The platform can be expanded to handle customized call-center and IVR applications. Voice control of conventional voice mail hasn't yet become popular, mostly because users have been able to master a few keypad commands for functions such as saving or deleting messages. Lucent addressed this need with Voice Director, which uses speech recognition developed at Bell Labs to enable users to perform this function from within Lucent voice mail systems. The system automatically gets its list of names that can be spoken from the directory of the voice-mail system. One of the most popular unified messaging applications is retrieving email using any telephone, thereby avoiding the need to have a PC or data port available.
Email is played using synthetic speech, translating the text into speech.
Note that if such a system is to access corporate email, it may need to be on the company premises. General Magic , for example, has a free, ad-supported service for email access called MyTalk, which also allows short, free phone calls. A number of companies are offering telecommunications assistants that integrate a number of functions under a unified, voice user interface. General Magic offers one of the most full-featured services, Portico, on a subscription basis. Portico screens calls, takes messages, forwards calls, supports dialing by name from a contact list and provides news and stock quotes.