Even if you don’t have the latest iPhone 4S – even if you don’t have an iPhone at all – you can get the latest voice-recognition software for your smartphone. Downloadable and free.
These apps interpret and follow voice commands and “speak” their response to you. You can steer the car and watch where you’re going, continue with other work, or just walk and search at the same time. They are amazingly powerful and, like every other high-tech innovation, constantly evolving.
Androids and iPhones come pre-loaded with some level of voice control, but it’s the Siri-like voice response that turns your smartphone into a handheld computer – a GPS guide, notepad, communicator and source of answers to nearly-infinite questions – all handled voice-to-voice.
Constant innovation means there are several Siri alternatives to choose from, including:
Vlingo Virtual Assistant
Perhaps the best alternative, Vlingo can schedule meetings, take notes, search the web, get directions, make calls, send texts and emails, send requests to an ever-growing range of online services, and update your Facebook and Twitter accounts by voice.
Google Mobile
You can capture any information available via Search, including nearby business locations, event times, websites and images.
Dragon Go
Designed for iPhone and iPod Touch devices running iOS 4.0 or newer, Dragon Go gets directions, drafts email and text messages, and searches for information via external websites.
Voice Actions for Android
Text, email, search the internet and complete specific tasks. If you don’t have a contact name or number, this app can search out the information and also place the the call.
Speaktoit Assistant
Launch apps, answer questions, browse maps, search for news, images or the weather report, send emails and connect with social networks including Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare.
Voice Control
This pre-loaded iPhone tool provides basic help like making calls, searching through music on your phone, finding out event times and so on.
Edwin Speech-to-Speech
This innovation essentially turbo-charges your phone’s built-in capabilities by adding voice response.
Sonalight Text By Voice
Sonalight provides spoken prompts to help you create or respond to text messages, even if your phone is in sleep mode.
So even if you can’t talk to Siri herself, you can talk to your own alternative voice recognition app. This is an innovation that has tremendous potential to make your personal life more fun and your business work much easier and more efficient.
