Less than two years ago speech and language (S&L) technology was hailed as the next significant leap in computing.
But since the downfall of former S&L leader Lernout & Hauspie there has been little major news.
Many thought S&L was not that advanced.
However, with powerful processors and improved voice codecs, S&L is finally featuring in an increasing number of products, giving users the ability to voice activate and control many devices.
Most people's experiences with speech enabled technology has been through use of PC-based voice-recognition software.
Most users were disappointed with the time needed to "train" the products and the accuracy rates. But due to the improvements in speech processing power (a key element for successful voice control), voice activation and control is now working well in a wide range of platforms (PDAs, telephones and other hand held devices) than it ever did on the desktop PC.
Developers are attracting interest from companies wanting S&L in their products.
Analyst group Datamonitor said the voice business market would return to positive growth in the next two months.
It estimates companies will spend $4.33 billion (£2.85 billion) on platforms, enabling software, applications and services. However, there are still some technical issues which need to be overcome.
Automatic speech recognition (ASR)
engines recognise spoken words and act on the commands. One of the biggest challenges is noise robustness - filtering out unwanted sounds. The software also needs to be sophisticated enough to distinguish between phonetically similar words.
Text to speech (TTS)
engines feature in many new products.
Avatars such as virtual newsreader Ananova were excellent platforms to demonstrate TTS, which produces near-human speech.
But virtual newsreaders failed to capture the nation's imagination and soon dropped out of sight.
Other S&L enthusiasts include the automotive industry which sees it as a possible alternative to the massive array of switches that dominate dashboards.
It is only a matter of time before the motor manufacturers find a way to deliver robust S&L device operation, which is why so many concept vehicles are now being fitted with prototype voice controlled devices.
As new markets are identified, new players are entering the arena.
Toshiba is now working on nine language speech processors ideally suited to the automotive environment.
Its new technology is said to offer extreme clarity and natural intonation that closely approximates the human voice.
Although there have been few mentions in the Press this year has been a fascinating time in the world of S&L.
When the initial media frenzy died down, speech technology companies continued to develop exciting new products featuring voice control and hopefully will soon be in a position to deliver on the hype.
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