voice recognition

Organise

ReQall iPhone App Gets Push Notifications

1:00AM Kevin Purdy | iPhone/iPod touch: reQall, the speech-to-text-powered task manager, has updated its free iPhone app to push reminders and tasks to your phone at any time, along with a few welcome features for fans of the memory-jogging servce. More »
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Would You Skip The Voice Recognition Option Given The Chance?

9:26AM Angus Kidman | Bank Of Queensland is about to start offering its customers the choice of skipping the voice recognition system on its telephone banking and heading straight for the touch-tone menus. Is that a good move? More »
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Google Mobile For Blackberry Adds Search By Voice, My Location

1:55AM Adam Pash | Jealous of the very cool search-by-voice feature available to Google Mobile users on both the iPhone and Android? Well, if you’re a BlackBerry user, today you get to join in the fun. Not only does the new Google Mobile for BlackBerry feature search-by-voice, but it also adds a My Location feature to search so that you can do local searches for nearby businesses. BlackBerry users, rejoice! You can grab the latest version from your phone by pointing your browser to http://m.google.com/. Google Mobile [via Official Google Mobile Blog] More »
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Voice Dialer Brings Fast, Impressive Voice Dialing To Your iPhone

7:00AM Adam Pash | iPhone only: As its name suggests, free iPhone application Voice Dialer adds voice dialing to your iPhone. More accurately, though, Voice Dialer is a contact search-by-voice app that also does autodialing. The difference: You can easily autodial any contact by saying “Call John Smith at home”—and Voice Dialer is great at recognising matches—but if you don’t say “Call” before the contact’s name, Voice Dialer will simply pull up matches. From there, you can also check out a contact’s full contact card to quickly compose an email, send a text message, or launch Google Maps at your contact’s address (the video demo illustrates these features nicely). More »
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Google Mobile App For iPhone Could Be Better… If It Read Your Mind

8:15AM Adam Pash | After a small delay, Google released their new and improved Google Mobile for iPhone app yesterday. We gave you our one-word review, but now it’s time for a closer look at Google’s impressive new voice recognition search app—the one that’s going to make typing to search on your phone a thing of the past. More »
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New Google Mobile iPhone App With Voice-Recognition Now Available

10:04AM Adam Pash | The search-by-voice iPhone app we heard about lasgt week may not have shown up as planned, but it is now available from the iTunes App Store. The iTunes page itself doesn’t show the app as updated, but download and sync it anyway, and you’ll notice a shiny new Google Mobile on your iPhone complete with voice-recognition. I’ve just started playing with it, but my initial one-word review: Amazing! More »
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Why Google’s Voice-Search iPhone App Didn’t Launch

11:00PM Kevin Purdy | So, it turns out Google fully planned to release its search-by-voice iPhone app on Friday—as noted by the New York Times and certain blogs—but were left in the dark by the App Store approval process, according to TechCrunch. The app is now expected to launch today—but we won’t put any chips on it. More »
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Google iPhone App To Offer Search By Voice

10:00PM Kevin Purdy | Google is expected to release a free iPhone application today that lets iPhone owners ask to find local businesses, get driving directions, ask basic search queries (”What’s the capitol of Belgium?”), and displays them on-screen “within seconds on a fast wireless network,” according to the New York Times. I don’t see it in the iTunes app store yet; tell us in the comments if you do. [via Gizmodo] More »
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Cactus Brings Free Voice Dialing To Your iPhone

7:00AM Adam Pash | iPhone only: Considering that voice dialing has been a standard feature of even the cheapest phones for several years, the lack of any sort of hands-free voice dialing on the iPhone is frustrating. Cactus Voice Dialer is a free voice-dialing application based on an open-source speech recognition engine called PocketSphinx. Since it’s speech recognition, there’s no set up required. Just call a number by saying the contact’s name and—if necessary—which number to call (e.g., “Adam Pash’s mobile”). Cactus isn’t the only voice dialing app available in the App Store, but it is currently the only free voice dialer as far as we can tell (VoiceDial, for example, is a whopping $US15). For as young as it is (and the lack of price tag), I’d say Cactus has a lot of promise. If only Apple would allow apps to tie to special buttons, like double-click home. Cactus Voice Dialer [iTunes Store via MakeUseOf] More »

