The Internet has grown by leaps and bounds over the past ten years. Most companies have mission-critical
applications, applications to monitor the applications, and applications to monitor the applications that
monitor the applications, ad nauseam.There are also information systems designed to provide important
information to the general public.These systems all have something in common: they require the use of a
computer. Computers, while common, aren’t used by everyone. People constantly talk about the “digital
divide,” referring to people who are unable to afford computers. Plus, sizable portions of the populations,
for one reason or another, still treat the computer with apprehension. Phones, however, are very much
ubiquitous. Almost every home has a land-based telephone in it, and with pre-paid mobile phones finally
showing up in the United States, mobile phones are further penetrating the market. Despite this large market,
developing voice-aware applications has always been costly and time-consuming, making them less
common and less functional than their Web-based counterparts. Asterisk can be a bridge between the world
of text and the world of speech. Thanks to programs like Sphinx (a program that translates speech to text),
Festival (a program that translates text to speech), and Asterisk’s own application interface, programs can
be written by any competent programmer. Asterisk’s interface is simple to learn yet extremely powerful,
allowing programs for it to be written in almost any language. Asterisk can be the conduit for taking your
applications out of the text that is the Internet and letting them cross over into the voice arena that is the
Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) A great example of how telephone-aware systems can
benefit the general public is Carnegie Mellon University’s “Lets Go!” bus dialog system. It has been
developed to provide an interactive telephone program that allows people in Pittsburgh to check the
schedule of buses that run in the city.The system has become such a success that the bus company has had
its main phone number forward calls to the application during off-hours, allowing callers to access
transportation schedules despite the office being closed. Asterisk can also be used to build similar systems
with the same tools used by CMU.
applications, applications to monitor the applications, and applications to monitor the applications that
monitor the applications, ad nauseam.There are also information systems designed to provide important
information to the general public.These systems all have something in common: they require the use of a
computer. Computers, while common, aren’t used by everyone. People constantly talk about the “digital
divide,” referring to people who are unable to afford computers. Plus, sizable portions of the populations,
for one reason or another, still treat the computer with apprehension. Phones, however, are very much
ubiquitous. Almost every home has a land-based telephone in it, and with pre-paid mobile phones finally
showing up in the United States, mobile phones are further penetrating the market. Despite this large market,
developing voice-aware applications has always been costly and time-consuming, making them less
common and less functional than their Web-based counterparts. Asterisk can be a bridge between the world
of text and the world of speech. Thanks to programs like Sphinx (a program that translates speech to text),
Festival (a program that translates text to speech), and Asterisk’s own application interface, programs can
be written by any competent programmer. Asterisk’s interface is simple to learn yet extremely powerful,
allowing programs for it to be written in almost any language. Asterisk can be the conduit for taking your
applications out of the text that is the Internet and letting them cross over into the voice arena that is the
Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) A great example of how telephone-aware systems can
benefit the general public is Carnegie Mellon University’s “Lets Go!” bus dialog system. It has been
developed to provide an interactive telephone program that allows people in Pittsburgh to check the
schedule of buses that run in the city.The system has become such a success that the bus company has had
its main phone number forward calls to the application during off-hours, allowing callers to access
transportation schedules despite the office being closed. Asterisk can also be used to build similar systems
with the same tools used by CMU.
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