IBM is extending its range of speech recognition software with a new product called ViaVoice which the company claims is able to track continuous speech. IBM has also upgraded Simply Speaking, its lower end discrete speech software. ViaVoice, which costs $200 with an upgrade arriving later this year, also supports specialist language modelers for the legal, medical and other professions that require specialist terminology. IBM has also reduced the price of the original version of Simply Speaking to $50 and claims it has added 250,000 users since the product’s launch last year. The lower-end product’s upgrade, Simply Speaking Gold, is modeled on IBM’s older Voice Type Dictation software which cost more than $700 until recently. Simply Speaking Gold will offer extra functionality to Voice Type Dictation the company says and will cost $100. It will be available in July. While OS/2 Warp 4 currently has IBM’s Voice Type technology, the company was reluctant to mention the operating system’s place in its speech recognition strategy and instead emphasized the compatibility of its new products with Windows 95 and Windows NT.
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