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Tellme Networks
Tellme Networks, Inc. was an American company founded in 1999 by Mike McCue and Angus Davis, which specialized in telephone-based applications. Its headquarters were in Mountain View, California. Tellme Networks was acquired by Microsoft on March 14, 2007, for approximately $800 million; the deal closed in late April 2007. In 2006, Tellme's phone network processed more than 2 billion unique calls. Tellme established an information number which provided time-of-day announcements, weather forecasts, brief news and sports summaries, business searches, stock market quotations, driving directions, and similar amenities. Operating by voice prompts and speech-recognition software, it was set up in 2000 as a loss-leader service to demonstrate the Tellme functionality to U.S. consumers. The voice of the Tellme service is Darby Bailey. In early 2012, Microsoft divested itself of Tellme Networks' interactive voice response (IVR) service and the majority of its employees to 24_7_inc, 24/7 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microsoft Cortana
Cortana was a virtual assistant developed by Microsoft that used the Microsoft Bing, Bing search engine to perform tasks such as setting reminders and question answering, answering questions for users. Cortana was available in English language, English, Portuguese language, Portuguese, French language, French, German language, German, Italian language, Italian, Spanish language, Spanish, Chinese language, Chinese, and Japanese language editions, depending on the Computing platform, software platform and region in which it was used. In 2019, Microsoft began reducing the prevalence of Cortana and converting it from an assistant into different software integrations. It was split from the Windows 10 search bar in April 2019. In January 2020, the Cortana mobile app was removed from certain markets, and on March 31, 2021, the Cortana mobile app was shut down globally. On June 2, 2023, Microsoft announced that support for the Cortana standalone app on Microsoft Windows would end in lat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Telephones
A telephone, colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that enables two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into electronic signals that are transmitted via cables and other communication channels to another telephone which reproduces the sound to the receiving user. The term is derived from and (, ''voice''), together meaning ''distant voice''. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was the first to be granted a United States patent for a device that produced clearly intelligible replication of the human voice at a second device. This instrument was further developed by many others, and became rapidly indispensable in business, government, and in households. The essential elements of a telephone are a microphone (''transmitter'') to speak into and an earphone (''receiver'') which reproduces the voice at a distant locati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Directory Assistance
In telecommunications, directory assistance or directory inquiries is a phone service used to find out a specific telephone number and/or address of a residence, business, or government entity. Technology Directory assistance systems incorporate a wide range of automation to reduce the cost of human operators. Almost all systems use custom database software to locate listings quickly. Most directory assistance systems use automated readback systems to give out the phone number. This frees the directory assistance operator to move on to another caller as soon as the correct listing is located. Some systems have "store and forward" technology which records the city and state the caller is requesting; it then plays the recording to the operator before they answer and ask the caller to further specify. Interactive voice response systems have been added to many directory assistance systems. These complex systems use speech recognition and recorded speech or speech synthesis to handl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
VoIP
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also known as IP telephony, is a set of technologies used primarily for voice communication sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. VoIP enables voice calls to be transmitted as data packets, facilitating various methods of voice communication, including traditional applications like Skype, Microsoft Teams, Google Voice, and VoIP phones. Regular telephones can also be used for VoIP by connecting them to the Internet via analog telephone adapters (ATAs), which convert traditional telephone signals into digital data packets that can be transmitted over IP networks. The broader terms Internet telephony, broadband telephony, and broadband phone service specifically refer to the delivery of voice and other communication services, such as fax, SMS, and voice messaging, over the Internet, in contrast to the traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN), commonly known as plain old telephone service (POTS) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
CCXML
Call Control eXtensible Markup Language (CCXML) is an XML standard designed to provide asynchronous event-based telephony support to VoiceXML. Its current status is a W3C recommendation, adopted May 10, 2011. Whereas VoiceXML is designed to provide a Voice User Interface to a voice browser, CCXML is designed to inform the voice browser how to handle the telephony control of the voice channel. The two XML applications are wholly separate and are not required by each other to be implemented - however, they have been designed with interoperability in mind Status and Future *CCXML 1.0 has reached the status of a Proposed Recommendation. The transition from Candidate Recommendation to Proposed Recommendation took 1 year, while the transition from Last Call Working Draft to Candidate Recommendation took just over 3 years. *As CCXML extensively uses the concepts of events and transitions, it is expected that the state machines used in the next CCXML 2.0 version will take advantage o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Open Standards
