Messaging News - October 2008 - (Page 31)

S peech enabled productivity applications are now available and affordable for mainstream business users with mobile phones. A major advantage of the current crop of tools is that they provide functionality that previously required entering data via text messages or a smartphone with a data plan. For example, it is possible to create calendar events via a phone call from a mobile phone that are then synchronized with a desktop application or a calendaring Web service. Providers of speech enabled applications for mobile phones have access to an immense potential-market. According to the July 2008 report Critical Mass—The Worldwide State of the Mobile Web from Nielsen Mobile there are nearly 260 million U.S. mobile subscribers. This translates to a bit more than 85 percent of the U.S. population as a whole and is greater than the entire U.S. adult population. Slightly more than half of these subscribers use SMS, but only 15 percent use email, and only 17 percent use the Internet on their mobile device. Other global markets are substantially higher, for example On Message with Ben Gross Today’s Voice Enabled Productivity Offerings according to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Europe as a whole has above a 100 percent mobile phone penetration. Overview of Voice Enabled Productivity Offerings Three services have substantial offerings in this area-Jott, reQall and SpinVox. The three services have a fair degree of overlap, although they are not precisely comparable. Jott and reQall primarily focus on services that allow users to create personal information management data such as tasks, notes, and calendar items via voice to text. SpinVox is primarily focused on voicemail transcription although it supports PIM functionality as well. Voicemail service is clearly the easiest to monetize, as so many users are unhappy with the usability and accessibility of their voicemail systems. Jott and SpinVox also have options for sending messages via voice, as well posting to blogs and Twitter via voice. All services recognize the subscriber using caller ID, so each phone must be registered in advance and caller ID must not be blocked. Any type of phone may be used: mobile, landline, or VoIP, but the outbound number must be consistent, which could be a problem for some corporate PBX users that rotate through a pool of outbound numbers. I first reviewed Jott in the On Message weblog in early 2007, although it has gained substantial functionality since then. Jott launched its public beta at the end of 2006 and was completely free until last month when the service was formally launched. Jott has built in support for notes/tasks, reminders, emails and text messages, each of which may be associated with a category. The service also has the ability to send emails or text messages using only voice commands. Jott has several mechanisms to import contacts from an address book or other online services. A user may also send messages to groups of contacts. Jott notes and reminders may be created via voice, text message or email from the user. In some basic ways reQall and Jott are similar, however, reQall focuses on helping users store and recall information easily and providing reminders when you need them. The service supports notes, tasks, shopping lists and photographs intended as a memory aid. For example, a user could call reQall and record a list of tasks and due dates. Later that same day, the user could call reQall back requesting the service to read a list of tasks for that day. The photograph reminder function is still effectively a beta feature and requires that photos be retrieved from Google’s Picasa online service. Synchronization With External Web Services Jott is unique in that it also works as a front-end to a large number of popular Web services. You can connect messagingnews.com 31 http://www.messagingnews.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Messaging News - October 2008

Messaging News - October 2008 Contents Editor’s Note Short Takes Targeting the Technology-Wise Customer The Insider Threat: The New Era of Disaster Recovery Making Collaboration Tools Pro-Knowledge Sharing Botnets Go Marching On Dissecting Email Forensics Next in Messaging News “On Message” with Ben Gross The World is Not the Center of the Universe, and Filters Don’t Stop Email Spam Making the Case Learn More

Messaging News - October 2008

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