25 June 2009 @ 13:52Voice Control Texting for the iPhone
It sounds like an oxymoron, I know, but texting via Voice Control seems like the natural next step for Apple’s iPhone.
You may be thinking, “If you’re going to open your mouth to speak a message, why not just call the person instead of message them?” Well, there are often times when the circumstances don’t make a phone call feasable for one or both parties involved in the conversation. For instance, when you’re in a library or another quiet environment.
So, then what’s the point of speaking a text message? Firstly, speaking is usually a lot quicker than typing. Secondly, texting while driving is dangerous and often times illegal. This is where Voice Control text messaging would come into play. Apple has already built in voice recognition into the iPhone 3G S, so it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch to extend Voice Control’s abilities to speech-to-text message compositon.
Such a feature enhancement would allow Apple to tout the iPhone as one of the safest phones on the market.
Cross your fingers and look for this feature in a future iPhone update.
by Jon | 5 comments | Tags: iphone, iPhone 3G S, iphone os, sms, text messaging, voice control
Posted in iphone | Link to this
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The challenge with speak to text is translating from proper grammar to textese and doing it only when the user wants to. For instance “give me a call when you’re going to the show” is the proper grammar where “you are” is contracted into “you’re”. Not all people who text want to communicate like 3rd graders and want to differentiate between “there” “their” and “they’re”. Then sometimes we can’t when we are forced to fit our message into 160 characters or less. This software won’t be the easiest thing to develop, but Apple ‘s products are priced high enough where they can afford to pay for the development.
vlingo for Blackberry has done this
Vlingo [App Store link] is available for iPhone, but doesn’t seem to do text messaging.
Actually vlingo does do voice texting, in the full version. At least it says it does. I haven’t bought the full version yet though.
If you are looking to ad Voice to Text control to your iPhone then read this thread http://www.surreystore.com/cms/technology/7-apple/16-how-to-add-voice-to-text-for-iphone.html