"What if I told you there was a way to take your existing
web site and make it accessible not only to anyone with a cell
phone, but to anyone with a telephone of any sort? What if such a
technology was based on open standards? What if you could start
developing with this technology right now? Here's a whirlwind
look at using CallXML, VoiceXML, and a company called Voxeo to help
you access your web application using a plain old telephone."
"Fortunately there are technologies and standards that exist to
help enable web telephony (WT) applications. The browser side of a
WT application is direct interaction with the user through sound
and voice as well as the phone keypad. All the technical magic in
this scenario lives on the server-side markup. And to make matters
even more interesting, there are at least three different possible
server-side "language" choices for WT applications:
VoiceXML, an XML standard managed by the VoiceXML forum founded
by Lucent, Motorola, IBM, and AT&T. This is specifically geared
to building voice-response systems and included voice-recognition
technology as well as text-to-speech (tts). It is currently part of
the W3C Voice Browser Working Group and will likely morph into the
standard for voice browsing.
CallXML, an XML standard created by Voxeo that is specifically
oriented towards managing phone calls and using touch-tone phones
to manipulate web applications. This is simpler than VoiceXML for
traditional touch-tone phone applications and is also capable of
managing the calls themselves, including transfers and conferencing
of other calls.
Microsoft WTE, a web telephony engine that ships as part of
Windows 2000. This is a COM object that lets you build WT
applications and script them in either stand-alone mode or through
the Web using a tool such as ASP."
