveaway, 10 X G.729 Howlet Licenses:
Winners: Blake Ray – Saturn Networks, Jakub Klausa, Maxim Samo

This week’s Polycom IP 335 from e4strategies: Mike Tabbert

Book “Building Telephony Systems with Open SER” from Packt Publishing: @FearNoIdea and “TheDavidFactor”

On VUC session of Friday, July 10th we were able to give away one of the new A580IP phones from Gigaset. Congratulations to conference regular Karl Fife of “The Karl Experience” for winning the phone. We know he’ll put it to good use by calling in to the conference each week!

The contest consisted of finding the movie whose soundtrack featured the VoIP-appropriate song “Calling You”. Karl was first to type  “Bagdad Cafe” in our IRC channel #voip-users-conference on Freenode.net. The song is a beautiful, haunting piece of music and I would like to use an excerpt from time to time in our opening or closing theme.

Thanks again to Tony Stankus, Product Manager of Emerging Technologies Gigaset Communications USA, LLC for providing this phone as a prize and for being a great guest. I am counting on Tony to come back and tell us when the phone features evolve, which they do from time to time.

Early on, we spoke about the lack of a mute button on the S675IP, and lo and behold, they added one to firmware, which is easy to update. The phone shows a message when new firmware is ready, and asks if you want to update. See the original post for more articles on these phones.

Polycom IP450

Congratulations to Barry (“beek”), winner of the Polycom ip450 phone kindly donated to VUC by e4strategies.com

I am trying to index the VUC Delicious Links page to make it easier to document what we discuss. I am now tagging each article with a date of ther session in the form  VUC-2009-04-10 so search for those if you need something specific to a session. I’m also trying to keep transcripts of all links so it will be easier to add them.