Insight Community

Asking about smartphone tools is like asking for computer software, which already exists, so I'll discuss that later -- in the mean time, I'll discuss general phone tools.

The tools that we need for phones are fast, free tools. I use goog-411 because it's fast and free. Grandcentral is cool, but it's only free "for now", and presumably as it goes into full swing, it will start to cost money or otherwise become too slow to be useful. For directions to work sent to my phone, they would have to arrive all at once and accurately, or else it is not useful. The iPhone is cool, but it suffers from a bit of overcomplication, in that it takes way longer to get the information from the iphone versus just calling goog-411 , connecting and getting the info that way.

I want to be able to make a phone call and get any information I could get over the internet, in the same way that goog-411 gets me phone numbers. Maybe a service that helps me find the phone number of the place that would have the info I need would be good. For example, if I want movie tickets, I should be able to call and say 'movie tickets' and the theater name, and get a service where i can purchase the tickets over the phone. I don't think most people would need a smartphone if they could just call and get the same information. Furthermore, a phone's natural interface is the phone itself, so forcing people to hen-peck on the handset isn't really helping (especially if they're trying to drive -- and let's face it, people are going to use their phones while driving).

Also, on phone services that I'm calling into, I want to be able to skip ahead in the menu so i can save time. If every time i call a service, i have to wait through 30 seconds of explanation for how it works, that's really wasting my time over say a month of calling twice a day (that would waste about 30 cell-minutes that I have to pay for!) I should be able to skip over the instructions with some simple key press and get to the service itself right away. This would save the service bandwidth as well by reducing the average call time.

(Warning.. Lengthy, and detailed)

____ 

  »  My experience with Grand Central:

  »  Regarding Voicemail-To-Text services :

 I've written and blogged about voicemail-to-text services before, they simply don't work. With present day
configurations, they never  will - they defy the basic tenets of quality speech recognition.

 To-wit: 

1. To recognize any individual's speech patterns, the recognizer must have a voice model, a/k/a "speech profile".
   
   In the real world: The holy grail, Speaker Independent speech recognition, is capricious, at best.
   
   Some organizations, E.G. Google, have used massive amounts of pronunciation data (a/k/a "speech samples")
   that are collected via Goog411 to try and overcome this, but that's a two-edged sword.
   
   For a remote server to examine and compare even a simple phrase like "Angie's 4th Street Prime Steakhouse"
   against many millions of possible positive recognitions, requires tremendous processing/memory overhead and
   a terabyte-sized lexicon that is all but impossible to manage & maintain. Moreover, even the best recognizer
   in the world (Windows Vista™) would be very sorely taxed to parse a lexicon probably close to the size of
   Wikipedia's sum total of text.
   
   Some outfits, like SpinVox, claim they have compiled massive grammars for many languages, and thousands
   of accents and dialects. This notion is absurd.
   
   Think about this proposition for a moment:
   
   A call comes in from a Spanish-speaking person. The recognizer decides "This is probably Spanish."
   
   Now, it must decide: "Is this Castilian Spanish / a Mexican dialect / a Puerto Rican dialect /
   a South American dialect (if so, which one)" etc., etc.
   
   Then the system must compare (above) four separate words; "angies" | "4th" | "street" | "prime" | "steakhouse"
   to at least a few hundred thousand multi-lingual, multiple-dialect-specific grammars; then it must decide if these 
   utterances are a) Single, non-related words; b) An associated string becoming a phrase or c) A complete
   sentence requiring punctuation. Now, the recognizer must then return again to multiple and distinctly different
   repositories, each one containing hundreds of thousands of grammars.. 
   
   The process above, mandates a corpus that equals the aggregate of text, e.g., on Microsoft's entire website.
   It is beyond ludicrous, to believe any  transcription service could possibly, via some gargantuan pie-in-the-sky 
   automated process simultaneously parse a few million possible recognitions, against just as many possible
   millions of grammars..
   
