VoiceXML Review - Letter from the Editor

Volume 3, Issue 1 - January/February 2003

January 2003

Dear Readers,

On behalf of the VoiceXML Forum's Publication Board, I wish you all the very best in the year that lays before us! Within the VoiceXML community, 2003 is going to be an exciting time indeed. The incredible amount of effort the W3C Voice Browser Working Group has put into the specification has culminated in the release of the VoiceXML 2.0 Candidate Recommendation by the W3C. VoiceXML is very real, and the vast array of VoiceXML products and services currently being offered by Forum member companies along with the progress of the specifications within the W3C attest to this fact.

Readers will notice that the scope of the Forum's e-zine is expanding this year. In the past years we've been carefully following the progress of the W3C Voice Browser Working Group and keeping you abreast of the latest development in the various specifications by featuring articles of key technical contributors in the VBWG. While we intend to continue to bring you such updates from the standards area, the proliferation of VoiceXML in the industry has resulted in a staggering number of VoiceXML products and services available today, and we aim to keep you informed of the best of them. In addition, it's clear that VoiceXML will play an important role in emerging multimodal standards, and we look forward to keeping your informed on these developments as well.

This month we are focusing on on-line VoiceXML developer studios. These days, all you need to start writing VoiceXML applications is a computer with an Internet connection (and maybe a phone!). This month we're featuring articles on several on-line studios from among the best: Voice Genie Developer Workshop (authored by Rakesh Tailor), VoxPilot's voxBuilder (authored by Dave Burke), and Loquendo Studio (authored by Claudia Romellini). Once you've read these articles, be sure to go to their respective websites and try these tools out!

At this point, some of you might be wondering what it takes to get an article about your company's recent VoiceXML exploits in the Forum's e-zine? To get started, you can check out the new 2003 Editorial Calendar and download the author kit!

This month, our faithful First Words columnist Rob Marchand takes us through the handling of complex recognition results in VoiceXML. However, true to his column's moniker, Rob manages to make sense of these rather recent changes/additions to the 2.0 specifications without getting you lost in the forest. By the way, Rob happens to be the e-zine's longest standing columnist. If you are just getting started in VoiceXML, I'd encourage you to go back through the archives and work your way through the articles Rob has penned over the past couple of years. Rob's columns build quite nicely upon each other and it makes for an excellent tutorial.

Finally, I'd like to take a moment and remind you that the VoiceXML Forum's Spring User Group Meeting at AVIOS 2003 is just around the corner. If you or somebody from your company has a live VoiceXML-related demo you'd like to give at the UGM, please get in touch with us soon! Take a look at the UGM Call for Participation put together by the Forum's Education Committee for more details on getting involved.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Engelsma
Editor-in-Chief
VoiceXML Review

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