Get Things Done Over the Phone with Jott

4:00AM Kevin Purdy | US-centric: At its most basic level, webapp Jott is a voice to text transcription service: you call Jott, leave a message, and Jott transcribes it and emails you or your contacts the text. That alone can capture the big idea that pops into your head on the drive to the office, but Jott can do a whole lot more than send you email. With Jott’s built-in links and tools that capitalise on its email-sending abilities, it can give nearly any personal organization system a go-anywhere, add-anything boost. Today we’ve got a quick primer on how to turn your phone into a ubiquitous capture tool that zaps info into all your favorite organisation apps by voice. Getting Started If you don’t already have a Jott account, have your cell phone handy and head to their sign-up page. Fill in the forms, confirm your email, add 1-866-JOTT-123 to your contacts and/or speed-dial and make the confirmation call. Once you log in, head right to “Contacts” and add “My Phone” (first name, last name) as a contact with only your own phone number. “Wait,” you might ask, “doesn’t Jott let you have all your messages sent to your phone as a preference?” Precisely—that’s every single Jott, which isn’t something I want to deal with. By having “My Phone” as a contact, you can skip your email inbox and leave yourself notes on your cell phone—which comes in handy when trying to remember a number or address while driving. Next, hit up “Groups” and think of any sets of emails and phone numbers you might want to message all at once using one phrase, such as “Co-Workers” or “Family.” After that, head to “Jott Links” and enable any the growing number of Jott-enabled webapps—including Lifehacker favorites like Remember the Milk and Google Calendar—you use. You owe it to yourself to check out Jott’s simple How To guide before calling, but the basic technique is simple. Dial the number, wait for the “Who do you want to Jott?” prompt, and then say either “myself” or one of the contacts, groups or “Links” you set up. After the confirmation and beep, you can speak clearly for less than 30 seconds, and your message will be translated by a mix of computers and humans (your privacy, they say, is assured) and then sent to the right inboxes, phones or web apps. I’ve had pretty decent luck with both the accuracy and turn-around on the service, but your mileage may, of course, vary. Filter and customise your Jotts Sending yourself email from a dial tone can be pretty handy, but only if your Jott messages don’t get lost amidst your other messages. You could filter all of them into one folder or label by the “@jott.com” sender, but why not organise your messages by topic? If your email server allows the common username+label@email.com format (detailed here), simply add that extended email as a Jott contact and set your filters accordingly (like I’ve done to record my feature ideas). If your can’t accept “+” emails, think of a unique phrase you can say in your messages—like, say, “gigantic awesome idea”—and have your email client file accordingly. If you find yourself using Jott a lot, and you can use this method to set up a Gmail/Jott to-do list. Group and print projects/ideas If you’d rather not mingle your wandering thoughts with your email inbox, you can create folders to store specific memos to yourself on the “My Jott” page. Say “Home,” “Work,” or whatever else when asked who you’re Jotting, and the messages will end up inside folders that have easy printing tools. iGoogle users can also go email-free with the Jott gadget. Make your organising tools more accessible Great organisation systems provide a single place to drop all your to-dos, events and thoughts, but what if you’ve just remembered a task while you’re walking to the store? Jott has you covered. The site provides built-in Links for many web-based systems previously mentioned on Lifehacker—including To-do manager Toodledo Expense tracker Xpenser Calendar and task organizer 30 Boxes Vitalist, a frequent commenter favourite If you have Google Calendar hooked up your own preferred scheduling app, just add it to your Links and you can call in your quick-add items (like, say, “9 p.m. Sunday Watch The Wire“) for easy posting. But perhaps the strongest Jott integration tool is Remember the Milk, which already can seamlessly insert itself into Google Calendar and Gmail. Put them all together and there aren’t too many places where you won’t be able to record your thoughts and ideas for later use. Keep Sandy close at hand (platonically) Sure, she’s technically an organisation tool as well, but the integration of Jott and