OTTAWA, ON– Pronexus, now entering its 16th year of operation and the developer of VBVoice, the leading Rapid Application Development (RAD) Toolkit for Interactive Voice Response (IVR) applications, announced today that IVRHost, a software-as-a-service platform, selected VBVoice software toolkit to develop their application “HearMyTweet”.

HearMyTweet is a service that allows “Tweeters” to listen to their own or others Twitter messages/updates from any phone via an IVR solution. This service can be valuable for an individual who enters their PIN to access their personal account, or a company that provides a free number to hear their Twitter messages.

“HearMyTweet is easy to use and will enhance your Tweets to make them easier to listen to. It’s a great way to share your Tweets with the ‘twitter-phobic’ or just help get your word out there” said Lee Decker of IVRHost. “With Pronexus’ IVR toolkit VBVoice we were able to develop a flexible feature-rich IVR application with web service integration that our users love.”

HearMyTweet allows the user the option to purchase a dedicated toll-free number and have their customers call in to hear their Tweets. In addition, the user can add their own introduction and ending message to promote their group or business, and provide phonetic translations so that the speech engine pronounces words properly. Integrated credit card processing allows the user to add minutes manually, while real-time management of their minutes provides the ability to notify them in the call when they reach a purchase threshold.
IVRHost developed HearMyTweet with a combination of web service integration, credit card processing and IVR application development software, VBVoice. VBVoice allowed the developers at IVRHost to leverage their current programming skills in industry-standard languages such as VB.NET and C#, thus shortening their learning curve and allowing them to create a powerful application for Twitter users.

“As social media continues to expand its reach around the globe, Twitter continues to be one of the fastest growing social networks,” said Pronexus CEO Gary Hannah. “HearMyTweet is a neat example of how VBVoice can be used to create a fun value-added application for this market.”

IVRHost offers a suite of hosted IVR applications developed with VBVoice, including HearMyFacebook and more. To see the complete suite of IVRHost’s services, please visit http://www.ivrhost.com.

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About Pronexus:
Since 1993, Pronexus has delivered proven voice applications and IVR development tools that developers rely on to help them integrate voice with business systems, including unified communications, customer relationship management and field service automation systems. Let us show you how we can help you reduce the time, cost and complexity of deploying speech and telephony technology by visiting our web site: http://www.pronexus.com.

About IVRHost:
IVRHost provides custom IVR applications charged on a ‘minutes used’ subscription basis. As a software-as-a-service platform, IVRHost relies on the Pronexus VBVoice software to offer robust and economical IVR solutions.

IVRHost offers robust integration using web services and other technologies to allow internal databases to take advantage of a hosted IVR service. IVRHost is perfect for replacing existing IVR solutions or to get running on a new application quickly. Please contact sales@ivrhost.com to learn more.

What is TTS ( Text to Speech) ?
TTS or Text To Speech is a process where text is converted to WAV file and played back. So it is a system or often called “engine” that converts text to voice. If some one types a sentence in a note pad, a TTS software would convert it to voice ad play it through speaker attached to computer or laptop.

What does IVR System do ?
IVR System plays recorded voice on a telephone when a caller calls in. So, it is obvious that instead of playing recorded voice, IVR can play text file using TTS engine.

TTS software or engine:-
There are many TTS engines available. Many TTS engines are built in computer operating system. Microsoft SAPI5.1 is such TTS engine which is available for Windows Operating System. Voiceover is built-in TTS engine for MAC OS Leopard. There are various companies which make TTS engines. For example : AT&T, Nuance, SVOX etc.

Using TTS with IVR System
TTS is very useful when there are lot of dynamic content to be provided to caller in a voice portal. The use of TTS in IVR system is quite easy! Every TTS engine comes with SDK (Software Development Kit) which can be used to integrate with IVR application developed in various tools. Almost all RAD Tools for developing IVR applications, support TTS as well as speech recognition.

TTS produces voices which can be recognised easily that it is generated by a computer, not by human. So, people who are used to listening to human voice, may not be able to understand TTS easily. It is specially true for people whose first language is not English. Most of the world’s TTS engines support English. Recently many companies are developing TTS for other languages as well.

It may take some time, but it is expected that quality of TTS voice will increase where everyone will be able to understand TTS Engine generated voice easily. That will help voice portals immensely.