Huh? What Did You Say? Ask Soon-to-Be Available Autonomy Software

LONDON -- To Ask Jeeves (ASKJ Quote) a question, you have to go through the trouble of writing it down. No wonder, then, that Autonomy Corporation's (AUTN Quote) speech-recognition software is causing such a buzz.

Autonomy -- a provider of software that automates the normally labor-intensive task of organizing vast amounts of unstructured information on the Internet, in emails and documents -- announced at the end of last week that it expects to begin shipping its speech-recognition technology "within the next couple of quarters."

The technology was initially developed by a company called SoftSound, which Autonomy acquired in April. The software will enable recorded or real-time speech to be searched and analyzed for concepts in the same way that written data is. For example, the technology would allow companies to analyze phone calls to their call centers to find out whether a question being asked has been answered before. ...