Yap does voice to text for your phone

Here's a useful concept: say you're really sick of dealing with your phone's tiny keypad to type in text messages. What if you could simply say what you wanted to write down, and have the tool fill it in for you? Yap is a new service that's trying to fill that need with their new mobile phone client. It's aimed at teens, who the company claims 66% of text while driving. Yap will read off your friend's responses, meaning you don't have to pay attention to what they're writing. The service works both ways, so your friend who has it installed could theoretically have an asynchronous text-only conversation with you too.

In addition to the text app, Yap throws in some integration with popular Web services like Amazon, Digg, Wikipedia, eBay, Facebook, Google News, AOL search, Flickr, Google Photos, Twitter, and Orbitz among others. You can simply say a search term, and it will convert it into a written search query on the correct service right on your phone's browser. The one for Twitter is especially cool since you can just say your status update, and it will convert it into a live Tweet.

The company is planning to support its service through "real time advertisements" which will pull context from your conversation, and serve up relevant ads. Their example showed a conversation about coffee, wherein the app pulled up a link for listings of Starbucks nearby. The service is still in private beta, and launching at this morning's TechCrunch40 conference.

Related: Highly useful: CallWave transcribes your voicemail

Each of these messages came from text-to-speech conversion from Yap. No more typing on your tiny key pad.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

[lmshahft]

Or you could just talk to the person on the phone.

Yes, I realize there are occasions when it's not possible to have a conversation on the phone, but if you're talking to your phone so that it can write a text message for you already, why not just talk on the phone to the other person and eliminate the text message altogether (assuming the other person can talk). I think I'm just one of the few who doesn't particularly like constant text messages between two people who could just have a quick conversation.

[adurstewitz]

True, but what about chat?

This is true, you can just pick up the phone and call, however the same could be said for chat. Why not just pick up the phone. This is an antiquated response to a cool technology.

From what I've read this technology allows you to chat with multiple friends at once, how are you going to do that on the phone? Conference call?

[lsp6]

Always people miss the big picture. Why use a lightbulb when a candle will do? Why use a car when walking will do?? Why use text when u can call. Well how bout if you are deaf i mean really cant hear but you have good verbal skills. Hmm maybe just maybe it would be good to have the conversation in text?? I sure know that after 65 years of being deaf oh and yes i am verbal too it sure is a good idea to be able to converse with hearing people on the phone in a real two way conversation. Even nice when I dont have to have my calles filtered thru a relay assistant. Tho i must say I love my relay assistants they are like part of the family when i make calls. Just the same voice to text is a good good thing. I dont want to leave it to my hearing friends and all the others out there to have a communications tool that i am excluded from because people lack the knowledge of the needs of the deaf and hard of hearing communituy!!!