   And who, or what sorts-&-organizes-&-maintains this miracle database of millions of possible grammars, for
   these billion or so uttered words and phrases, pray tell? Or maybe the lookup/get call process, of this alleged
   greater-than-NASA-sized, multi-lingual, multi-dialect database is simply part of the magical processes?
   
   Mark Hopkins, veteran blogger and well respected Assistant Editor at Mashable.com gave SpinVox a pretty fair
   shake for several tests, using a landline, in a quiet environment. 
   Here is an excerpt from Mark's SpinVox testing:
   
   What I said:
   “It’s that YouTube or whatever may have helped them get there quicker, citing the new Apple UGC ad
   that came out as an example.”
   What I Said, SpinVoxed:
   “It’s that a youtube or whatever may have helped them get their quick or setting the new apple UGC ad.." 
   Ignoring the glaring transcription errors, the most grievous error here begs the question;
     What if this was a business, mission-critical voicemail, and a client was instructing Mark to visit
     Mashable.com.. but what Mark receives, instead reads: Nashville.com ?
   
   As any speech recognition user will quickly note, an error rate worse than 3%-4% is unacceptable.
   When the novelty wears off, the transcription accuracy demonstrated above is worthless for anything
   other than occasional entertainment purposes.
   
   Then we come to the matter of topology, and recognition thresholds. All telephone connections are not
   created equal, so each and every incoming call must be examined; particularly when dealing with international telecommunications from various countries with a wide range of quality and audio bandwidth specifications.
   
   Additionally, point of origin hardware-based noise canceling is impossible, so there must be some other type of
   analysis as to what the recognizer should treat as speech, and what is ambient non-speech noise; This analysis
   and it's results would require, almost certainly, a dynamic recognition threshold algorithm. Such technology, 
   in and of itself, demands incredibly fast & nimble processes that simply don't exist, yet.
   
   
2. The answer to the quandary is that humans must be involved, at least for the foreseeable near future, until
   technology like the IBM Cell/BE voice channel processors are mainstream, and memory modules are smaller,
   cheaper and with far more storage.
   
   The problem with using humans to assist with transcription? Humans require wages, facilities, management.
   These requirements make the operation costs far too expensive to amortize across a sketchy customer base. 
   For a successful, international, large scale voicemail-to-text service to keep their doors open, 100's of humans
   would have to be listening to thousands of voicemails daily, working 24/7 shifts; a Huge operations overhead.
   
   Consumers won't pay much past $4.99 monthly (if that much), for such a service; and it's just not that useful
   to a wide enough cross-section of users to hope that a service like SpinVox would have revenues from literally
   hundreds of thousands of customers paying several dollars a month.
   
   So the concept of an even reasonably accurate, speaker independent  voicemail transcription remains,
   at best, very, very cloudy.
   
   
3. Some good news:
   
   There are parallel solutions, for the inevitable "I want to do many things with speech recognition, from my
   mobile phone, over the voice channel, regardless if my access is working/ I'm in a Hotspot".., 
   as mobile speech recognition becomes rapidly ubiquitous..
   
   
   • Adondo Corporation, makers of PAL technology, have an application which assigns user's workstations
     and/or home PC's a phone number, where a speech profile resides, trained by a single user. Users can
     then call their own computer, and do a wide variety of tasks by speech alone (including managing Outlook)
     and the recognition is far more than impressive. Adondo has now migrated the best of this technology to
     a server environment, where a "remote" profile resides, and callers can now dial their uniquely assigned
     phone number, and just talk the night away - getting amazing transcription accuracy.
     
   
   
   • Sendchat, from SR Virtual is introducing a universal speech-to-text service that
                 &nbs p;    a) Stores and accesses remote speech profiles for each user
                       b) Uses a custom designed, telephony-centric recognizer
                       c) Will work from any mobile phone with an Internet connection
     
     The SendChat system is still a few months from a launch, but I have spoken with one of the principals of
     this rather exciting alternative to tedious "text-thumbing", and they are most definitely on the right track;
     they are very quality conscious.

