The Dragon Systems AudioMining technology converts audio data into searchable text, which is easily accessible by keyword searching. This new capability which eliminates the need to listen to hours of recordings to find necessary information, can save time and increase productivity. It gives users immediate random access to recorded materials and enables them to access material using its speech content. Applications of this technology include:

• LARGE TECHNICAL SUPPORT CENTERS / HELP DESKS - A technical support manager who is responsible for providing feedback to the product development team could use this technology to search a database of recorded technical support calls, determine the issues that end users are contending with and advise engineering accordingly.
• CALL CENTERS - A stockbroker or call center operator who records all phone calls to document customer orders and conversations can gain access to specific conversations to verify information concerning transactions. Marketing executives could also access customer requests and feedback from a company database.
• BROADCAST MEDIA - A news editor at a television or radio station could search archives of recorded broadcasts to retrieve relevant information and clips pertinent to breaking news almost immediately.
• CONFERENCE MANAGEMENT - A conference management organization that records proceedings, could use this technology to create an index of key topics for tapes of those sessions. This index should be printed to indicate tape number and time into the tape. If the material is on CD-ROM audio, the information would be directly accessible with the index.
• LAW ENFORCEMENT / SECURITY - Police and security forces that need to search hours of recorded phone calls or radio transmissions can use this technology to quickly obtain critical information.

"There are hundreds of thousands of hours of recorded speech from meetings to telephone calls in the hands of corporations today," said Dragon Systems Vice-President of North American Marketing Roger Matus. "These recordings contain nuggets of information that are invisible to companies. This new technology takes data that is invisible and makes it visible."

The Dragon Systems AudioMining technology is built upon some of the same underlying speech technology used in Dragon NaturallySpeaking™, the widely-acclaimed speech product that has garnered more than 70 industry awards worldwide and is the best selling speech retail product in the USA, according to PC Data (December 1998). The system employs this underlying technology to internally generate text lists that are indexed back to their location on the recorded media, as accurately as possible with untrained speech files, which are then searchable. Users will search these lists to retrieve information relevant to their current projects. This new capability supplements existing Dragon Systems solutions by taking advantage of the underlying technology to help end-users take advantage of speech recognition to improve productivity.

"The technology being previewed by Dragon Systems makes recorded data searchable in a way that previously was not possible," said Chris Shipley, editor and publisher of DemoLetter and executive producer of the Demo conference. "I am excited to have Dragon Systems back at Demo for the third year in a row and to have them preview this new capability for the first time."

###Dragon Systems, Inc., is a worldwide leader in PC speech recognition. Dragon Systems develops and markets high-performance, cost-effective speech and l anguage technology that, in multiple world languages (including American English, British English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Swedish), enable users to create text, issue commands, enter and access data simply by speaking. The company also licenses technology worldwide through developers, distributors, resellers, OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) and ISVs (Integrated Software Vendors). Dragon Systems ports its technology across multiple operating systems and hardware platforms — from hand-held devices and PCs to workstations, and is pursuing leading-edge research and development projects for computer and telecommunications applications. Since introducing Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the first large vocabulary continuous speech recognition system able to create general purpose text, in 1997, the Company has received over 70 major industry awards worldwide.