Kunwadee Sripanidkulchai, a researcher at the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre, said this was a new application making information available by telephone or the Net through voice over IP.

It uses a Thai text-to-speech engine called Vaja, which changes text information to speech so people can dial a telephone number to enter the service and access information through a VoIP system. The services also use an open-source engine named Festival to give English information.

Users who want to access news from NetTalk though a telephone line just dial the call centre. Others who are busy and who have no time to read news for themselves can access VoIP information through a special phone they can have installed.

Kunwadee said the agency has completed the prototype. It plans to utilise this new application within the organisation in the next several months before providing the services to the public.

She said the agency is looking at further developments which could integrate a mail system into the NetTalk application. These users will have a registered number. The application will able to read mail from e-mail accounts of members without them opening the mail for themselves. Instead, they just dial a telephone number to the server and the system will read the messages.

"NetTalk will be useful for members who have urgent mail but no time to read it on their computer screen," said Kunwadee.

She said users will need to register to use NetTalk as the system needs to identify customers when they access information. "This supports privacy and security on the network," she said.

Jirapan Boonnoon

The Nation