 

 

In Europe now, people are allowed to use their cell phone during flight, and in my option, that influence will eventually cause a strong desire to eventually allow cell phones to be used during flight in the U.S.    However, one very prominent and prolific roadblock still insists.    Business travelers and others want to make calls during flight, and airlines and wireless companies want to make revenue from this service, but most people onboard don’t want to be bothered by people yapping while they fly.    So, why not have the airlines pass a rule that says you can use your cell phone during fight, but only if you use a Conversation Privatizer like device?  See www.ZipItInc.com.  This makes a Win-Win-Win situation for ALL!  

I have used Fring and find it absolutely useful for people who carry a mobile phone and want top get connected to their contacts whether it is a personal meeting or professional conversation. I installed Fring on my Nokia S60 3rd Edition phone and I can call ither Fring users for free using mobile VoIP. Fring works through WiFi, GPRS, EDGE and also through 3G services. It is also available for Windows mobile 5 and Woindows Mobile 6. It is a use ful application for all the mobile enterprise users and takes seconds to install. The application will let you know who is online and who is not and aprt from this it lests you use Skype, MSN Messenger, GTalk and other host of services.

This is how Fring works. (Image courtesy - Crunchbase) 

I have found Fring to be very useful and a great application for buddies. If both of them have Fring then you are not away from each other. 

Google Maps Mobile is a viable substitute for subscription based GPS functionality for occasional, ad hoc user. Google Maps approximates your location on a map based on the signal strength of your phone even if your phone isn't equipped with GPS (see http://www.google.com/mobile/gmm/mylocation/index.html). In areas with good cell coverage I found the 'approximate' location is usually within a block of my actual location. I use Google Maps on my Blackberry Curve to provide directions when I travel rather than paying a premium fee for GPS in a rent-a-car . After setting a starting location you enter the street address of your destination (or pick a destination on the map). Google Maps Mobile gives accurate turn-by-turn directions with frequent updates of your current location along your planned route. As you reach each way-point of the directions you can click on that way-point to zoom in on that portion of the mapped route. This is extremely useful for tracking where you are along routes with many turns. While this feature is useful it is not without its shortcomings. Generating directions is limited to recognized street addresses or selected locations on the map. For example, you can't enter the name of a restaurant as a destination; Google Maps won't resolve that to a location. This 'free' service does have a cost, depending on your data plan. Google maps are data intensive so I wouldn't recommend it unless you have an unlimited data plan for your cell. For users who only occasionally need on-the-go driving directions this is a cheap alternative to subscribing to a GPS service.

I would also like to tell you about the application Natajak. Today I downloaded a new cool messaging application, natajak. The name might sound weird to many of you, but the application is pretty cool. It is available only for Nokia phones and I have installed it on my Nokia 5500 Sports. You can register for the application and a link would be sent to your message inbox, open the link and you can install the application, you need to have an active internet connection on your mobile phone. natajak will help you in sending text, photos, and email to your family and friends. Also, you can subscribe to feeds in your phone using this application. Once installed natajak also sent me a message, which told me where the application is sitting in my phone, I mean in which folder, so location that application was not a problem for me. I have installed many applications before, but this kind of message was not sent to me before, so I kind of liked this service.
One of the best part is that it will send your data over an active internet connection, so it is actually sending it for free, the internet charges are the same, which are charged by your mobile operator.
I tried sending email from my phone to my own email id and the mail was sent in seconds. As the screen of Nokia 5500 is small, I found it very cramped up but for mobile phones with big screens, using this application will be fun!!!

This is what all you can do with the natajak application,

Facebook – Send pics, update status, get notifications, send messages to your Facebook friends; Send pics clicked from your mobile to other users or Flickr or Picasa;
Get latest feeds from your favorite sites (by default the application comes with subscription to live feeds of BBC, Top Gear, Style Tip, Gossip Girls, Film.com, Guardian travel) you can also add/edit/delete your own feeds; you can setup your email client to send email to your phone etc.

