(Credit:
JaJah / eHarmony)
Online dating services eHarmony and Match.com on Thursday plan to begin using a special version of JaJah that lets users make anonymized voice calls to people they're interested in.
Unlike streaming video, which is a hot trend in online dating sites, users are limited to standard telephone communication like voice calls, SMS, and voice mail. Both sites are using a version of JaJah that's focused specifically on privacy permissions. Users can't just call someone without the person on the other authorizing it first. The same goes for both voice and text messages. Also, neither party gets the other person's real phone number, meaning you can safely use your regular phone without worrying about your number getting in the wrong hands.
Along with the security features that let people connect for the first time, it's also simple to cut off communication entirely. If either party decides that they no longer want to talk to the other person, it's as simple as de-authorizing them. This keeps them from being able to call again, and relegates them to using the dating service's standard messaging tools.
JaJah says the service has been in limited beta testing on Match.com since early March. Several other dating sites are also providing it for some of their members, although those sites have not yet been announced.
If you're already bored of getting English translated to Mandarin through JaJah, TwitterFone, another mobile service with voice recognition savvy, has put out a neat update that's sure to burn through your mobile phone minutes. You can now listen to the last 10 tweets from your Twitter pals and respond to any of them that you'd like using the same speech-to-text system in place for publishing tweets of your own.
It's certainly not as fast or easy to parse voice messages as the mobile version of Twitter (m.twitter.com), but if you're on an older handset and don't have a data plan, this is about as easy as it gets to stay in touch with Twitter without buying new hardware. It's also nice enough to list the full names of Twitter users, not just their user name, which could be a good or bad thing depending on how well you know the people you're following.
One thing that was slightly off for me was the time stamping, with tweets from just a few minutes ago being listed as a full hour behind, at least according to TwitterFone's automated system. I'm assuming this is a kink that will be worked out in the future. Otherwise, if you're a big fan of sitting back and enjoying some blurbs from your friends while on the go (spoken like sweet nothings by a female robot), then TwitterFone is right up your alley.
TwitterFone is still in private beta.
Related: Dial2Do: Speak your Twitters, e-mails, SMS messages and more
Telephony service JaJah has launched two completely different voice tools that are both useful in their own right. The first is a new "concierge" service that lets you call any of your contacts with voice dialing using a special local access number. It works even if your handset does not support voice dialing, and will connect you to that person as long as you've synced up your address book with JaJah's.
The other service, called Babel, is more useful for people visiting Beijing as part of this summer's Olympics. By calling a special phone number you can leave a voice message that will be translated to Mandarin in just a few seconds. It's meant to be used as an on-the-go tool for English speakers who are over there to watch the games and who might run into translation issues while getting around.
Unfortunately, Babel requires calling a local U.S., U.K., or Australia local access number to access it, as there's not currently one for China. The good news is that if you're in the depths of a local Chinatown in one of these supported countries, you'll be able to ask for directions or order a dish off a restaurant menu using your phone instead of having to point to it on a menu.
I gave Babel a spin earlier this morning and had mixed results. You might as well give up for things like URLs or long words. Even when I spokes as slowly and as clearly as possible, it managed to flub up more than half of the words in some cases including classics like turning "point" into "porno" and "get" into "Georgia." Regardless, its speed is truly impressive as it spits back results in just a few seconds. You can view my trials with it in the video below, or give it a spin yourself at 1-718-513-2969. You can also find the other local access numbers for the U.K. and Australia here.
If you're a native Mandarin speaker, I'd love to hear how this does with English translations. Let me know in the comments.
JaJah is an emerging "dial-around" service. From your computer, you tell it who you want to call, and it dials your phone, then the other party, and connects you to each other. The advantage of using a dial-around product like this: cost. JaJah charges 3 cents a minute for international calls.
(Credit:
JaJah)
The iPhone's strong Web browser should make it a great platform for JaJah, and JaJah just created a special iPhone version of its site, FreeYouriPhone.com. You use the slick interface and big screen to initiate a call, then wait a second for the iPhone to ring you before it connects to the other side.
Unfortunately, this is an instance where the iPhone's browser-only model for third-party applications fails us. The Safari browser does not, apparently, have access to the iPhone's contact list (or calendar). That's a good thing from a security perspective--you wouldn't want any old random site reading your iPhone's internal directory--but it stinks for communications services like JaJah. Who wants to have to enter phone numbers again into an iPhone that already has them stored?
Also, in my testing, the JaJah iPhone site wasn't quite cooked. The interface took up a tiny portion of the iPhone's screen, and was unreadable without a lot of two-finger zooming. That's fixable, of course. But the deeper integration issue may not be.
See also my favorite dial-around product, CallWave (review), as well as other creative telephony services Jangl, Jaxtr, and GrandCentral (news).
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