Re: HomeVoice discontinued

[Marc_F_Hult <MFHult@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 26 Feb 2007 17:14:41 GMT, nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Dave Houston) wrote in
message  <45e31424.503095171@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>Can anyone shed any light on why HomeVoice has been discontinued?
>
>Over the past several years several quadriplegics who relied on it told me
>it was the only VR software that was reliable enough to meet their needs so
>I am surprised to see that AFT has discontinued it. AFT licensed it
>(exclusively) from the company that originated it so, perhaps, someone else
>may pick up the license.

1) As I understand it, Applied Future Technologies AFT's HomeVoice was
licensed from Voxware which in turn bought it from Verbex in 1999.

2) Voxware is in danger of losing its NASDAQ listing

http://www.voxware.com/fileadmin/images/Press_Releases/NASDAQ_Delisting_070222.pdf
It lost $1.3M on revenues of $3.1M despite a reorganization.

	"Approximately a year ago Voxware made the decision to transition
	from 	direct selling of custom solutions that included
	proprietary hardware and software, to the sale through partners
	of productized, standards-based voice software that
	operates on open hardware platforms."

http://www.voxware.com/fileadmin/images/Press_Releases/Voxware_PR_FY07_Q1.pdf

2) HomeVoice was a one-person show with reported problems in service.

3) The last upgrade was apparently five years ago (2002)

4) The software alone apparently cost more than $200.

5) The principle source of buzz about this software in this newsgroup has
been Dave Houston who apparently has not used it himself but bases his
comments on those of other anonymous sources.

6) HomeVoice was frequently advertised/bundled/sold with specialized
hardware. I concluded long ago that the challenged and undocumented,
unexamined, inaccessible claims of superiority of HomeVoice could easily be
due to hardware that was tailored to quadriplegics and the merits of the
software confused with those of the hardware by end-users and not to
superiority of the software that was purchased from Verbex in 1998.

HomeVoice software has been the topic of discussion in other forums including
in March 2005 HomeSeer in which HomeSeer founder Grant Tinker gives a bit of
the history of the various and competing technologies (Dragon Systems, Joe
Lernout and Paul Hauspie of L&H, Scansoft, and MS).

http://board.homeseer.com/archive/index.php/t-102231.html

... Marc
Marc_F_Hult
www.ECOntrol.org