Voice Processing: Dragon Systems Unveils World's First Mobile "Natural Speech Organizer" That Interprets Spoken Phrases and Turns Them Into Actions - NaturallyOrganized voice recognition software/productivity assistant - Product Announcement

Edge: Work-Group Computing Report, Nov 23, 1998

Dragon NaturallyOrganized, the world's first Natural Speech Productivity Assistant, was announced Monday by Dragon Systems, Inc. of Newton, Mass., at COMDEX 98, Las Vegas Convention Center. This revolutionary new product not only contains the state-of-the-art, award-winning Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech recognition software, but also includes a powerful assistant that responds to the spoken word to generate emails, schedule appointments, enter tasks, generate documents and more.

Users simply state what they want done into a portable hand held recorder or directly into the PC. The Dragon NaturallyOrganized software responds to commands, such as "send an e-mail to (name)," "schedule an appointment at (time)," "create a task", "enter a note", and more, followed by dictated text. The system recognizes the text and identifies the naturally spoken commands. If needed, it will retrieve information necessary to carry out the task, such as attaching a document to an e-mail. The user simply makes a verbal note into the Dragon NaturallyMobile recorder and the Dragon NaturallyOrganized software does the rest. For example, if the user says "Send an e-mail to Janet and John", the Dragon NaturallyOrganized software will retrieve both e-mail addresses from the user's contact database. It has the ability to handle multiple users with the same name.

The system will then compose the email, fill the TO: field, create a subject line, enter the dictated text, and prepare the message for sending. Similar powerful capabilities are included for appointments, to-do lists, creating files, and more.

"Dragon NaturallyOrganized is a revolutionary product that opens up a significant new era in the use of speech recognition systems. It can become your personal assistant even when you don't have a PC with you," said Roger Matus, Vice President of North American Marketing for Dragon Systems. "Mobile professionals, business owners, legal and medical professionals, can have the power to be more productive right in the palm of their hands."

The first version of Dragon NaturallyOrganized supports the best selling ACT! contact management system from Symantec Corporation of Sunnyvale, CA. Future releases are planned to support a wide range of applications, including Microsoft Outlook, Goldmine, and Timeslips. It comes complete with a copy of the widely acclaimed, award-winning Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech recognition software with a high quality headset microphone for use with a PC, the Dragon NaturallyMobile digital recorder, a connecting cable, special linking software for the recorder, and revolutionary new software that uses a patent-pending process to convert recognized speech into actions.

The Dragon NaturallyMobile digital recorder is the world's first digital recorder specifically designed for speech recognition. It is light weight (approximately 4 oz), ergonomically designed and fits comfortably in the palm of a hand. To use the recorder, the user speaks at a natural pace into the recorder, using its high-quality built-in microphone. Ideas and action items are captured without having to boot up a computer. When the user returns to his PC, he connects the recorder to the PC via the included cable and instructs Dragon NaturallyOrganized to process the recorded actions. The software not only transcribes the speech, but also parses and interprets the information. Then after a quick approval by the user, Dragon NaturallyOrganized executes the requested actions, such as scheduling phone calls with specified contacts and sending email, including attaching a document from the user's disk (which may have been dictated into the recorder earlier). If the user desires, he can ask for contact information at their PC from his ACT! contact manager completely by voice and it is automatically delivered.

Users can generate a variety of action items using the same natural language that one might use with a human assistant. Some examples include:

* "Send email to Joel about the first quarter results. Sales are up!," and an email message is created with the subject "First Quarter Results."

* "Create an email to Steven Smith and Bob Jones regarding our meeting. Steve, we are looking forward to meeting with you next Friday at your corporate headquarters. New paragraph. Lee." The email is composed and sent to the proper email addresses, automatically, after a quick review and approval.

* "Schedule a meeting with Renee for next Thursday at 3 p.m. about product briefing" and the appointment is automatically entered into their calendar. A meeting confirmation can also be automatically sent via email.

* "Remember to take the car in for an oil change" and the action item automatically appears on their task list.

* "I just called Janet. We discussed new resource allocation opportunity." A note/history is created in ACT! for Janet Small with the dictated text and flagged as a "Call completed."

ACTIONS USERS CAN CREATE BY VOICE * SCHEDULE APPOINTMENTS Users can schedule appointments with contact names, dates and times that are acted upon by Symantec ACT!