MimTtics, a French electronic document management specialist, introduced its new FaxtoSpeech product, which transforms faxes into voice messages, at this week’s IT Comdex 98 in Paris. FaxtoSpeech combines Mimetics’ character recognition engine EasyReader with the voice synthesis system Elan Text to Speech, from Elan Informatique. The product transforms received faxes into voice messages, which can then be interrogated like a simple answering machine, whatever the language (French, English, German, Spanish). Presented as a library of application programming interfaces, FaxtoSpeech is targeted at integrators, developers, software editors and fax manufacturers. Priced at approximately $4,000, the product is immediately available. Upon reception, faxes are read into a text file, along with summary information, such as the name of the sender, the subject of the document, its targeted recipient and key words from the text. Thus, a user would call into the office server, punch in an access code, and listen to the messages.
