Marshall Harrison - "the gotspeech guy"

MVP again and other stuff

marshallharrison — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:54:00 GMT

I got this in my email today:

Dear Marshall Harrison,
Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2009 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in Communications Server technical communities during the past year.

This is my 4th year and I am honored to be named MVP again.

Today was also my first day of being laid off. Or to put it another way – today is my first day as an independent OCS/Speech Server consultant.

I’m excited about the opportunities that being an independent consultant provides me. It gives me the freedom to work on things that I find interesting and it gives me the opportunity to pursue speaking and training assignments. I like the fact that I will get more interaction with other companies looking to take advantage of OCS and Speech Server. I truly like the role of evangelist for these technologies and I’m looking forward to experimenting more with Speech Server and UCMA 2.0. I’m also glad that this will give me more time to spend promoting/growing GotSpeech.Net and GotUC.Net. I have been so busy with other things that I haven’t been as active on my forums as I would like but that will be changing.

But this new venture also means that I have to round up my own business so if you know of anyone that needs training, mentoring, coding or other consulting work then just send them my way.

The GotSpeech Guy is looking for employment.

marshallharrison — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 01:09:00 GMT

Gold Systems is cutting back on their engineering staff so I will be unemployed as of 07/01.

So I’m looking for employment. Specifically I’m looking for Speech Server or OCS developer positions fulltime or consulting assignments. I can also do mentoring and training in Speech Server and I’m available for writing assignments. I would prefer to work remote but other arraignments can be made. My home office has a Speech Server development and a production environment and I also have a Dialogic media gateway for testing and development. Of course I have access to the GotUC.Net OCS sandbox but I will be setting up my own in my office so I will be fully self sufficient when I finish.

Marshall Harrison, MVP Microsoft Office Communications Server
marshall@gotspeech.net | 904.806.5418

Microsoft UC Developer Survey

marshallharrison — Wed, 27 May 2009 11:26:42 GMT

Microsoft is asking UC developers to take a quick survey to better get to know its developer audience, carried out by Frost and Sullivan.

For example, what applications have been developed, what other communications tools besides Microsoft’s unified communications products (like Microsoft Office Communications Server, Microsoft Office Communicator and Microsoft Exchange) you have been using, and most importantly, what Microsoft could do to better help the community?

In order to get a better insights Microsoft engaged Frost and Sullivan, an independent third party, to conduct a Unified Communications Developer survey.

If you are a developer of unified communications applications such as OCS and Communicator, please take 15 minutes and fill out this survey:

http://www.globaltestmarket.com/survey/s.phtml?sn=134581&lang=E&secid=9f8cbb

When you click the link you will be directed to a secured site hosted by Frost and Sullivan that will allow you to fill out the survey. It requires cookies to be enabled to work correctly.

Please note that Frost and Sullivan will keep all your individual responses confidential and anonymous.

Based on the data collected in the survey, Microsoft hopes to develop a set of activities to provide better assistance to you in building great enterprise solutions on the Microsoft Unified Communications platform.

Of course we will keep you posted on such activities via this blog.

Speech Server (2007) 64 bit April roll-up also available for download now!

marshallharrison — Wed, 27 May 2009 11:20:56 GMT

The x64 link for the April roll-up fixes for Speech Server 2007 is now included. So finally 64-bit developers can fix the red-crosses error, caused by the SP1 of .NET, or get back results from a VoiceXML subdialog. You can now set InterDigitTimeout on the DTMF recognizer for VoiceXML apps so you VXML developers should be happy. It also fixes a couple of other thigs but you can read about them yourself at the link below.

Go to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/963025/ for the download.

Enjoy!

Windows Speech Recognition Profile Tool

marshallharrison — Wed, 27 May 2009 02:08:16 GMT

Microsoft has a new Windows Speech Recognition Profile tool (WSR Profile tool) that enables a Windows Speech Recognition user to easily back up and restore his or her speech profile.

You can download it here - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=1d60a5a6-85d4-4db2-a581-a41f66561a7d

Sign-up for the UC Developer Sandbox!

marshallharrison — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:30:07 GMT

I know many of you are interested in the future of Speech Development in OCS R2 and beyond.

I just posted this Sign-up for the UC Developer Sandbox! over at GotUC.Net and I thought you would be interested.

We are giving you a sandbox where you can learn how to develop speech applications using UCMA without the expense of setting up your own OCS environment. So come on over and join us.

