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Imagine for a moment that you are physically
challenged and can't see at all and perhaps only have
one hand. Let's presume you can still hear and speak.
How would you access the wonderful resources we now
take for granted on the World Wide Web? A handset
could work if applications existed to use it. A large
percentage of the world's population has access to
phone services but only comparatively few have direct
access to what we call the Internet. Can those "have-nots"
become "haves"? Sure!
Now imagine that handset has no buttons at all. How
would one single-handedly connect? A voice application
could do the job. Now imagine picking up the phone and
not hearing a dial tone and then just speaking into it
to call home, or listen to nearly 275 other "extensions"
that have been developed so far using VoiceXML (Voice
eXtensible Markup Language) and Tellme's Studio.
What inspired the cofounders to name the company
Tellme Networks, Inc. in 1999? Would you believe
episode 118 of the sitcom Seinfeld titled "The
Pool Guy," in which Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards)
pretends to be the IVR system for a movie house when
his new phone number ends up being too close to theirs
and he keeps getting their calls? If you watch the
reruns, you're sure to see it eventually.
CELESTIAL REWARDS
Tellme Networks received Communications ASP
magazine's Product
of the Year Award in the Speech Recognition and
Voice Portal Solutions category. Why? Perhaps because
they've garnered some impressive funding in a time
when other "pre-IPO" high-tech companies are faltering
(don't dare call them a dot-com!). Or it could be
because they've addressed issues relevant to the "road
warrior" as well as for folks who want information at
their fingertips but don't necessarily want to go
online to do so.
Tellme Networks has successfully established the
ability to let the voice do the talking instead of the
fingers doing the walking with the phone. By listening
to folks who use their voice portal, 1-800-555-TELL,
for free (2-minute limit for long-distance calls),
they've learned how to best utilize VoiceXML
technology and put it to practical use for both
individuals and enterprises. They've done this by
marrying technology from companies like NMS
Communications with professional voice specialists.
The technology sounds great and responds well to
anyone with a handset. They developed "Magicword"
barge-in (callers can speak at any time to interrupt
prompts) and "breathers" (barge-in temporarily
disabled, combating noise/interference and frustration
of repeated commands) that nicely sets them apart from
the competition. They've mastered the art of waveform
concatenation and know how to use VoiceXML without
using automatic speech recognition or text-to-speech
technologies. They established speech grammars so the
local computer doesn't have to be "pretrained"
learning the speaker's voice.
DOWN TO EARTH
First, we need to emphasize that there is no hardware,
software, or download required to work with Tellme
Studio. However, you may wish to download editors,
tools, and server libraries they have made freely
available. What are also available are Web-based tools
for checking syntax, performing real-time call traces,
and logging debug information while testing phone
sites on the fly. "Phone sites" would be those
VoiceXML applications you are itching to try.
Remember, this is 100 percent VoiceXML.
After establishing an account and creating some
code, you can contact the Tellme Studio VoiceXML
Server and test your application call flow module by
either using the VoiceXML Terminal on the Web site or
by calling 1-408-678-4465 from outside the United
States or 1-800-555-VXML (8965). You need to remember
both your self-established 5-digit account number and
your assigned 4-digit PIN, so keep them handy.
The excellent link to Tellme Studio for VoiceXML
Developers even inspired TMC's president Rich
Tehrani to dip into the Web-coding pool and
experiment with the Communications
Solutions™ EXPO registration process.
ENTERPRISE APPS
A growing number of businesses are using Tellme's
technology because it frees them from having to
provide capital investments and investing months of
development time in activities that can be
up-and-running in minutes using Tellme's combination
of Web and telephony infrastructure. How does Tellme
Networks make money providing these services? Think of
them as voice consultants (using terms like "prosodies"
-- the inflections placed with a speech file or
phrase, "concatenated-speech design," and "voice-talent
pools") that can provide soup-to-nuts design and
development of your applications that reduce or
perhaps even eliminate certain call center activities.
They've identified regional tonal qualities, and by
combining thousands of voice-bits into streaming
sentence structures, they have learned how to avoid "IVR
choppy-voice hell," which makes users happier and
makes it easier to traverse menus. They negotiate a
fee based on either the call-per-minute scenario, or
will even do a fee per subscriber for service
providers. AT&T Wireless will use their services
as part of their offerings and Curious Networks
sources them for their mobile service applications.
Another adopter is ShopTalk Networks with a CRM
application designed for Jiffy Lube.
QoS
How does Tellme Networks keep the Quality of Service
(QoS) issue at bay? They have systems located in
several data-center locations around the United
States, all of which are tied directly into the telco
switching fabric, resulting in very high quality and
reliable calls. Each "pod" is scalable using a
format/design similar to what AOL has been using for
their services, interacting with the major telco
switches they are co-located with. Each is positioned
in a high-security area and the workflow is constantly
monitored for optimal performance. Each location can
be severed from the others and still work effectively,
providing maximum redundancy and failover protection.
Tellme actually signs QoS guarantees with enterprises
stating their applications will never suffer from busy
signals during peak usage because of that design.
Tellme recently announced their expansion into Europe
by merging with Belgium-based MagicPhone and plan on
further expansion into Asia as well as the rest of the
Americas and other parts of the world contingent upon
interest from enterprise clients in those markets.
TUTORIALS
There are other tutorials that can be found in the
VoiceXML developers, such as BeVocal,
Hey Anita,
and VoiceGenie,
but none reach the depth and breadth so far as that
found at Tellme's Studio. The co-opetition is making
the end products better for everyone because these
VoiceXML applications are being treated as open-source
and Tellme is setting the quality standard.
