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Mobile voice search company Vlingo on Wednesday released Vlingo 3.0 for BlackBerry. Like Vlingo 2.0 before it, Vlingo 3.0 uses your voice commands to text other Vlingo BlackBerry users, search the Web, dial a number, create a note, update Facebook and Twitter, and open other applications. New to Vlingo 3.0 is a robotic voice that reads back your actions (like, "calling Home"), plus two premium features. One lets you text any contact (not just others using Vlingo's BlackBerry service), and the other creates, replies, and forwards e-mails based on your dictation. These two services, packaged into Vlingo Plus, cost $17.99 for a one-time fee.

Since Vlingo 2.0 allowed for e-mail dictation in version 2, it's disappointing that the premium set-up in version 3 yanks back a core feature. The benefit is having Vlingo read back the contents of your message rather than having you view it yourself. This makes the move to audio a move to hands-free composition as well, which is useful if moving your lips is the only motion you can spare. However, as Vlingo 2.0 won't expire, those who want to continue dictating e-mail for free and who are uninterested in the application's other enhancements should consider skipping the upgrade.

In addition to the technological add-ons, Vlingo 3.0 officially plays nice with some Bluetooth and all wired headsets. So long as you pair the devices and press the side button, you can rattle off voice prompts through the headset without lifting the BlackBerry to your mouth. If you're driving while calling a number or dictating an e-mail or note, the new setup, along with the just-debuted audio playback feature, helps keep your eyes focused on the road.

(Credit: Vlingo)

As a final addition, Vlingo 3.0 becomes compatible with the BlackBerry Storm, Bold, Curve 8900, and Peal Flip phones, and adds some tweaks to make Vlingo work seamlessly on many more phones tied to corporate policies. (Company admins will still have the final say, however, on any programs they choose to lock out.)

The hands-on test
As with Vlingo 2.0, setting up Vlingo 3.0 takes about five minutes. Following the setup wizard, you'll first configure a hardware convenience key on the phone that activates Vlingo when you push it. This literal side door into the app obviates the need to launch it from the phone's start screen. After that, you'll also be shown a quick tutorial and will need to wait while the app indexes your address book. Figure in a few more minutes to set up your Twitter and Facebook credentials the first time you update your status messages with each social service.

How did the app actually do? Very well, although still not perfectly. My Facebook status update message, "Testing Vlingo 3.0" retrieved "testing Vlingo tree Plato," and did not always capitalize the 't' in testing, which for an editor is a serious offense. Luckily, Vlingo lets you view a message before sending it on its way, or reads it back to you, if you're a premium user.

The robotic read-back was also accurate in our tests, and is optional. In the settings are adjustments for volume, the voice's gender, and length of the message--it's here you can also silence the speech. Yet with this voice playback, headset support, and the new premium e-mail and texting services, Vlingo is by far the strongest voice service offering for BlackBerry, and is poised to make a buck to boot.

Related story: Vlingo one-ups Google with a better voice-powered iPhone app

Voice-transcription service Vlingo has launched a really fantastic new iPhone application (download) that lets users talk into their phones to search the Web, dial contacts, and update their status on Twitter and Facebook. Much like Google's iPhone app which was released early last month, users are able to do all this without ever having to use their keyboard.

The big difference between Google's efforts and Vlingo's is the addition of Yahoo search, meaning users can pick the search engine of their choice. You're also able to auto-dial contacts by speaking their name. This, along with speech-to-text search of Google Maps, and the social network status updates gives users the utility of TwitterFone and the SayWho iPhone application in one piece of software.

I've been using the app over the past week and found it to be far more useful than Google's offering. It may be missing the really great (though iPhone SDK rule breaking) option to raise the handset to your head to begin a search, but it makes up for it with quite a bit more utility right from the get-go. The voice dialing is also exceptionally cool. Early on in the iPhone's lifetime there were a handful of jailbroken applications that let you do this, and they were genuinely useful before the inclusion of contact search. The added benefit of using Vlingo's system is that it cooks up a special voice recognition profile for your phone book since you initially have to send it in for processing.

The Twitter and Facebook update tool is also really well done, offering you a preview of the text before you send it, as well as a text counter to show you how many characters you have left. You're able to make any edits in case the transcription flubbed your words too. After having used TwitterFon and having its mistakes set in stone, this is a godsend.

Going forward the one thing that would really push this app over the top is a built-in browser, giving you option to open up search results within the app itself. Currently it jettisons you out to Safari, which you must then exit and re-open the Vlingo app if you intend on doing another voice-powered search.

Vlingo is free and should be available in the iTunes app store in the next few hours. Below are some screenshots of its interface. We'll have a video of it in action shortly.

Vlingo lets you update your Twitter and Facebook status, look up and call phone contacts, and search the Web--all with just your voice. (click to enlarge)

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Update: I've embedded the video below, and the app is now live.

Voice services are the next generation of technology evolving from person-to-person phone calls. Voice services can solve some of the big problems like having to press buttons or pay attention to what you're doing. That's good for people with vision problems and for road warriors. In the past, people associated automated voice services with the fictional computer of the Starship Enterprise, but these days we're able to use it for mobile Web services like GOOG-411 and 1-800-DIRECTIONS, which showed off their stuff in the last session.

First up was Lypp, which offers a mobile conference-calling platform. Lypp mixes SMS and instant messaging for Blackberry and phones running Windows Mobile. The service has an API, which lets you build in Lypp functionality to other Web applications or services. Their consumer front-end works with an IM bot you can message with the names of the people you want to talk to, and the service will pull them into a conference call by using your phone book. It's also got a scheduling utility that lets you set up a call for a later date.

The company makes its cash on a per-minute model by charging users for the call, although it intends to move to an all-you-can-eat flat rate in the future. Unlike a FreeConferenceCall.com there's no free version. The creators of Lypp don't think that model is stable or sustainable due to its foundation of shaky local law that works by jumping the call through various states with loopholes.

Talkster is a voice-and-text platform. In sum, it lets you call your international buddies by using local numbers to avoid some of those heavy per-minute charges. The service supplements itself with short advertisements. We took a look at the service a few weeks back and came away impressed with their savings over a standard international call, but a little turned off by the amount of advertising that's been integrated to make it so cheap.

Vlingo is a speech-recognition service that lets users talk into a mobile-phone application that turns speech into written words. It offers a free speech-to-text search application on its Web site, running on just a few phones for Sprint and AT&T. The real hope, however, is to make money from the technology platform, which adapts and learns from its users speech. To see if your phone is supported, go here.

Wrapping up the session was Yap which has a handy application that turns your voice into text for IM and SMS conversations and a slew of other mobile applications. The service showed its goods a few months ago at the TechCrunch40 Conference. One of Yap's creators, Igor Jablokov, talked about his company's advertising platform and the potential to pull in contextual ads based on what people are talking about. While the service isn't available yet (they're trying to get a good deal with a carrier), Jablokov did a cool live demo on stage showing the application being able to discern spelling between "serial" and "cereal" based on usage in two different sentences. Creepy.

Still to come: advertising, social networking, and more.