Talk to your BlackBerry (and not just through it)

Give your thumbs a well-deserved break, without worrying about your productivity suffering because smartphones just got smarter.

On June 25, a Cambridge company that has been working on developing speech recognition software for mobile devices unveiled an app for RIM’s BlackBerry smartphones, making it the first company and mobile device to offer a fully voice-powered interface. Vlingo Corp’s new BlackBerry app lets users send text messages and emails, browse the web, open apps on their devices (such as BlackBerry Maps and BlackBerry Calendar), search and browse contacts, dial phone calls and send notes to each other. themselves, all using the power of their own voice.

This last utility, sending voice notes to yourself, is provided in a new (and long-awaited) novel feature called Note2Self.

No doubt, this progressive new development in telecommunications technology will make it easier, faster and safer for people on the go to get work done wherever they go, without having to focus all their attention on squinting at their small screens and searching for fumbling with their uncomfortable keyboards. Voice recognition technology promises to make smartphone use more efficient and affordable.

Skeptics of speech recognition technology might charge that the software will no doubt require people to modify the way they speak to ensure their devices understand them and learn and memorize an entirely new “vocabulary” – a kind of verbal shorthand. to control the various commands. . However, with Vlingo on the scene, nothing could be further from the truth.

It turns out that users of the new Vlingo speech recognition software will be pleasantly surprised (maybe even surprised) to discover that they don’t need to change the way they speak or what they say to control their smartphone operations with their voice. That is the goal of Vlingo’s efforts: to make smartphones capable of understanding the human voice and human speech, the way people actually speak, what they say, and how they say it.

And, of course, users can also integrate voice and typing controls into the use of their devices, without having to give up one for the other. This is especially useful when performing operations that may simply work better with the soon to be archaic power of touch.

The Vlingo speech recognition app for BlackBerry will be available for free, although wireless carriers (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, etc.) may decide to charge their own fees for using the service.

Vlingo’s entry into speech recognition began with a similar product developed for use in the oneSearch mobile portal provided by Yahoo! Currently, the new application for BlackBerries is only compatible with the latest models: BlackBerry Curve, BlackBerry Pearl and BlackBerry 8800 series. Vlingo has also announced that they are in the process of developing voice recognition applications for Windows Mobile smartphones, Apple’s iPhone and Google’s upcoming Android operating system.

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