PERSONAL computer giants Microsoft and Intel have teamed up to create a standard method to integrate the telephone with PC.
The new standard presents opportunities for real-time, multimedia, electronic mail (E-mail) applications - where the PC integrates E-mail, voice-mail, fax and audio and video conferencing and transmits them all via standard telephone lines.
The future products that add telephone functions to the PC will be based on a new set of Microsoft specifications called the Windows Telephony application programming interface, developed jointly by Microsoft and Intel.
The specifications have apparently received the support of about 40 companies, from telephone switch manufacturers to PC and peripheral makers and software developers.
The Windows Telephony API specifications are available to third party developers, and will be included in the next release of the Windows operating system.
Microsoft and Intel said products based on the specification would allow direct access to the telephone network and thus would enhance such existing PC applications as database management, personal information management, spreadsheet use and word processing.
The companies also said the Windows Telephony specifications had implications for wide area networks that allowed the PC to be used for both voice and data transmissions.