Alright alright
Joost failed. Here's a little app that certainly does not fail -- in fact it really is good. I have used it for a few days now and it hasn't had any changes in how well it works. Remember back a monthish ago when Google came out with
their voice searching app that was all the rage? Now add in some voice dialing, voice map search, and voice social networking updates all in one. Yup that's vlingo.
Voice Dial
Come on Apple why isn't voice dial enabled by default? It needs to be. Oh well at least the AppStore opens up the possibility to take up the slack where Apple fails. Vlingo does some voice dialing and it does it well. Just a couple short minutes of setup and you'll be ready to dial your contacts by voice instead of getting bogged down scrolling through the iPhone's default contact book.
BE WARNED though. Vlingo copies your contacts to their servers to make their voice dailing solution work. It doesn't warn you that that's what it is doing. If you are paranoid about them having your contacts list the don't use it. It only copies names not numbers -- that isn't so bad.
Voice Search
You can't have a voice app without a voice search as far as I'm concerned and of course vlingo handles voice search without a problem. Just hit the button on the main screen and say something like "web search awesome iphone modding" and up your search results will pop. Another nice feature is you can use vlingo to do either a Yahoo or Google search. I don't know why you would want to use Yahoo instead of Google but you can.
Voice Maps
The default map.app is pretty awesome for looking up what you're looking for. But what if you don't want to type? Vlingo has you covered. Say "find sushi" and up pops the map search results for sushi. Voice > typing every day of the week.
Voice Facebook / Twitter
These days updating your status on social networking sites is all the rage (practically an addiction. Yeah there are plenty of apps out there on the AppStore than handle Facebook and Twitter that give you a lot more options than just shooting out status updates to your friends/followers/stalkers but for status updates voice is the way to go. After a simple setup (entering in your login details) press talk and you've updated your stats -- can't be simpler.
All in all
Vlingo is one of if not the best voice app on the AppStore at the moment. It understands my good ol' boy drawl without much issue. It does web searches map searches and voice dialing efficiently which are the things I care about. It has made it to the front page of my homescreen. It works quickly and tends to be more accurate than the other options like Say Who, Say What, and Google so just drop them and get this one instead if you can get over the bit of shadyness where vlingo copies your contact list without notification. Further more word on the interwebs says that vlingo will be providing updates in the coming months that will add even more voice functionality to the iPhone.
To download
here is the the link -- oh did I mention it is free?
12-04-2008, 03:22 PM
Linear Mode
