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A view from the Big Apple (Conchango offices in New York City)
I've noticed that there is surge of voice mobile applications on the scene lately: - Grand Central: Google bought these guys and switched it to an invite-only service while in beta (and at the same time, eliminated the ability for you to upload your own custom ring tones, choosing now from just the list they provide). The concept is to provide a single "virtual" number that rings on multiple physical phones (they also support Gizmo VOIP too). They offer many ways to customize and manage the calls you get and have unlimited voice mail storage too. They do have a mobile enabled version of their site. I think they have a lot of potential to become a killer application if only they would provide an open API to their service. For example, they do not offer any native clients (e.g. Windows Mobile or Blackberry) nor do they have voice mail to text conversion - both of these could be provided by third parties if they had an open API.
- YouMail - Cell Phone Voice Mail with Personalized
Greetings and Online Retrieval is a free service that takes over the
voicemail service from the carrier where
you can pick up your voicemail in the usual way, or have it emailed it
to you as an audio attachment, and of course you can store it all forever. It also has visual
voicemail and you can customize your greetings for your contacts. I like the fact that you can set up multiple phones to send to the service, for example, mobile and work. They also have a huge library of pre-recorded greeting so this is a great service for people who want to jazz up their boring voicemail service.
- SimulSays [Beta] is a great service I have used. It replaces your existing voicemail service and converts your voicemail messages into text messages which you can then have sent via SMS or e-mail. They provide unlimited voicemail storage and have beta clients for BlackBerry and Windows Mobile. I met these guys at a show once and they are growing like crazy. They told me that their translation is 100% computerized with no human intervention (apparently most other services do use some level of computer and human combination for translation)
- GotVoice - Another service that will convert your cell, home and
work voicemail to text and sends it to your phone and email. I've not tried them so I can't comment on the service yet.
- SpinVox - These UK based guys offer many different voice applications and are well worth checking out. They have a voicemail to text service similar to SimulSays but go further and offer services to allow you to dictate your blog, send yourself a memo, send an instant message (SMS), update your social message status (Twitter, Jaiku and Facebook) and more all by voice.
- Jott is a free (ad supported) voicemail to text or voicemail to
email service. You leave a voicemail message at the Jott phone number,
from your registered cell phone, and the message gets translated into
text and delivered to your email inbox or phone sms, if you send it to
yourself (reminder, calendar item etc.), or it gets sent as an email to
anyone you pick from your contacts list.
- Call Wave - Thse guys provide mobile Visual Voicemail, voice, text and fax solutions at very reasonable prices. They do have voice to text translation but I've found it very basic in comparison to other services (but right now it is free so you can't beat the price). Definitely worth checking out.
- Pinger - A hands free
alternative to SMS. According to their website: Pinger lets you trade voice messages with anyone's mobile phone. There is no ringing or lengthy prompts and it's more personal than text because it's your voice. Plus you can send
a Pinger message to a group with one call. Pinger is free and works on
any US mobile phone.
- Nuance Voice Control - Now here is something that is different. This is an application that installs on your mobile device. You then use it to compose
emails, texts, play tracks from your media player, open web
pages, or check weather all from your voice commands. Since mobile devices don't have the processing power to do great voice recognition, this application uses a back-end service to do the work (hence the monthly charge) and because of this is extremely accurate. If you don't have a proper keyboard on your mobile device or you are in some way physically handicapped (or just don't like typing on tiny keyboards) or you want to be more productive while driving I think this is must have application/service!
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