Article in the SMH about Sir Timothy Berners-Lee's proposal for a standard for Speech Synthesis Mark-up Language. "SSML will bring high-quality synthesised speech to web interactions," says Sir Timothy. "Application designers for mobile phones, PDAs and a host of emerging technologies will be able to use it to gain control of important aspects of speech synthesis, including pronunciation, volume and pitch."

"W3C's Speech Interface Framework - a collection of specifications for building voice applications for the web - will allow an unprecedented number of people to use any telephone to interact with appropriately designed web-based services via keypads or spoken commands, and by listening to pre-recorded speech, synthetic speech and music," says Sir Timothy.

Full article at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/09/20/1095651237218.html