Webware

Earlier this week, I bashed Google's visual voice mail service for its inability to transcribe my voice messages into understandable English. (OK, most of the article really focuses on a new flexibility in Google Voice, which I do like.) To be fair, poor transcription isn't all Google's fault. They're offering a free service based on a computer-aided technology that improves each year. The real problem is that machine transcription just isn't good enough.

Up until yesterday, I hadn't received more than a handful of visual voice mail message translations imbued with any meaning in my native tongue. In fact, I turned off SMS forwarding because I couldn't handle the streams of nonsensical texts that would pour in for each voice mail left. Thankfully, I won't miss the yucks stemming from mismatched voice-to-text at all, not when I can still read the messages in my online Google Voice in-box over and over again.

Do you have any favorite mistranslations produced by free computer-aided transcription engines? Share yours in the comments--or better yet, e-mail me if you'd like to take place in our anonymous gallery--and I'll share three errata from my in-box below.

The longer the message, the more creative the transcription.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

Despite its brevity, the only accurate word in this transcription is "hello."

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

That's right! You go and procure the message, people!

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

This activities ribbon is a welcome addition to YouMail on iPhone.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

We're big fans of visual voice mail, which lets you view, and then listen to, your voice mail messages in any order you'd like, not just chronologically. It's even better when that service is free (voice-to-text transcriptions, however, are typically extra). To that end, we were happy to see that YouMail's visual voice mail app for iPhone updated on Thursday, getting features such as push notification, and a new activities ribbon that lets you reply to and forward messages. You can also now organize messages by folders.

In addition, YouMail 1.5 includes a feature for toggling between speaker and handset mode, the ability to switch on automatic message playing (in the Settings), and long-awaited slide-to-delete functionality for messages. The revised app also adds the fun, but minor feature of shaking the iPhone to refresh the screen.

Sadly, YouMail 1.5 constantly crashed on us in the first 15 minutes of use, even after several reboots. It seems to have stabilized now, so it could have been a mild case of iPhone indigestion.

YouMail Visual Voicemail for iPhone competes with visual voice mail services like Google Voice, which is in beta, which does not have a dedicated iPhone app, and which offers an iPhone Web experience that my colleague Rafe Needleman gently referred to as "a load of crap."

What do you think of the new YouMail, of Google Voice, or of visual voice mail in general? Share your thoughts in the comments.

The first thing an employer sees when they evaluate your candidacy for a job is your resume. It tells them what you're all about, where you've been, and what you're capable of bringing to the table. It's an extremely important sheet of paper (or these days, digital document).

Realizing that, I've found some useful tools on the Web that will not only give you ideas on writing your resume, but they'll also help you improve it. If you're looking for a job, you'll definitely want to try out at least some of these sites.

Improve that resume

CareerBuilder: CareerBuilder might specialize in job searching, but the site is also a great place to get some help with your resume.

On CareerBuilder's Resume page, you'll find several useful tools for improving your resume. One option is to get paired up with a CareerBuilder resume expert who will help you write your resume. If you choose that option, you can work with the expert to create a resume that's directly tailored to your skill sets. You'll receive a first draft of the resume within four days. Prices for that service range from a $175 one-time fee for recent grads to $279 for director or "c-level" executives.

If you've already got your resume started, you might want to try out CareerBuilder's free resume review. Simply upload your resume to the site and an expert will evaluate your resume. It's a neat service that should come in handy as you start looking for that new job.

CareerBuilder's resume tools help you find the right job.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

HowToWriteAResume: HowToWriteAResume provides several features that aim at making your resume as strong as it can be. But where the site really shines is in its resume builder.

When you start creating your resume on the site, you'll have the option of inputting everything from your name to your achievements throughout your career. The service takes you through six pages that require you to input information. Once complete, you can choose between several resume formats. Unfortunately, the site's free account offers you only one format option. If you want something a little nicer, you'll need to pay a one-time fee of $10.99. I found that the premium resumes are nicer, but whether or not they're worth the price is up for debate.

If you're already happy with your resume, you can use HowToWriteAResume to get expert advice on what to include in the document, as well as some basic tips. It's an all-around useful site. I'm just not convinced that the premium resumes are worth the $10.99 fee.

HowToWriteAResume makes you pick a resume format.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

The smartphone maker made its first BlackBerry Web Development Plug-In for Eclipse available on Tuesday, along with version 1.2 of its plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio. The tools allow developers to build BlackBerry Web applications within the widely used Eclipse and Visual Studio environments.

"The BlackBerry developer tools portfolio aims to bring together the best of Java and Web development for the creation of Web applications that are integrated with core BlackBerry smartphone functions for a seamless, intuitive, and robust user experience," BlackBerry platform group chief Alan Brenner said in a statement.

Both plug-ins include BlackBerry smartphone simulators for application testing, together with application profiling for checking on the data traffic and load time implications of Web content used in the applications.

The Eclipse plug-in, which is compatible with version 3.4 of the environment, allows the debugging and profiling of HTML and CSS-using Web pages, and of rich Internet applications using Ajax, Silverlight, PHP, ASP, Ruby on Rails, JSP, and Python.

The new Visual Studio plug-in--the first version of which came out two years ago--targets the 2008 version of that environment, and aids the creation of simple Web pages or rich applications using Ajax and ASP.Net.

David Meyer of ZDNet UK reported from London.

(Credit: YouMail)

YouMail's visual voice mail app for iPhone may look less sexy than the sleek, crafted application interfaces we've grown used to, but in its first effort, functionality will be more important than form.

