The idea of talking to a computer rather than typing, pointing, pressing or touching it in any way is not only embedded in our shared cultural vision of the future (remember HAL?) but makes sense because it is so natural to us as a way of communicating.

Following this line of thinking would lead one to suspect that voice-enabled e-commerce (ie, v-commerce) will become a common way to do business on line: the question is when?

E-commerce is also a hot area, only they're calling it 'voice-commerce', or v-commerce. So you might be ordering from an online bookstore and once your order is completed the system could ask if you want to hear of a similar book by the same author. You say 'yes' and off you go again.

Nuance Communications seeks to further "V-commerce," according to Ron Croen, president and CEO. Nuance Verifier will do that by offering a speaker verification system that verifies a caller's ID by both voice print and natural language understanding. Once a user registers his voice, when a credit card number is required via a phone transaction, the system checks the voice print, as well as asking the caller to repeat a randomly generated phrase or number.