Westwind Media.com Acquires Rights to Media Technology
Radio syndicator Westwind Media.com (http://www.westwindmedia.com) announced it was acquiring the rights and license to audio/video technology held by Carnegie Mellon University.
Carnegie Mellon, based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has a technology called "Synthetic Interview" which enables viewers to interact with a web site's products, services and "virtual" representatives.
The technology has already been used by Bell Atlantic for web-site customer service questions, and to answer questions for the Las Vegas tourist board.
"This strategic acquisition through Carnegie Mellon University is one that will help to maintain Westwind Media.com as the leader in multi-media audio/video distribution by allowing us to do something no other web-based media company can," says Kevin France, President and CEO of Westwind Media.com. "Maintaining the ability to ask a `virtual person' any question that comes to mind, and receive a real-time, accurate response is mind-boggling technology."
"You have to see it to understand the magnitude of this transaction for Westwind," says Dennis Rommel, head of Corporate Development at Westwind. "This Westwind exclusive has unlimited uses -- anything from a famous movie star answering, in a video screen real time, questions about the latest movie release, to Mr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reciting responses to children as if he was still with us, to your favorite football player talking about last week's playoff victory, to assisting Human Resource offices across the globe in answering most commonly-asked employee questions. The uses go on and on."Terms of the deal were not disclosed but Westwind Media.com will acquire Grand Illusion Studios, Inc., the spin-off company formed by Carnegie Mellon University. In addition, Westwind will establish an office in downtown Pittsburgh designed to assist in the continued development of this technology
The synthetic interviews (synthetic interviews) can be used with players such as RealPlayer and Windows Media