I was on my way back from Henley yesterday with a friend. I suggested the idea that I should be able to listen and reply to my emails by voice in the car using a smartphone. She was pretty surprised and thought I was probably pushing the limits of what’s out there.
A morning of Googleing has revealed a complete lack of anything really decent in this area. I found this article which was a good step forwards in finding someone else on the same quest, they too however feel a little short changed in the world of ‘advanced’ handsets..
Here’s what I’ve found:
–Text’n’drive, Free/Paid, iPhone/Blackberry/Android (soon): This looked promising, you give it your IMAP/Pop settings and it will read out your email, however replies which is only available in the pro version is via mp3 which is pretty useless for most people. This would be a great app if integrated with SpinVox, as it stands, not awesome.
–DriveSafe.ly, Free/Paid, iPhone (soon)/Blackberry/Android: These guys look like they’re nailed the reading of emails as well, they even have a version that will plug into your BES server. Still no replying by voice though.
Dragon Dictation
These guys seem to be the leaders of the field. So far they have a dictation app for the iPhone/Android that works really well but doesn’t natively integrate with an email account and doesn’t read back email. They also have an app for Blackberry which allegedly lets you read and reply to emails using normal speech. Finally these guys are working quite heavily with Android, if you check the link below there is an article around a recent android phone that does text reading and reply, just missing the elusive email reply..
More links:
Android phone with Dragon: http://www.cnet.com/8301-19736_1-20003883-251.html
Bluetooth headset that reads your texts: http://www.myblueant.com/q1/features.php
That’s all so far, I’ll post anything interesting I find along the way..
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The best method is probably to have a secretary that follows you everywhere 😛