This last weekend, users of YouMail's freemium Visual Voicemail Plus service were able to start reading and responding to voice messages from iPhones. Like rival visual voice mail services, YouMail lets you manage voice messages like e-mail messages in exchange for making the service your default mobile answering machine. In addition to playing back voice messages in any order you choose, you're able to save, delete, and respond from YouMail.com or from your phone.

Transcribing the voice call into text costs extra with a tiered pricing plan. The personalized greeting messages you can tailor to favorite callers is free.

Future versions will likely take advantage of the push notification slated for Apple's iPhone 3.0 software update, due out June 17.

To celebrate the release, YouMail is announcing a contest on June 16. YouMail will enter anyone who downloads Visual Voicemail Plus on the iPhone or BlackBerry in a drawing to win a year of its Read-It Select Unlimited free transcription service, valued at $329.99.

YouMail is available on BlackBerry and iPhone, and can be found as a beta app for Android.

Data visualizations are a great way to make something complex more easily understood from any spreadsheet or table. Verifiable, a free visualization tool does just that, by quickly organizing uploaded data sets into charts that can be customized and manipulated using a drag and drop control scheme that feels a lot like making a playlist in iTunes.

What's interesting here is that the service is putting both the charts and the data in the same place, so you can go behind the curtain to double check to see the source numbers. The other day when we wrote a follow up on the TechCrunch50 and Demo conferences and showed what was live and what was dead, we included charts, but in order to back everything up we had to drop the source spreadsheet in there, too. With Verifiable, the source data would have been there, but only seen when users clicked on the charts.

There are number of ways to get your data onto the service. You can upload from your hard drive, or paste the data by pasting it into a text box. However my favorite is by linking it up to Google Docs and Spreadsheets which lets you suck in your data from the cloud. You can even narrow it down by what part of the spreadsheet you want to get the numbers from.

I'll be honest here, I don't have a whole lot of use for this in my daily routine, but compared to some other data comparison services like Tablefy, iCharts and Swivel, Verifiable's Web app feel seems more attuned to folks who need to remix and re-order data they already have.

Here's a sample chart. To see all the fun data behind it, you'll have to click on it.

Zeroing in on that important missed call is YouMail's number-one feature.

(Credit: YouMail)

Since its inception, YouMail, a visual voicemail service for mobile phones, has had one big problem. You could view and play your mobile phone's voicemail messages online, or--beginning lat June--by pointing the mobile browser to YouMail.com, but messages weren't stored on the device itself.

Starting Wednesday, YouMail has begun to change that with a native YouMail in-box for BlackBerry phones. Visual Voicemail Plus is a free downloadable app that stores your incoming voice messages along with the caller's name, number, and time of call.

In addition to viewing and playing messages in any order you'd like, those who have signed up for the free or premium transcription service will be able to read the message content.

Other online features have carried over as well, including interacting with the voice files by downloading, saving, and forwarding them, or posting them to social networks.

The latter has always been the creepiest application, and in my opinion, a misguided attempt to tap into social networking trends. It's true that replaying calls for amusement, blackmail, or punitive action has been a common fate of cell phone messages for much longer than actor Alec Baldwin's damning outburst back in 2007, but why make it so easy to push a private call to the public domain? Let's just hope I'm the only Debbie Downer here envisioning embarrassing abuses of an innocent call.

But back to the app at hand.

YouMail's free and prmeium transcription services carry over to the mobile in-box.

(Credit: YouMail)

While I'll certainly be the first to welcome this native app with open arms, I will point out that it's a bit basic in the design department. We're sure to see more style come to the download in future releases.

The opening of YouMail's API, now in limited beta, means we're sure to see a proliferation of development, including YouMail's porting to other mobile platforms, and to other apps and widgets as a plug-in.

For now YouMail's Visual Voicemail Plus application will work on the BlackBerry Pearl, Curve, Bold, and Storm running version 4.3 or higher of the operating system, and only if you're with Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile carriers. New users can sign up for a free account from the Visual Voicemail Plus interface or online.

The globe shows the activity of Facebook users across the planet at 4:37 a.m. PST. The East Coast of the U.S. is a beehive of social activity.

(Credit: Facebook)

Some Facebook engineers came up with a visualization of user activity by the social network's 120 million active users across the planet. According to TechCrunch, the concept (named The Palantír of Orthanc after an object from The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, was created at a Facebook hackathon and could be turned into a product. Check the video of the visualization.

Visual search engine Searchme has a sexy new iPhone app that brings its signature Cover-Flow-like interface to the phone's 3.5-inch display. Search results come in the form of large thumbnails with short content summaries underneath. To browse through them you simply flick your finger across the screen, just like you would with album covers in the phone's iPod application.

The app also supports pinch gestures for zooming in on thumbnails. This lets you see the the details of a page before visiting it in Safari--something that can be done with a simple double tap on any result. This may seem like a trivial feature, but it can be immensely helpful, and in some cases even prevent you from having to visit the site at all. In my case I was able to pull up a restaurant's address just by zooming in, saving me some time and data.

Searchme knows when you've flipped it on its side and will display the search results in gorgeous Cover Flow-style.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The application makes use of the iPhone's accelerometer, and can tell when you've got it in landscape mode. When flipped, you get an additional two thumbnails on the screen, and it does away with the summaries entirely. It's also marvelously fun to zoom back and forth.

This app is definitely more than eye candy. Over a 3G connection it took just 3 seconds to bring up search results that I was able to flip through, and another 15 to stream in the thumbnails. During that loading time I was able to browse through the titles and summaries with zero lag which is really impressive.

Searchme is free and can be found in the app store (iTunes link).

Previous Searchme coverage:
Searchme tries music streaming to attract users
Search interfaces of tomorrow you can try today
Searchme nabs $31 million from Google backer, others