iListen Ready For Prime Time

After releasing the first public preview of their Mac only speech recognition product at this past summeris MACWORLD Expo, MacSpeech has announced the immediate availability of iListen 1.0. The programis speech recognition ability and feature set has dramatically improved through each of the three preview releases, and the final version promises superior recognition ability and a broad feature set. According to MacSpeech:

Macintosh speech recognition authority, MacSpeech, Inc., announces the availability of iListen 1.0, its long-awaited next generation speech recognition program.

iListen was developed in partnership with Philips Speech Processing, using their FreeSpeech 2000 speech engine. Philips is a global market leader in speech recognition, natural dialogue and language understanding technologies.

"iListen is designed to be the speech recognition software for the rest of us," said MacSpeech Chief Evangelist Chuck Rogers. "Its ability to stay in the background and allow the user to dictate into virtually any Macintosh application will set a new standard for the industry." iListen utilizes TalkAnywhere? dictation technology, which converts spoken words into typewritten text and characters anywhere a Macintosh user would normally type.

"The underlying architecture of the Mac platform, with the blazingly fast PowerPC processor, makes Macintosh the premier platform for speech recognition software," said Clent Richardson, Apple vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations. "MacSpeech?s implementation of the Philips FreeSpeech 2000 speech engine and their TalkAnywhere technology give Macintosh users an excellent choice for both dictation as well as command and control of Macintosh applications."

iListen is available for the introductory price of US$99 through the MacSpeech web site. A boxed version is expected to be in stores by mid-December. You can find more information about iListen at the MacSpeech web site.