Help Shape the Future of Speech Server

marshallharrison — Mon, 04 May 2009 12:16:42 GMT

As you might have noticed there are practically no speech tools yet in the UCMA 2.0 Speech SDK apart from some basic classes.

Currently Microsoft is prioritizing which tools to make available in the Wave ‘14’ release of OCS/UCMA, at which time the Speech Server functionality should become an integral part of the UC platform.

Microsoft would like to solicit the feedback from the GotSpeech.net Community on how to prioritize which tools to build and ship for Telephony Speech (for Desktop Speech, please check out the Windows Vista Dictation Resource Kit)

This is specifically about the speech recognition and speech synthesis tools and not about the dialog languages, like VoiceXML and Windows Workflow. UCMA 2.0 shipped with basic UC Workflow Activities including speech, and currently the Speech Server (2007) VoiceXML 2.1 browser is ported to the UCMA API and this browser will be released in the future.

Using the comment tool, could you please distribute $100 in value across the following tools we are considering to build/release, with $0 being not important at all, and any value above $0 giving it a relative value increasing with importance. You can just copy the table below into a comment or if you prefer you can just copy and email it to me – I’ll see that it gets to the right parties.

Tool	Relative value to you out of $100 total	Comments
Grammar Static Analyzer		Syntax checking
Grammar Static Analyzer		Grammar cop like in Speech Server (2007) (detecting OOV utterances)
Grammar Dynamic Analyzer		Simulator to measure grammar changes effect on the basis of existing log files
Custom Pronunciation Tool (text)		Create custom pronunciations
Custom Pronunciation Tool (audio)		Generate pronunciations from audio
Lexicon Editing Tool (app)		Tool to edit custom application lexicon
Lexicon Editing Tool (master)		Ability to edit the Microsoft provided master lexicon
Prompt Editor		Edit and align prompts in prompt database for prompt engine
Prompt Database		Store prompts, ability to check missing prompts and do version control
Prompt Engine		Concatenative prompt engine
Speech Synthesis Prompt Sculpting		Tool to edit TTS pronunciations
Custom TTS Voice Tool		Tool to create your custom TTS voice
Visual Grammar Editor		Visual SRGS grammar editor
Statistical Grammar compiler		Tool to import transcriptions and create a statistical language model from those
Conversational Grammar Engine		Conversational grammar engine like in Speech Server (2007)
Conversational Grammar Builder		Conversational grammar builder like Speech Server (2007)
Transcription Tool		Tool to transcribe and annotate the logs in a consistent manner
Log Analysis Tools		Analyze log files to see hit rates and success metrics for dialog states like in Speech Server (2007)
Offline Recognition Tool		Ability to read wave files and measure recognition rates
ASR Analysis tools		Measures word error rates, sentence error rates, etc.
Other – please specify

As per Microsoft’s default policy, this posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Many thanks in advance for your feedback.

New Speech Site

marshallharrison — Sat, 02 May 2009 02:06:00 GMT

Microsoft has launched the Microsoft Speech Technologies Development Center.

Lots of good stuff there as well as links to Speech Team Blogs and even a link to GotSpeech.

Be sure you check out the consolidated downloads page - its one of the tabs at the top of the page.

There is another speech site coming soon and I’ll blog about it when it goes live.

Plus look for some great news coming out of GotUC.Net in the next couple of weeks. Its huge and I don’t think there has ever been a developer community effort like this before.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

Exchange 2010 Beta

marshallharrison — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:19:13 GMT

Not exactly Speech Server related but as Speech Server, OCS, Exchange and Microsoft Office grow and collaborate more there is good news here for the Speech Server developer. As the other pieces of the pie grow we should see new opportunities for us. I’m especially excited about Exchange 2010.

Reviews

· Microsoft Exchange 2010 Beta Looks Solid from Core to Cloud (and related slideshow Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Includes Welcome Improvements) – eWeek

· First look: Exchange 2010 beta shines – InfoWorld

News

· Broader Office 14 testing coming by fall – CNet

· Next Exchange features e-mail 'mute' button - CNet

· Microsoft Brands Office 2010, Releases Exchange Beta – PC World / IDG

· Microsoft fends off Google with Web browser-friendly Exchange 2010 - Computerworld

· Microsoft to release Exchange 2010 beta on April 15 - ZDNet

· Microsoft Exchange 2010 to address annoyances & mobility – Seattle PI

· Next version of Microsoft Office coming in 2010 - AP

· It's Office 2010: First technical previews due in Q3 - BetaNews

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 VHD Now Available

marshallharrison — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 18:22:16 GMT

I just blogged this over on GotUC.Net. Rather than blog it here also I’ll just point you over to GotUC.

