Hitesh Seth

Welcome to VoiceXML. This column focuses on VoiceXML (Voice eXtensible Markup Language), an emerging standard (defined by VoiceXML Forum, submitted to the W3C Voice Browser Activity Group) for the development of interactive voice-based applications. It's one of the first standards that opens up the formerly proprietary platforms for the development of Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR) and Speech Recognition applications. VoiceXML allows developers to leverage their skills and investments in existing Web technologies (such as J2EE and Microsoft COM+). This first column focuses on getting you started with developing dynamic VoiceXML applications. Just as HTML allowed developers to create sites and personalized Web applications for anyone with a browser and an Internet co... (more)

Tools For Developing VoiceXML Apps

The previous article in this series, "Building VoiceXML Applications Using J2EE" (XML-J, Vol. 2, issue 2), discussed building dynamic and interactive voice applications using VoiceXML and J2EE. In this issue we'll focus on the tools available to aid development and testing of VoiceXML-based components and applications. We'll discuss how to use the tools to test and debug such application... (more)

Grammars For VoiceXML Applications

The previous article in this series, "Tools for Developing VoiceXML Applications" (Vol. 2, issue 3), reviewed tools that can aid the development and testing of VoiceXML applications. Now we dive into the mechanisms of writing the grammars and review the standards being developed around the ways of representing them. The last article pointed out that some tools/components, such as the Nuan... (more)

Modular Speech Application Development Using VoiceXML

One thing weve learned from Web-based application development is that tools are useful only if they can reuse components and third-party libraries and make it easy to assemble applications. This article reviews how we can build modular speech applications using VoiceXML. The focus will be on the language constructs that VoiceXML provides for modularization and reusability and on vendor-s... (more)

Selecting a VoiceXML Gateway

As an open standard, VoiceXML truly leverages the knowledge and products that the industry has developed around Advanced Speech Recognition (ASR), Text-to-Speech (TTS), telephony interfaces, voice printing, and Voice over IP (VoIP). As an open standard, what VoiceXML has made possible is flexible models for development and deployment. Some of my previous articles reviewed deployment tools... (more)