SoftBridge: A Multimodal Instant Messaging Bridging System

Instant Messaging is traditionally a text only affair. However, there are instances when it would be useful to bridge to other types of media, like speech. The SoftBridge is an application framework that enables this kind of communications bridging using instant messages. Its use of protocols like the Jabber Instant Messaging Protocol and the Simple Object Access Protocol makes it simple, open and extensible. It also allows bridging to non IP communications infrastructure, like the telephone network. We describe the design and architecture of the system, protocol and extensibility mechanism. Finally we describe our experimental methodology and discuss the results of our initial experiments. Keywords—instant messaging, bridging, XML, SOAP, Jabber, web services, speech synthesis, speech recognition, multimedia