I use a Samsung SPH-A920 on Sprint and I am always trying to add value to my unlimited data plan with various third-party applications. What follows is a summary of the applications I use on a regular basis and would recommend to others:

•  The ubiquitous Google Maps is available in a free, downloadable application for Java-enabled phones. As you might expect from Google, the application is extremely user-friendly and well formatted for the small screen. Find any location on a map, and get detailed step-by-step, clearly illustrated directions between destinations. Like their online maps offering, users can even switch to satellite view and see real view-from-above images, which can be zoomed tightly enough to identify your own rooftop. Another handy feature: the app remembers the last 20 destinations you've entered, so if you've looked it up before you don't have to multi-tap the address again -- just click on it in the history list. Bravo! Point your mobile browser to www.google.com/gmm to download.

•  Pandora offers its free, streaming music solution as a mobile application, but only through Sprint or AT&T. Pandora allows users to create their own stations and customize them by seeding them with favorite artists or songs, in addition to a thumbs up/ down feedback system. For an endless stream of music, some you know and some you don't (but will probably like), Pandora cannot be beat. Listening online is free, but the mobile application costs $2.99/ month. Seamless integration means all your stations are synchronized whether you are online or mobile. Sweet! Visit http://pandora.com/on-the-go to get it.

• WidSets is a free mobile-widget application that allows users to choose from a list of handy widgets to add to a customizable mobile interface. Some of my favorite widgets are games like Sudoku, Mines, BreakOut, and a memory game called Fruitsets. Other handy utility widgets include Wikipedia search, local weather, flickr photo sharing, and pictures of scantily clad women. Visit https://www.widsets.com to get started.

• Opera Mini is a free mobile web-browser, and among the best available for Java phones. This application basically renders full web pages as though it were a desktop browser and allows users to zoom in and out and interact with a website just like a desktop browser. Web search functionality is formatted specifically for the small screen and returns very usable results. Direct your mobile browser to operamini.com to download.

• mJetz is an interesting new application that combines the convenience of mobile widgets with a full-featured feed reader and web browser into one concise and intuitive interface. Other features include search functions for both the mobile web and the full web, a recommendation engine that allows users to discover new content, and a very handy send-to-friend feature for sending articles, feeds, sites, or a personal message directly to another phone or to an email address. mJetz is currently in Alpha release so the product will continue to evolve rapidly over the next several months. This could turn out to be the most powerful mobile application yet. For a free download, point your mobile device to mJetz.com.

With a smartphone and mobile internet connection it's easy to take advantage of some compelling phone tools. But, most services still cater to the masses and that means interacting through voice or text message.

This is a list of mainstream phone tools that will help you stay connected and informed. While creating this list it became obvious how aggressively Google is pursuing the mobile space.

Jott (voice)

• Jott is an intuitive technology-after calling the 800 number a voice will ask "who do you want to Jott?" Speak the name of a contact, wait for the beep, then start talking and Jott will transcribe and send the message.
• It's an incredibly easy way to connect with other services online using voice commands. For example, it will create appointments on Google Calendar, or send Twitter messages.
• It also allows users to send e-mail and text messages to stored contacts using the same voice recognition and transcription technology.

Mosio (Jott, text)

• Mosio brings the web's information to your phone. Send any question to this community and someone (a human volunteer) will usually answer within moments.
• I've used Mosio to look up prices on eBay, check the latest sports scores, and to figure out what exactly the TRAF button does in my rental car.
• Using Jott to send the question just makes it that much more fun.
• To keep the community going strong, take a turn answering questions once in while, Mosio suggests that for ever 5 questions asked you should answer one.

Google 411 (voice)

• This makes any town feel like home. It's free, and it's voice activated. Call 1-800-GOOG411 and get the phone number and address for any location in Google's immense data warehouse.
• I frequently use Google 411's text message feature to save a search result on my phone for future reference.

