Typing on the iPhone/iPod Touch's keyboard can be arduous. This is never more evident than when trying to bang out messages in several instant-messaging conversations at once. Shape Services, the makers of the popular IM+ instant-messaging app ($9.99 App Store link), have realized this, and are soon rolling out a new version of the app that includes speech-to-text, albeit at a price.
Taking advantage of Apple's recently released in-app payment system, 99 cents a month gets you the feature, meaning that the annual cost of continuing to use it is about $12 a year. Not bad if you're a heavy user. But how well does it work?
In short, it does a decent job, but it still experiences some of the typical pitfalls found in other speech-to-text tools. If you've used Google's search app on the iPhone you know all too well that it can handle some words better than others, and that it works slightly faster when you're on Wi-Fi. The same can be said of IM+.
The app managed to get a few sentences without flaws, but I regularly found myself going into make a quick edit to one or two words each time. That wouldn't be so bad if it didn't take so long to do all the processing. Over 3G, small quips like a four- or five-word reply took around 15 seconds to process and get sent back, whereas full messages took up to 24 seconds. These times were cut a few seconds shorter when on a solid Wi-Fi connection, but still on the long side.
The updated version of the app is in Apple's review queue, meaning it could be out later this week, month, or be rejected outright (although not likely since it's using standard APIs). Besides speech-to-text, the update also adds animated emoticons for whatever service you're using. It's a small touch, but sure to make IM enthusiasts happy. We take a quick look at that and the speech-to-text feature in the video below. Worth noting is that processing times have been sped up for the sake of time, although we make note of that when it occurs:
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
Who doesn't like listening to computer generated human voices for hours at a time? If you're a fan of Microsoft Sam, you should check out Dixero, a service that turns RSS feeds into podcasts you can subscribe to and listen to on your computer or portable devices. The company is showing of its products at this week's Web 2.0 Expo, despite the incredibly noisy show floor.
The listening quality is about the same as Odiogo, a service I looked at a few months back and have used with great success on blogs and news sites that have it integrated. What makes Dixero neat is that you can choose one of three types of voices you'd like to listen to the posts with. It's also nice enough to take your entire OPML file and let you pull in those feeds, then pick which ones you want to fit into individual channels.
The actual player is a little less extensible, offering a simple play/pause button and the option to skip back and forth between posts. You can also grab the RSS feed and subscribe to the feeds as a podcast in your favorite feed catcher. What it's missing is a way to embed it on other sites or swap between the voices--something that's left to the whim of the creator.
Dixero's player lets you skip between blog posts as audio files.
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