Lewis, JohnTucker, William DavidBlake, Edwin H.2013-02-182013-02-182003Lewis, J., Tucker, W. D. & Blake, E. H. (2003). SoftBridge: a multimodal instant messaging bridging system. In Z. Miklos (ed.), Southern African Telecommunications Networks & Applications Conference (SATNAC), 1: 235–240, George, South Africa0-620-30948-2http://hdl.handle.net/10566/537Instant Messaging is traditionally a text only a air. 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.enCopyright Telkom. This file may be freely used for educational purposes, as long as it is not altered in any way. Acknowledgement of the authors and the source is requiredBridgingInstant messagingMultimediaSpeech recognitionSpeech synthesisWeb servicesConference Proceedings