Google Calendar (Jott, text)

• While it's possible to text message GVENT (48368) to create a new event, calling Jott and saying "dentist appointment tomorrow at 9am" is far easier.
• The one exception to this is reviewing an upcoming schedule. According to Google:
  • Send "next" (to 48368) to get a notification regarding your next scheduled event.
  • Send "day" to get a notification containing all of your scheduled events for the present day.
  • Send "nday" to get a notification containing all of your events for the following day.

Google SMS (text)

• While not as flexible as Mosio, Google SMS (466453) provides a variety of information bits based on specific syntax and keywords.
• Some examples include "weather san Francisco", "translate goodbye in Spanish", "1 gallon in liters"

Gmail Mobile

• Available for Java enabled phones, it provides a slimmed down Gmail interface on your phone.
• It has a small footprint and will run smoothly on most phones.
• Views attachments (photos, MS Word, PDFs)

GotVoice

• After trying the Lite version of this service I quickly switched back to checking voicemail directly from my phone. Often I couldn't get to a PC with headphones available and I didn't want to broadcast my voicemails over computer speakers.
• Its premium service sounds more interesting through, translating the audio to text like Jott. Right now I'm just not willing to pay $5 - $25 per month for a service like this. Plus, I'm hoping that Grand Central will come out with a similar service eventually that will integrate with its existing voicemail archive system.

Grand Central

• Routing phone calls through Grand Central provides a host of benefits. It provides an intuitive spam filtering system, voicemail archiving and custom ringback tones, among other features.
• It also allows me to route personal and work calls differently depending on time of day and priority level.
• To make friends, family and colleagues feel special I've recorded personal greetings for all of them in Grand Central. It enables greetings like "Hey Dana, sorry I missed you! Hit me after the beep." Vs. "Thanks for your call Robert, please leave a message and I'll get back to you within 1 business day."

Sandy (Jott)

• Sandy is a game-changer when it comes to organizing schedules and reminders. It essentially brings the command prompt together with e-mail and makes it a scheduling and task nerve center.
• I've also integrated Sandy with Jott so that I can call Jott and say "Sandy, remind me to schedule a Recap meeting tomorrow at 8am." That way at 7:45am the next day I'll have an e-mail in my inbox prompting me to act.

Twitter (Jott, text)

• Twitter is a great (if hyperactive) way to keep in touch with colleagues and friends because the time investment at each sitting is so fractional.
• Using Jott to send Twitter messages keeps my thumbs callus-free.

 

  I've read the various Insights submitted here, and visited many of the mentioned websites.

  A lot of them appear to be pretty useful, especially the ones that are mentioned by
  Rick Frauton (mobilerss), above.  

  The problem is, IMHO, not the interface, but the user experience and it's cost.

 Mobile web browsing, IM and the like on mobile devices is a utilitarian experience,
 not a useful tool experience. 

 For the most part, the universal mobile device size and form-factor alone is a limiting 
 factor that's incurable;
.

• Users will never carry devices with big enough screens to view easily
  (until fold-out screens are perfected); 
  .
   · More significantly: 
  .
  

  Using today's devices for what can be done  on the "Mobile Web" has a very high cost:
  It requires single-tasking on devices where & when ambient light and/or
  our surroundings are conducive.
  .
    Former Yahoo! Mobile evangelist turned startup entrepreneur Russell Beattie has called it quits;
    and he made some startlingly succinct comments as to why: 
  .

  •  ".. the mobile traffic just isn't there. It's not there now, and it won't be.." 
    .
    
  •  "The argument up to now has been simply that there are roughly 3 billion phones out there, 
       and that when these phones get on the Internet, their vast numbers will outweigh PCs
       and tilt the market towards mobile as the primary web device. "
    .
    
•  The problem is that these billions of users *haven't* gotten on the Internet, and they won't
     until the experience is better and access to the web is barrier-free - 
     and that means better devices, and full browsers.."
  .

 » If Beattie is correct, this begs the question..

How much, of the forecast mobile traffic that never appeared..
Is primarily because of the high user-experience cost?