One of the other things that really sets Tellme
Networks apart from the competition is their quality
craftsmanship when it comes to doing the voice for the
grammars used in applications. It took nearly one year
for seven of them to complete the voice-overs and
permutations for the city, state, street name, and
address functions. They said the VoiceXML coding was
trivial. The hard work was getting the voice
inflections just right while dealing with regional
dialects, etc. They are also mature, rock-solid, and
self-confident enough to know not to promise what they
know they can't deliver.
The W3C intends to release the next revision of
Voice XML, called Voice XML 2.0, perhaps as early as
this summer. The good folks at Tellme Networks will be
instrumental in making that happen.
OPERATIONAL TESTING
In order to test-drive Tellme's Voice Application
Network, we were asked to spec out and write up a call
flow for an application for possible deployment on TMC's
Web server with a toll-free number assigned to the
application. Since Rich Tehrani already began work on
an application for Communications Solutions™ EXPO,
something else had to be done that would be unique --
something that folks would like to see but for which
enterprises wouldn't pay development costs.
There are over 1,200 extensions that have been
created by the nearly 13,000 developers registered at
Tellme Studio so far. Tellme will caution you, some of
those applications may be found to be offensive
because they are not produced or monitored by Tellme
Networks, but for the most part it's just great voice
development. Access can be obtained by either going to
studio.tellme.com, logging in with your registered
number, etc. and viewing the descriptions, or just
dialing 1-800-555-TELL, and either dialing the
extension or just saying "Extensions," and then
saying, "Tell me my choices." A random list of 10
options is given by the system. Some don't allow you
to exit gracefully, so you may need to press ** when
you are through.
Conceptualizing An Application
After randomly sampling frequent flyers and road
warriors, the concept of being able to "attend the
faith of our choice" during weekend stop-overs
gradually formed and gelled into an idea.
If you are of a religious nature and end up
weekending out on the road, you might like to attend a
local service of some kind. You would like to get
directions from your current location to the choice
you make. You'd like to know the time for meetings.
Perhaps if there were a hotline, you'd like to know
that too, in case there were activities during the
week that might be of interest. Also, if there was
time, you'd perhaps like to listen to scriptures of
your choice, or you desired to hear other scriptures
from other faiths. We could call this VoiceXML
application the "Faith-Based Finder For Road Warriors."
Once it is base-lined and debugged it could then be
made multi-language. Conceptualizing is easy, isn't
it?
Stepping Into The Studio
After getting permission to proceed, the following
steps were followed:
- Registering at Tellme Studio.
- Generating a "Wish List" Call Flow Diagram.
Tellme prefers using Microsoft's Visio for
diagramming, but the program used in this example
is cross-platform from Computer Systems Odessa,
Corp. known as ConceptDraw. Programmers like
visuals and a plan to follow. This one took a few
hours to make acceptable.
- Keying in the application in the Tellme Studio
Scratchpad, including the "polite" guidelines as
described by Tellme, or paying Tellme to complete
a customized enterprise application for you,
including using Darby Bailey's professional voice.
In this instance, we've been using a team of
Tellme employees including Prashant Sridharan,
product manager, to coordinate efforts, Megan
Dyer, public relations specialist, to keep things
honest and interesting and Ramy Adeeb, VoiceXML
expert, for coding expertise, among others.
- Doing the standard test-debug-test cycles using
the 1-800-555-8965 (VXML) number. Remember your
password, Studio Developer ID number, and your
PIN.
- Either setting the application up as an "Extension,"
or hosting it on your own Web server and get an
800 number from Tellme for client access. Then let
the world know it exists.
Extensions interfaces have a maximum of five
minutes of use at a time. If you wanted to listen to
Tolstoy's War and Peace as a .wav file, then
create your own private URL with lots of hard drive
space for the application so Tellme's resources aren't
over-taxed. They easily handle millions of calls every
month, but those resources aren't infinite.
Now call 1-800-555-TELL (8355), say "Extensions,"
then say "53556" to hear
that application in real-time mode. That is really all
there is to it. Let your imagination run wild!
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
Tellme has done a magnificent job bringing the
VoiceXML developers together with their newsgroup
function in the Tellme Studio, the free development
tools such as VoiceXML Terminal and Scratchpad, and
free phone access for testing purposes.
One "it sure would be nice if" item would be
availability of an online call flow diagram tool.
Another would perhaps be a Web-based button to call in
directly when inexperienced developers need
hand-holding (if you talk nice, they may give you
their internal 877 number so you can call toll-free).
And finally, being able to communicate with the Tellme
Team through video conferencing stand-alone
applications like NetMeeting or CUSeeMe, or the online
e-conference options like WebEx, MeetingPlace
(Latitude Communications), or WorldStream, without
flying or driving to their location would be nice. Of
course, there is nothing quite like the experience of
getting up close and personal with fellow Internet
telephony aficionados.
CONCLUSION
There is a wonderful can-do attitude by really
talented, resourceful people and a real spirit of
youthful zest for life felt in the Tellme Network
facilities. It may not have been the original
intention of the cofounders of Tellme to create a
product that would be a godsend for the physically
challenged, but just think for a moment how much
better it would be for the "have-nots" to magically
join the "Webified Webolution," without being tethered
to a mouse or keyboard, just by talking on the phone.
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