Live From IW2000: A very interesting demo was going on as I walked by the One Voice Technologies booth here at Internet world. When I stopped to investigate, I was impressed with what I saw. With this new software, dubbed IVAN (Intelligent Voice Animated Navigator) and a microphone, you can navigate your way through the Web by talking to the little IVAN character.

You simply ask questions in normal language and the speech interpreter and IVAN do the rest. According to the product information, IVAN "understands not just how words sound, but what they mean." He is also a dynamic program that learns from each request and can quickly adapt to you and your style. And because he is "intelligent" you can search by concept rather than the usual keyword. Businesses can use IVAN to talk to customers and "develop true one-on-one relationships."

Along with IVAN, One Voice Technologies also has VoiceSite, which can create two-way conversation with site users through an applet. Dialogue Studio (part of VoiceSite) does not affect existing HTML code nor does it require special tags or code.

The other part of VoiceSite, Dialogue Design Language, can be used in any scripting language and utilizes voice-enabled pull-down menus, check boxes, and radio buttons for customer interactivity.

I highly recommend checking out IVAN as it seemed to be a very interesting and innovative technology which is fun to use. You can visit IVAN on the web at MyIvan.com or visit One Voice Technologies.