Opera gets to talking: Developers Can Use Opera to Enable Speech in Multimodal Applications

Oslo, Norway – July 26, 2004

Opera Software today announced the deliveryof its Opera Browser 7.55 for Windows, to be used in conjunction with theIBM Multimodal Toolkit for WebSphere Studio, an Eclipse-based tool designedto help speed development of speech-enabled applications in devices such assmartphones, handhelds and automobiles.

Within the IBM Multimodal Tools, Opera Browser allows a multimodalapplication to display graphical Web pages while enabling speech input andoutput using IBM’s Embedded ViaVoice engine. The toolkit enables developersto builld multimodal applications for devices from low resource PDAs tohigh resource in-vehicle solutions, using the industry standards-basedmarkup language, XHTML+Voice, that combines XHTML and VoiceXML.

“The Web is being integrated into all sorts of embedded devices andmachinery and the integration of voice with data is a natural evolution,”says Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. “Through our efforts withIBM, we hope to enable developers to quickly get their applicationstalking.”

Opera’s own speech-enabled browser version, 7.6 for Windows, is on track tobe released later this year.

Developers can download the IBM Multimodal Tools at http://www.ibm.com/software/pervasive/multimodal/

 

Opera Contact:

 

Opera Software
Pal A. Hvistendahl
VP Marketing Communications
Tel: +47 99 72 43 31
press04@opera.com

IBM Contact:

Geraldine Kan
Public Relations, IBM Pervasive Computing
Wk: 1-914-766-1112 (IBM tie-line 826 1112)
Cell: 1-917-478-5148
gkan@us.ibm.com