I think this is a big step forward as it will allow individual developers a chance to try out OCS R2 and start coding with UCMA 2.0

New Dialogic Media Gateway Software Release

marshallharrison — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 01:58:56 GMT

There is a new Dialogic Media Gateway software release. It is Release 6.0 SU3 and it has a release date of March 5th 2009.

I downloaded it and installed it tonight on my gateway and it tool less than 5 minutes to install and restart my gateway. I was running 6.0.110 and now I’m at 6.0.128. I haven’t had time to test everything out but I counted 34 bug fixes that were addressed in this release.

You can find the new release here - Dialogic DMG1000 and DMG2000 Downloads

I should warn you though that the download sight contains this warning - Please Note Warning: If you upgrade the SW on a unit that cannot support it, the unit will no longer function.

Enjoy and please let me know if you upgrade.

I'm a PC and I'm an MVP

marshallharrison — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 00:04:00 GMT

One of the more fun and less serious moments from the MVP Summit:

MVP "I'm a PC" Video

GotUC.Net is live now

marshallharrison — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:09:00 GMT

It has been almost 2 years since I first announced my intentions of standing up GotUC.Net as a sister site to GotSpeech.Net. I am surprised that it took this long but the dream I had then has finally come true. But, that time lapse has been put to good use. My original vision has was for a general site centered around OCS deployment. But the more I looked at other sites and the more I thought about this I came to some realizations:

I’m a developer
there is no real place to go on the Internet for developers looking for OCS information
these are similar to the reasons I started GotSpeech

So, GotUC.Net will be an OCS developer oriented site. It will concentrate on the core APIs of OCS. I’ve got several well known names lined up to help in the forums and the blogs. I won’t list names yet but these guys really know the OCS APIs inside and out and if you have been around OCS you will recognize them

As i said, GotUC will be devoted to programming at the lowest levels. No fluff on how to install OCS or questions on how many mediation servers are needed. We will concentrate on developing applications that take advantage of the Unified Communications Application Programming Interfaces that Microsoft provides to the developer. You will find forums for UCMA 2.0, the OC Automation API, the UCC API, the CWA AJAX API and UCMA Workflow. In addition there will ne several Wikis and downloads available to assist developers. I’m still fine tuning the interface and smoothing out some rough spots but it is functional

So if you are the type of person that likes to go deep beneath the hood and get your hands dirty working on the internals or you are interested in developing some new whiz-bang application for Office Communications Server then this is the site for you.

New Unified Communications Programming Book

marshallharrison — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:36:00 GMT

Rui Maximo has a new book titled Programming for Unified Communications (Pro-Developer) coming out later this year. I’ve been a reviewer for some of the chapters and I am really excited about this book. Besides Rui the other authors are Kurt De Ding, Chris Mayo, Vishwan Ranyan and Oscar Newkerk. I’m impressed by the talent represented here (I know several of them). This will be a must purchase for me when it comes out.

I have been a fan of Rui’s writing since I got his Office Communications Server 2007 Resource Kit. Actually I have two copies. One I have marked up and use often and the other is an autographed copy that is pristine.

Oh, the cover shown on Amazon is not the final cover.

Microsoft 2009 Global Summit

marshallharrison — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:43:23 GMT

I’ll be in Redmond next week for the MVP Summit so my presence here on GotSpeech will be limited. That’s ok though because you don’t really need me. The community can run itself without me as we have many knowledgeable people hanging out here and answering questions.

The Summit is a four day invitational event for Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) and Regional Directors (RDs) The Summit gives us:

A chance to -

Connect with other MVPs and RDs
Engage with Microsoft product managers
Provide valuable feedback directly to Microsoft on its products and technologies.

Deep technical sessions by competency
Cross-competency electives
Highly dynamic and interactive sessions
Additional activities designed to promote networking and meet attendees' diverse informational and business needs

It is a very enjoyable time as I’ll get to reconnect with friends inside Microsoft as well as with other MVPs. I’ll be spending lots of time with the other OCS MVPs. We all stay in touch via email but it will be great to have some face time. And while you may be thinking it will all be fun and games I can assure you that it will also be tiring – the days run from around 6:30 AM and go until 10:00 or 11:00 PM.

For more information check out this link http://www.mvpsummit2009.com/