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(COMTEX) B: The 21st Annual AVIOS Conference Announces Best of Show Awar
B: The 21st Annual AVIOS Conference Announces Best of Show Award Winners

SAN JOSE, Calif., May 21, 2002 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- The Board of Directors of the
Applied Voice Input/Output Society (AVIOS) is pleased to announce the winners of
the Best of Show competition at this year's AVIOS Speech Conference and the
winners of the Best Paper awards. Companies winning product awards include
ScanSoft, Fonix, Clarity, Phonetic Systems, ArialPhone, CoAssure, SpeechWorks
and AT&T Labs. The product awards exemplify the movement of speech recognition
and other speech technologies into practical applications.

The high quality of all papers and products at AVIOS is reflective of AVIOS's
charter to motivate and aid the development of excellent applications of speech
technology, including speech recognition, text-to-speech synthesis, and speaker
verification. Papers are available in the Conference Proceedings, which can be
purchased by calling 408/328-1782, or emailing [e-mail]. Further
information about AVIOS can be found at www.avios.org.


The Award Winners

Leon Lerman Best of Show: AT&T Labs - Natural Voices (text-to-speech) (The late
Leon Lerman was the founder of AVIOS.)


Best Consumer Product: Fonix - Voice Activated PDA
Best Desktop Product: ScanSoft - Dragon MediaIndexer

Best Industrial/Professional Product: Clarity - Clear Voice Capture

Best Telephony Product: Phonetic Systems - Phonetic Operator 4.0 Platform, VSE
Technology


Best Peripheral Accessory: ArialPhone - ArialPhone System

Best Telephony Application Service: CoAssure - Speech Recognition Test Services


Best New TTS Product: SpeechWorks - Speechify 2.1 text-to-speech
Best Paper Awards
Gary Poock Best Paper Award:

Noam Fogel, PerSay, "A Commercial Implementation of a Free-Speech Speaker
Verification System in a Call Center."


Student Paper Award:

Dave Gelbart, International Computer Science Institute (ICSI), "Reducing the
Effect of Room Acoustics on Human-Computer Interaction."


Special Recognition Paper Awards:

Larry Smith, PartnerServe Company, Inc, & Jon Bower, Beth Pilgrim, Paul Schwarz,
and David Stevens, Lexia Learning Systems, "The Viability of Voice Applications
for Children."

Matt Yuschik, Comverse, "Usability Testing of Voice Controlled Messaging."


About AVIOS

The Applied Voice Input/Output Society is a non-profit organization that has
served the speech community for over twenty years, dedicated to improving the
variety and quality of speech applications. It provides information resources, a
voice for the industry and its developers, and an annual conference.

For further information, contact the AVIOS office at 408/323-1783 or check the
AVIOS web site at www.avios.org.

Please address all editorial inquiries to David Kaye at KPR, Inc. Phone:
818/368-8212 or email to [e-mail].


CONTACT: KPR, Inc.
David Kaye, 818/368-8212
[e-mail]

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Copyright (C) 2002 Business Wire. All rights reserved.

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KEYWORD: CALIFORNIA
INDUSTRY KEYWORD: SOFTWARE
TELECOMMUNICATIONS
TRADESHOW
SOURCE:
AVIOS

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