Microsoft Response Point PBX voice-recognition "magic button"

Ethan,

Wow, that is very cool stuff indeed... can't really extend a proper appreciation for this work, but to say thanks.

You are a serious tease. This sounds REALLY cool. I am a big MSFT customer and we are currently piloting MSFT UCS and I have followed the development of Response Point. Would love to see something like that in Asterisk/FreePBX/Trixbox.

With fonality doing something with dell and msft doing VoIP with RP, it can't help but be good for exposure.

And I am physc'ed about am what Ethan is doing...

Ethan-

"Also, watch FreePBX on Friday for the source code release of my Asterisk Voice Recognition Company Directory, a tree-based drag-and-drop company directory with voice recognition capabilities."

Did I blink and miss this? Thanks.

I certainly apologize....some times I get ahead of myself. It's coming...very soon...unfortunately tonight is Super Tuesday, and I'm a political junkie. Subscribe to this thread.

So let me be the voice of reason here since there hasn't been any so far. Trixbox and FreePBX are free software packages that developers have pointed out many times that nobody ever donates to because the point being that they are FREE. So now you take this "magic button" that requires a Lumenvox license which if you try, you can get one channel for $50 and then its $250 per additional channel. Let's say you have a 10 person company, you probably need to be prepared for a 1:4 ratio so you probably need 3-4 licenses to make sure it works all the time, so you are looking at $800 for this functionality in a very small business which could easily be $3,000 for a larger install. If these same companies aren't willing to fork $50 to donate to the software development they sure as hell won't pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for this feature. Is it a cool feature? Perhaps, is it worth the hype its been getting when nobody is going to shell out a freaking dime to get it? No.

Don't get me wrong, I applaud the work it took to create it but for the obviously overwhelming majority of trixbox/freepbx users it is worthless because of the cost of the Lumenvox license.

--- Fred - The Voice of Reason ---

The "Voice of Reason" needs more fiber in his diet.

Fred - The Voice of Reason:

Disclaimer: I have not seen the code and I have no idea how it works.

Counter Argument: Your sole issue is that folks will not buy the Lumenvox licenses right? My reasoning is that once we see the code there will several options one could pursue - including replacing the Lumenvox voices with an open source alternative. Therefore people who choose to do so could get a "free" magic button, except maybe compromise on quality, while others could pay for the higher quality voices if they choose. There are also folks who get around some licensing issues by outputting WAV files and playing those, but I am not advocating that.

Final Counter Argument: Those companies you refer to that won't pay $800-$3000 for the function - do they have computers, phones, personnel, office lease, etc.? I bet those were not "free" right? They obviously must buy some things if needs/wants dictate.

dstroot, you might want to stop showing your ignorance. The magic button uses Lumenvox which requires a license fee and the alternative is Sphinx which does not work well enough.

Tony, I am not throwing FUD, I am saying that the TYPICAL users will not pay for it. Your model is not typical, because you are "doing it right" from what I can see and what I have heard. The other guys are taking trixbox, slapping it on a box, and walking away. The true value to customers is being a VAR which you obviously are, at that point you are providing a complete solutions package versus "installing a new phone system". More trixbox integrators would be more successful if they followed the value added reseller model, however, that takes more than the smarts to install trixbox, it requires strong business sense and the ability to analyze a companies business needs. That is not something the typical trixbox installer does today.

Do you not read these forums? Do you not read your own posts? Do you not listen to people? It appears that the only thing you can do lately is to come here to promote your training since you obviously aren't getting enough people signed up from your own site which you claim is a larger user base than the trixbox community. The trixbox team should rightfully remove all posts promoting your training since they do not allow any other company to promote their products and services in the forums as it is considered forum spam. While there may be a few fanboys of yours here the reality is you are as hypocritical as they come. Come on, even the name "Free"PBX and yet you are trying everything in your power to make it PayPBX with support, hardware systems, and now training (all things Fonality did first...makes you go hmmmmm). I am quite comfortable with my upfront and honest opinions and statements while you are often hypocritical, constantly beat around the bush, try to slide snide comments in, and while bashing companies like Fonality for being successful when you obviously are jealous of their successes and want to be in their shoes. So you would do well to listen to yourself and stop being a pompus ass.

-- The voice of reason prevails --

"Reason" usually comes with facts. And as always, you present fantasies of your own mind insinuating statements that were never made and claims that are certifiably false. I won't bother to respond any longer as there is no need to give you reason to waste the communities time any more then you have already done so.

fbosco,

I have to say that freepbx is the engine that makes the trix car go. REALLY FAST!

Since the freePBX product is so tightly integrated in trixbox, I don't have a problem with Philippe's posts with the occasional reference to his product's events or offerings.

For one thing if freePBX doesn't make some kind of revenue...the program STOPS.

Then what do you do? Expect him to live at the salvation army while advancing the project?

