One of the more impressive demonstrations during the "10 programs for OS X" portion of last week's keynote came from IBM when Toby Maners demonstrated their "Macworld Best of Show" winning ViaVoice voice recognition application. Afterwords, I had the chance to speak with Toby to get more details on the program.

Having used the keynote to announce its new ViaVoice for Macintosh OS X Edition, a fully integrated voice recognition application for the Macintosh OS X platform, IBM used the rest of the Expo to show it off. Built upon IBM's award-winning series of continuous speech recognition software for the Macintosh and designed to integrate with the new Mac OS X, users can dictate into most text applications, easily launch and surf the Web, and navigate Apple's new Mac OS X - all by using their voice.

The first thing previous users of ViaVoice will notice in the new version is its "Aquafied" look. Toby Maners--manager of consumer voice and pen segment, IBM Voice Systems--explained that the developers wanted to create a fun interface for the product, and the look of OS X was of course their inspiration. IBM's ViaVoice for Mac OS X sustains the Aqua look and feel throughout; including a new Command Center, redesigned Voice Center, SpeakPad and Preferences.

"IBM has optimized ViaVoice to work best with Apple's popular Aqua user interface and G4 processors," said Toby at the Macworld NY Keynote address. "We first brought ViaVoice continuous speech recognition to the Mac two years ago. Our new ViaVoice for Mac OS X brings us even closer to making the optimal conversational interface a reality for the Mac community."

IBM ViaVoice for Macintosh OS X provides users with the capability to dictate directly into popular supported applications, to launch and surf the Internet and access web pages through voice-activated web links. The keynote demo was impressive, but the technology goes far beyond dictating and sending e-mails. If your favorite software program doesn't already support ViaVoice, chances are that it can be programmed to do so. For instance, any keystroke in Photoshop can be assigned a ViaVoice command, so users can switch tools without even taking their eyes off their subject. Although most applications will accept voice dictation into any text field, only those with direct support for ViaVoice will allow for voice activated corrections. IBM is working with software vendors to increase the number of programs that are compatible.

ViaVoice for OS X offers a U.S. vocabulary more than twice the size of any previous ViaVoice for Mac product. The new product also features:

• Faster Enrollment - allowing users to train the system to more quickly recognize their speech, done by reading a 25 minute text sample provided by IBM
• G4 Processor Optimization - for G4 with multiple processors and for G4 with velocity engine
• Customizable Control - expandable, user customizable, command and control features so users can speech-enable common tasks
• IBM ViaVoice Outloud Text-to-Speech (TTS) technology in U.S. and U.K. English - providing the capability to listen to e-mail and other text documents which the computer reads out loud
• Specialized vocabularies - topic support that provides customized vocabularies for Computers, Business and Finance, Chatter's Jargon and Cuisine
• Noise-canceling digital Universal Serial Bus (USB) microphone - makes the widely popular and successful IBM ViaVoice products available to most Macintosh systems, including iBook customers

And speaking of noise canceling, I asked Toby how effective the software is at filtering background noise such as conversation, music and even television. She suggested that if this is the normal work environment, enrolling under these conditions will help ensure that ViaVoice ignores such noises.

IBM's ViaVoice for Macintosh requires:

• 300 MHz Power PC processor or higher
• 256 MB RAM
• 600 MB of available hard disk space
• CD-ROM or DVD drive

The software runs on iMac, PowerMac G3, PowerBookG4, PowerBook G3, Titanium PowerBook G4, and iBook computers, and includes a noise-canceling USB microphone. ViaVoice for Macintosh OS X will be available in Fall 2001 in International English to address both U.S. English and U.K. English users, and is planned for other, selected languages after that. It will be sold through major mail order catalogs, retail and office supply stores, through ShopIBM, online vendors, as well as other channels that carry Apple software. The suggested retail price for the software is $179.95 in the U.S. and £99.99 in the U.K. An upgrade path will be offered for ViaVoice for Mac Millennium and ViaVoice for Mac Enhanced customers. Information will be provided on the IBM Voice Systems website when available.

.