Greg Sterling has tried the new Vlingo app for Android and posted his impressions on the Internet2Go Blog. The routine incorporation of “speechable moments” keeps expanding and it is a good practice to make spoken input one of the alternatives for wildly popular mobile services.

Vlingo is engaged in a feature war with some of the largest “brands” in mobile services and computing. Google and Nuance (under both the Dragon and Apple brands) continually refine their roster speech-enabled mobile services. AT&T has recently showcased Speak4it enabling people to use their voice to conduct local, map-based search. The speech group at Microsoft hopes that the seamless integration of speech with other modalities (including gestures) will create the most pleasant and efficient mobile user experience.

These companies, along with specialists like ShoutOut, collectively and constantly define and redefine “state-of-the-art” for mobile speech. In this environment, differentiation is fleeting but, ultimately, the idea is to enable users to seamlessly toggle among input modes. That means they can talk, tap, type or gesture as they see fit in the context of what they are trying to accomplish.

Categories: Articles

Tags: Speech recognition, mobile services, Microsoft, Nuance, Google