Voice to Text Future - In Your Hand

I’ve been trying out a new messaging service of a type I’ve been skeptical of in the past. I’m talking Voice to Text. Now I’m going to remain skeptical for different reasons.

Andy pointed me to Mobivox’s new “Dictate Message” service or is that a command? Anyways you call Mobivox and when asked who you want to call you simply say “dictate message” then it is logical, she asks to whom and then whether SMS or email. In the end I added “Test Account” to my directory and sent off a number of test messages to my account. You can speed it up by saying “Send SMS” or “Send email”.

For once, I was stunned by the accuracy I got back. This actually works! For contrast, I last tried this with Spinvox and was disappointed by the service. In each case I spoke fast and left messages. I kept my SMS’s short. They worked well. In any case this technology is getting better and in the Mobivox case I found it very usable.

From the press release I received:

Upon calling MOBIVOX, the user says the contact’s name and tells MOBIVOX to
send him or her a text message or e-mail. The user then records a short
message, which MOBIVOX transcribes to text and delivers within minutes
to the contact’s e-mail address or mobile phone number. MOBIVOX charges
49 cents for each message sent, however, the first five messages sent are free.

And it is that last sentence that keeps me skeptical about all of these services. Mobivox is not alone in pi. There’s some challenges here.

• First your directory must contain the contact’s email. That’s not guaranteed in Mobivox or in most of these systems. If there’s no web connection adding when you want to send it isn’t easy. Thus you have to preplan to use services like these. It may well be possible if you have uploaded your whole address book, however, call by name systems generally get slower or more cumbersome if you have three john smiths and 5 johns in total in your address book and only want to ever call one.
• SMS is easier although if being done from the car (hands free good idea) it is from your mobile. Otherwise you would almost certainly think twice before you open the door to a 49 cent SMS. I can see a few users wanting to send an SMS from a home phone for example. That could be convenient and useful for my mother who doesn’t have a cellphone. Then that puts me right into my real objection.
• Cost. I think these types of services are just too expensive. On the SMS front 20 cents is a cost (max they keep ratcheting it up). For email which is less likely to be “timely” delivery (it’s not in the users hand) I’d think even less; a max of 10 cents. I think there are users who would love the service and might pay for an all you can do bundle. Make it cheaper and it may be interesting, however cellphone minutes cost too. Which brings me to my last point where the future for this technology really exists.
• Voice to text will soon be embedded in the cellphone. If I can get Dragon Dictate on my PC it can’t be too long before I get it on my iPhone. Then the costs above and the services will become irrelevant. In fact I like this scenario. And given the beauty of the iPhone if you give me voice to text dictation on it I’d bet we will finally start to adopt it.