Give your thumbs a well-deserved rest, without worrying about your productivity suffering because smartphones just got smarter.
On June 25, a Cambridge company that has been working on developing voice recognition software for mobile devices unveiled an app for RIM’s BlackBerry smartphones, making it the first company and the first mobile device to offer a completely voice-powered interface. Vlingo Corp’s new BlackBerry app allows users to send text messages and emails, browse the web, open apps on their devices (such as BlackBerry Maps and BlackBerry Calendar), search and browse contacts, dial phone calls, and send notes to each other. themselves, all using the power of their own voice.
This last utility, sending voice notes to yourself, is provided in a new (and long-awaited) new feature called Note2Self.
Undoubtedly, this new progressive development in telecommunications technology will make it easier, faster and safer for people on the go to get their work done wherever they go, without having to concentrate all their attention by squinting at their small screens and looking for groping with their uncomfortable keyboards. Voice recognition technology promises to make using smartphones more efficient and cost-effective.
Skeptics of speech recognition technology might charge that the software will certainly require people to modify the way they speak to ensure their devices understand them and to learn and memorize a whole new “vocabulary”: a kind of verb shorthand. to control the various commands. . However, with Vlingo on the scene, nothing could be further from the truth.
As it turns out, users of the new Vlingo speech recognition software will be pleasantly surprised (perhaps even surprised) to find that they don’t need to change how they speak or what they say to control their smartphone’s operations with their voice. That’s the goal of Vlingo’s efforts: to make smartphones capable of understanding the human voice and human speech, the way people actually speak, what they say, and how they say it.
And of course, users can also integrate voice and typing controls into the use of their devices, without having to give up one for the other. This is especially useful when performing operations that may simply work better with the soon-to-be-archaic power of touch.
The Vlingo voice recognition app for BlackBerry will be available for free, although wireless carriers (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, etc.) may decide to charge their own fees for using the service.
Vlingo’s entry into the field of speech recognition began with a similar product developed for use in the oneSearch mobile portal provided by Yahoo! Currently, the new application for BlackBerries is only compatible with the latest models: BlackBerry Curve, BlackBerry Pearl and BlackBerry 8800 series. Vlingo has also announced that they are in the process of developing voice recognition applications for smartphones running Windows Mobile, Apple’s iPhone and Google’s upcoming Android operating system.