An open standard is a standard that is openly accessible and usable by anyone. It is also a common prerequisite that open standards use an open license that provides for extensibility. Typically, anybody can participate in their development due to their inherently open nature. There is no single definition, and interpretations vary with usage. Examples of open standards include the GSM, 4G, and 5G standards that allow most modern mobile phones to work world-wide. Definitions The terms ''open'' and ''standard'' have a wide range of meanings associated with their usage. There are a number of definitions of open standards which emphasize different aspects of openness, including the openness of the resulting specification, the openness of the drafting process, and the ownership of rights in the standard. The term "standard" is sometimes restricted to technologies approved by formalized committees that are open to participation by all interested parties and operate on a consensus bas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
VoiceXML
VoiceXML (VXML) is a digital document standard for specifying interactive media and voice dialogs between humans and computers. It is used for developing audio and voice response applications, such as banking systems and automated customer service portals. VoiceXML applications are developed and deployed in a manner analogous to how a web browser interprets and visually renders the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) it receives from a web server. VoiceXML documents are interpreted by a voice browser and in common deployment architectures, users interact with voice browsers via the public switched telephone network (PSTN). The VoiceXML document format is based on Extensible Markup Language (XML). It is a standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Usage VoiceXML applications are commonly used in many industries and segments of commerce. These applications include order inquiry, package tracking, driving directions, emergency notification, wake-up, flight tracking, voic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Santa Claus
Santa Claus (also known as Saint Nicholas, Saint Nick, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle or Santa) is a legendary figure originating in Western Christian culture who is said to bring gifts during the late evening and overnight hours on Christmas Eve. Christmas elves are said to make the gifts in Santa's workshop, while flying reindeer pull his sleigh through the air. The popular conception of Santa Claus originates from folklore traditions surrounding the 4th-century Christian bishop Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of children. Saint Nicholas became renowned for his reported generosity and secret gift-giving. The image of Santa Claus shares similarities with the English figure of Father Christmas, and they are both now popularly regarded as the same person. Santa is generally depicted as a portly, jolly, white- bearded man, often with spectacles, wearing a red coat with white fur collar and cuffs, white-fur-cuffed red trousers, a red hat trimmed with white fur, a b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve is the evening or entire day before Christmas, the festival commemorating nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus. Christmas Day is observance of Christmas by country, observed around the world, and Christmas Eve is widely observed as a full or partial holiday in anticipation of Christmas Day. Together, both days are considered one of the most culturally significant celebrations in Christendom and Western world, Western society. Christmas celebrations in the Christian denomination, denominations of Western Christianity have long begun on Christmas Eve, due in part to the Christian liturgical day starting at sunset, a practice inherited from Jewish tradition, and based on the Genesis creation narrative, story of Creation in the Book of Genesis: "And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day." Many churches still ring their church bells and hold Christian prayer, prayers in the evening; for example, the Nordic Lutheran churches. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York Times''. Together with entrepreneur Raoul H. Fleischmann, they established the F-R Publishing Company and set up the magazine's first office in Manhattan. Ross remained the editor until his death in 1951, shaping the magazine's editorial tone and standards. ''The New Yorker''s fact-checking operation is widely recognized among journalists as one of its strengths. Although its reviews and events listings often focused on the Culture of New York City, cultural life of New York City, ''The New Yorker'' gained a reputation for publishing serious essays, long-form journalism, well-regarded fiction, and humor for a national and international audience, including work by writers such as Truman Capote, Vladimir Nabokov, and Alice Munro. In the late ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Timothy Gladwell (born 3 September 1963) is a Canadian journalist, author, and public speaker. He has been a staff writer for ''The New Yorker'' since 1996. He has published eight books. He is also the host of the podcast ''Revisionist History (podcast), Revisionist History'' and co-founder of the podcast company Pushkin Industries. Gladwell's writings often deal with the unexpected implications of research in the social sciences, such as sociology and psychology, and make frequent and extended use of academic work. Gladwell was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2011."Governor General Announces 50 New Appointments to the Order of Canada" The Governor General of Canada, 30 June 2011. Early life and education Gladwell was born in Fareham, Hampshire ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Documentary
A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and Media studies, media analyst Bill Nichols (film critic), Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in terms of "a filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception [that remains] a practice without clear boundaries". Research into information gathering, as a behavior, and the sharing of knowledge, as a concept, has noted how documentary movies were preceded by the notable practice of documentary photography. This has involved the use of singular Photograph, photographs to detail the complex attributes of History, historical events and continues to a certain degree to this day, with an example being the War photography, conflict-related photography achieved by popular figures such as Mathew Brady during the Am ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
