VoiceXML Review - Letter from the Editor

Volume 2, Issue 1 - January 2002

Dear Readers,

On behalf of the VoiceXML Forum's Publication Board, I wish you all success and prosperity in all your VoiceXML endeavors in 2002! Our first issue this year is dedicated to voice commerce (v-commerce).

Our first article, authored by Greg Harman, presents a technical view of v-commerce and its architectural similarities to electronic commerce (e-commerce) and mobile commerce (m-commerce). Greg's paper, Understanding V-Commerce, argues that in the end, v-commerce, e-commerce, and m-commerce applications should be viewed as different user interfaces to the same application, and that these different interfaces should coordinate with each other. This seems to be exactly where the industry is heading, given the number of multimodal projects that are starting to sprout.

Need to order something from Office Depot for that Saturday morning project? No problem, just call their new ASR-enabled call center! In our second feature article, titled Let's Talk Office Supplies, Dr. George White and Pilar Manchón describe how their firm (NetByTel) is helping Office Depot achieve significant cost reduction by deploying VoiceXML application to allow customers to place catalog orders, check order status, and/or find the nearest Office Depot.

Jeff Kunins is back answering your questions about speech grammars in our Speak & Listen column. In response to the "which grammar format should I be using" question, Jeff sketches out some good common sense advice on what developers should consider when writing apps using languages and technologies that are not yet finalized by standards organization. Given the recent public release of the W3C VoiceXML 2.0 draft, this advice is quite relevant at the moment.

In our First Words column Rob Marchand introduces us to the <subdialog> tag, and how it can be used to author reusable voice dialogs. Rob also explains some of the differences in the <subdialog> tag as defined in VoiceXML 2.0 vs. VoiceXML 1.0.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Engelsma
Editor-in-Chief, VoiceXML Review

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