SpeechTEK 2004 -- IBM today announced it is contributing software to the open source community in a move to spur the availability of speech-enabled applications by making it easier and more attractive for developers to build and add speech recognition capability in a standardized way.
The initiative, supported by more than 20 key industry players from speech vendors to platform providers, is aimed at ending the battles over competing, proprietary specifications.
IBM is contributing Reusable Dialog Components (RDCs) to Apache Software Foundation and proposing a project at the Eclipse Foundation to donate markup editors for speech standards established by the W3C.
I learn about this early this morning, then I went to SpeechTEK in NYC. I sat in the first row and met IBM's Steven Mills before he gave the Keynote. He said “the rising water would raise all the boats“, well I saw the pictures from Florida last week and the water rose but many of the boats sunk.