LOCUSDIALOG ACQUIRES SPEECH TECHNOLOGY ASSETS FROM INFOSPACE SPEECH SOLUTIONS

LocusDialog announces the acquisition of certain technology assets from InfoSpace Speech Solutions, including the latter's SoftDialogue and VXML Gateway technologies. InfoSpace will continue to provide and support deployments of the company's speech platform and speech-based applications, utilizing certain technologies under a licensing agreement with LocusDialog.

Company further expands technology and expertise in line with ongoing development of large-scale, open standards-based speech telephony solutions

Montreal, Canada.....LocusDialog announces the acquisition of certain technology assets from InfoSpace Speech Solutions, including the latter's SoftDialogue and VXML Gateway technologies. InfoSpace will continue to provide and support deployments of the company's speech platform and speech-based applications, utilizing certain technologies under a licensing agreement with LocusDialog.

In addition, LocusDialog has employed many of the senior speech specialists formerly with InfoSpace Speech Solutions. These specialists bring extensive expertise in speech technology, Natural Language Processing (NLP) and VoiceXML. LocusDialog is a world leader in the design and deployment of packaged speech telephony solutions (LocusDialogSTSTM) for organizations and call centers.

The integration of the technology assets and the expertise of newly-added speech specialists will play a key role in significantly extending the LocusDialogSTS platform's revolutionary capabilities and user-targeted benefits.

More specifically:

· SoftDialogue's extensive specialized proper nouns phonetic dictionaries and tools will enhance the recognition accuracy of the LocusDialogSTS Auto-Attendant

· The advanced biometric Speaker Verification technology will allow rapid development of secured speech-enabled applications

· The suite of SoftDialogue's speech-signal processing algorithms will increase the performance of speech recognition in noisy conditions and enable the development of robust, very large name directory applications

NLP and VXML are Key Technology Acquisitions...

LocusDialog will be leveraging its broad Natural Language Processing expertise to further enhance the user-friendliness and effectiveness of its proven speech solutions. Additionally, the SoftDialogue VXML Gateway technology will be central to LocusDialog's ever-growing participation in the evolution of an open platform. Adding VXML support to LocusDialogSTS is fully in line with the company's commitment to highly functional, standards-based speech applications utilizing standards such as VXML and SALT. This responds to the overwhelming desire among callers for intuitive means of accessing rich information sources in a variety of environments.

LocusDialog CEO Richard Martel adds: "LocusDialog has been notably successful in its corporate mission of providing enterprise telephony call routing solutions that integrate the latest in advanced, standards-based speech technologies. We are a recognized global leader in the speech-enabled auto-attendant market segment. Acquiring these important technology and resource assets assures LocusDialog the necessary tools to further innovate and thus accelerate mass-market acceptance and adoption of our revolutionary speech telephony solutions."

About LocusDialog...

LocusDialog designs and creates multi-lingual speech-telephony solutions for small, medium and large organizations and call centers in a broad range of vertical markets. Incorporating best-of-class SpeechWorks technologies (including the OpenSpeech Recognizer and Speechify engines), the company's packaged applications include speech-enabled call routing, speech-dialed directories, and speech-driven information access.

LocusDialog's speech products are noted for their advanced telephony integration capabilities with existing analog, digital, IP and Centrex infrastructures, and for facilitating rapid, easy access to people, places and information resources from any telephone device, anywhere, and at anytime. With an installed base of speech telephony systems that is unequalled in the industry, the company is the frontrunner in making speech the preferred telephony communications interface. LocusDialog's solutions are delivered to the marketplace through an established network of renowned national and international telecom distributors/partners, including SBC, NextiraOne, Bell Canada, Telus, NEC Canada, NEC BNS, MacroVoice Networks and NACR in North America, and Datapulse, COGIS Industries and SPIE Communications in Europe. The company has also been selected for OEM agreements with SpeechWorks International-the SpeechSite product offering is powered by the LocusDialogSTS platform-and with EADS Telecom in France.

For more information on LocusDialog and its products, visit the company's Web site at www.locusdialog.com.

LocusDialogSTS is a trademark of LocusDialog Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Contact information:

LocusDialog
Stéphane Couture
Marketing Director
stephane.couture@locusdialog.com
Tel.: 514.954.3804   
Fax: 514.954.3805

KPR, Inc.
Barbara Evans or David Kaye
818/368-8212
barbara@kprinc.com or dave@kprinc.com

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