China's leading personal computer maker, Legend Holdings, has developed an interactive voice operation system to check and reply to e-mails by phone.
This system was displayed at Monday's Beijing International Exhibition of Digital Info-Service and Technology.
Legend's software design engineer Ren Wenjie said that users are able to access their e-mails by simply talking to a telephone.
By dialing the service number, users can hear the phone telling them content of their e-mails according to their request by mailing time, senders, subjects, slugs, order and attachments.
Meanwhile, the system can record users' voice mails, which will be sent as attachments to replies. Saying "exit" or simply hanging up will allow users to exit the system.
The intelligent voice system serves as a personal secretary, Ren said.
However, she admitted that the technology still lags behind its foreign counterparts due to the syllable difference between Chinese and Western languages.
The engineer told Xinhua that Legend has tried to apply this system to news navigation on the Internet. "But it will take some time before the experimental technology will be applied in industry," she said.
Zhang Zijiao, a teacher of network programing at Zhengzhou University in central China, said, after his e-mail checking trial,the industrialization of the system would have a tremendous future," at least as a great help to the elderly and blind people in browsing the Internet."
Legend is currently negotiating with Beijing Civil Affairs Bureau to apply the technology to community services, Ren added.
(People's Daily July 9, 2002)