(Thats a hint from me...why not make a sizable donation)

I have to agree with cosmicwombat. Let it go.

Why is it you won't reveal your identity?

Why Can't We All Just Get Along!

Robert,
Let me point out that it is you who called me out for no reason. I am simply stating the obvious facts that have been brought up by numerous people here and people are calling BS on that (love your site Kerry!). The general non-willingness to pay is not something I extracted from my sphincter. This is based on many posts here from the likes of Kerry and Phillipe themselves about the almost total absence of donations. Then Tony has to get a word in by calling that FUD when it is a reality. The fact that Tony has an apparently successful business by providing complete solutions to customers is testament to his business savvy and has far less to do with the technology or the underlining code. I would bet that the vast majority of Tony's users have never heard of trixbox or Asterisk.

Every few months some lamer will go and post about their trinidad DID's, some new softswitch, some cheap phone, and the community flames the person for spamming the forums and yet, we see posts from i9, Rhino, Schmooze, Phillipe, Robert hawking the freepbx training which is FAR more obnoxious since it a) is not fair to anyone else that tries to advertise in the forums, b) is a cheap exploitation of the community that trixbox has built, and c) appears to be a desperate attempt to fill empty seats. Just because I disagree with you and think those blatant ads should be banned along with everyone else I get flamed back. That is hypocrisy at its finest. There should be no double standard here period. What does trixbox gain by letting FreePBX advertise? I would bet not a damned thing. If they want to advertise for their commercial paid training, let them buy banner ads or sponsor blocks on the site like everyone else does.

Fred - Defender of Reason

Just to clarify, the "Voices" are for Cepstral the text-to-speech engine. Those are $29/voice. All you really need is "Asterisk Allison" 8k voice for telephony. Cepstral can be replaced by the open source Flite tts engine, though the quality isn't nearly as good.

LumenVox is where the speech recognition comes from. There are no open source solutions that are even remotely capable of replacing LumenVox, and there probably never will be.

What I am going to propose to LumenVox, however, is letting us setup a central license server accessible on the Internet and "pool" licenses together for overflow. In this scenario, each PBX could have 1 or 2 physical licenses and then get additional overflow licenses over the Internet in real-time. I have already tested the LumenVox license server under this client-server model, and it works. When a PBX needs speech, it ask the license server for a license. If the license server has a license available, it doles it out. As soon as the PBX is done recognizing speech, it releases the license back to the license server.

Theoretically, this could provide the community with a reasonably inexpensive way to add speech to their PBXs. There is still going to be some cost involved, because relying on the Internet 100% is just fools talk, and regardless someone is going to have to buy the licenses for the licensing server, though with some sort of monthly/yearly hosting model, these expenses could be recouped quite quickly.

These are all things that will be discussed in the future with LumenVox.

Ethan

Mustardman,

I would love to see a viable alternative here, but unfortunately, there just isn't one, and I don't foresee there being one for many years to come (if ever).

You are referring to sphinx, and no offense to whoever may take offense, but it sucks in comparison to LumenVox. There is a reason speech recognition is so expensive, and that is because it is one of the most technically difficult things a computer can do, so it requires huge R&D dollars that need to be recouped eventually.

I am personally 100% OK with the expense for speech recognition, however. As an "add-on", speech recognition is something I can use in customer demos to get them excited, and if they *really* want it, they can buy it. It comes down to choice.

Ethan

It is a line between hobby and business use. Once you start buying a few phones or a TDM card then $50 doesn't seem so bad. I bought the Allison 8K, more or less, in preparation for the Button. For the moment, it is for curiosities sake as this has especially high geek appeal.

btw, the Allison 8k voice was worth it.

Robert,

I agree.

Cepstral and Digium really did something with the move to make Allison one of Cepstral voices. It's really cool combining pre-recorded Allison sounds and prompts with live calls to databases, etc for real-time high quality text-to-speech.

Ethan

not to speak for Ethan who did the great work on this, but not finding a way to get it out in some form wouldn't really do justice to its great potential so one way or another it will find a way out.

Just a thought - I made a wiki section for collaboration on this project:
http://www.trixbox.org/wiki/voice-rec

People can post code, and guides there.

If you are looking for the Voice Recognition applications and in particular you like the idea of the company directory, all the work is going on over at FreePBX. You can see the company directory information there:

http://freepbx.org/news/2008-02-06/asterisk-voice-recognition-com...

As far as where you should donate and the answer to your question, there is not place that is distributing donations amongst the main projects that are delivering to you what you mention in this thread (Asterisk, FreePBX, Elastix, trixbox) so you'll have to decide who is giving you the key features that you are looking for in making your decision. If it is the core PBX and Voice Recognition work going on - then FreePBX. If it is the integration and packaging of Linux, Asterisk, FreePBX, etc - then trixbox. If it is Asterisk, then I've got Digium's community director sitting right next to me as we speak, and he says 'just give it to the FreePBX team - they're doing a great job.)