Speech Recognition is destined to become the next user paradigm,
and it enables the user to multi-task, while accessing the "Mobile Web";
and very important to road warriors - it is legal while driving.
.

A perfect solution to doing a terrific amount of what we'd like to do via
the 'mobile Internet', simply and low-cost is to use speech to do it. 

• Managing email
  .
• Getting instant traffic reports
  .
• Getting instant weather reports
  .
• Getting instant stock quotes
  .
• Getting instant contact data for any Outlook contact
  .

The wonderful news is that this can be done now -
And can be done over the voice channel - Online access is unnecessary.

No worries over capricious data rates, chasing hot spots, fading connections.

 Adondo Corporation, makers of PAL technology, have an application which assigns user's workstations
and/or home PC's a phone number, where a speech profile resides, trained by a single user. Users can
then call their own computer, and do a wide variety of tasks by speech alone (including managing Outlook);
and the recognition is far more than impressive.

Adondo has now begun to migrate the best of this technology to a server environment, where a user's
remotely-trained profile resides, and callers can call their PC or workstation, via it's unique phone number..
And can 'talk the night away' - getting amazing recognition accuracy with advanced artificial intelligence.

And.. Everything happens over the voice channel;
As fast as one commands - the computer responds.

Hands Free.
Legal while Driving

I use Adondo's PAL frequently; it's refreshing to simply say into
my mobile phone, via my hands-free headset:

"Get my email" and moments later, I'm hearing my email read;
Hot contact messages first.

or

"What's the traffic on Route 66?" or "What's the weather?"

I haven't looked at the phone, haven't had to thumb anything,
I'm happily continuing what I was doing before I undertook the above,
without missing a beat.

Doesn't that beat having to pull over and/or find a shady spot,
and of course.. squinting at a 2' X 2.5' inch screen,
then thumb around for about 10 minutes..

Any day of the week?
Anywhere at all?

.

Cell phone applications are getting very interesting — but not in the ways you'd expect. I'm not attracted to any of the voicemail-to-text services. (After all, my cell phone can connect me to both text and voicemail equally well!) I might be tempted to use the service if I were silencing my ringer, since I could silently read the messages without bothering anyone around me. But here's a dirty secret about cell phones: even when it's set to vibrate, the vibrating is still pretty loud.

But I'm fascinated by a clever service offered by Triple A called AAA Mobile. It uses your phone's GPS data to identify the closest restaurants and hotels — but it also offers the auto association's own quality ratings. (And it even identifies which ones offer special discounts for Triple A subscribers.) Verizon offers a similar service called VZ Navigator (which reportedly makes it easy to find the closest movie theatre.) But the most compelling scenario for cell phones has always been "What if I break down somewhere on the highway?" With AAA Mobile, your exact location is automatically transmitted when you call for a tow truck.

This is where cell phones are a good fit: you use mobile phones when you're mobile. Google Maps is handy when you're planning a route across town — but it's even handier to have it on your cell phone. And now instead of guiding the way to stationary objects, cell phones can use GPS locators to identify the current location of your friends. Services like FindWhere's "Live Contacts" will tell you how close your friends are (as long as they're using the same services). Ten years ago, no one would've dreamed of an application like this — because it simply wasn't technologically practical. But we live in interesting times...

A few years ago MobilRelay tested a service actually that turned the cell phone into a movie ticket. After buying a ticket online, the theatre would transmit an image of a barcode which could be scanned for one movie admission. I thought of that today when Microsoft announced a new service they're offering through TellMe Networks. Not only can you get showtimes (and driving directions) over your phone — you can buy tickets through Fandango. I haven't tested this, but I'm intrigued. Most phone applications require you to push buttons and then listen for the next voice prompt — but if you're punching the buttons, you aren't holding the phone to your ear. TellMe uses speech recognition, which should make the whole transaction surprisingly painless. And it even supplies driving directions.

Of course, today another news story informed us that Spike Lee was creating a movie specifically for the cell phone. Pretty soon, we won't need to get driving directions — because the cell phone will be the theatre!