Cell-phone vendor switching killer app

by on April 26, 2007

I am hanging out with a bunch of Charles River Ventures partners this week in Phoenix and one of them, Mobeus, just showed me something that will get me to switch cell phone vendors when it comes out.

Well, it was CEO Dave Grannan and Mike Phillips, CTO, who pulled out their cell phones and — started talking to them.

But, not in the way you might think. Their words were — almost in live time — being transcribed right in front of me.

Full text off of voice.

It is a killer app for cell phones.

I sure hope Apple’s iPhone gets their service (probably won’t, though, cause it’s built in Java and requires a Java runtime on the phone which Steve Jobs seems set against) cause I really want to buy an iPhone with this service.

This is the first thing I’ve seen for mobile phones that might get me to not buy an iPhone.

Imagine telling your phone “San Francisco pizza” and having it change that to text and go to search engines to bring back pizza places.

It works this well and it is the demo of the year I’ve had so far.

The technology won’t ship until later this year (they are going into beta testing in the next month or two).

They are totally stealth mode. Don’t even have a Web site (and say it they will have a different name when they go public). Dave said I got the first public demo.

I’ll definitely keep in touch and bring more about this company when they ship.

  • Google Voice Search, http://labs.google.com/goog411/, is a similar killer app.
  • Does this mean what I think it means? Voice notes that I can read (and email.) No more playing back and writing down. Wicked!
  • Robert, TellMe announced a phone application that does your "san francisco pizza" example. Speak into the phone, get local search results on the screen.

    Try Tellme's newest beta release
    Now you can download Tellme to your phone! Tellme beta lets you:

    Say what you want
    See the results on your screen
    Get a map, directions, or bring up recent searches
    Share results as a text message to a friend

    It's free from Tellme. No subscription or usage fees!


    Check it out:

    http://www.tellme.com/products/TellmeByMobile

    AT&T/Sprint only, but more to come.
  • Tellme and all others work with a relatively limited vocabulary, and are info-request oriented.

    There is a reason why Jott, the app that accepts free format dictation is NOT based on technology, but human transcribers. The technology simply isn't there yet.
  • Well, before you buy the iPhone, I suggest you wait a month or two to see what everyone else says anyway. You're waiting months for it, and one more month won't hurt. iPhone might be so great that this killer app might not outweigh the iPhone's benefits. Personally, iPhone doesn't impress me as it is, but I'm interested in what the reviews will be like in the first month or two after it's released and problems start being discovered by users.

    http://t1resource.blogspot.com
  • Christopher Coulter
    Nice feature, yet hardly used, over "killer app"...most consumers don't end up using 90% of the smart phoney software gimmicks. More a 'dazzle and trick the money men' play, imho.
  • Been playing with the Google 411 voice search, it does not have everything, only what you would find if doing a google maps search as far as I can tell, but I love that I can dial that one number and they put my call through, unless I say stop. Dead simple, "Burlington Washington, Pizza, three" and I am ordering a pizza. "Stanwood Washington, Eagles Nest" and I am being connected because there is only one. Like I said, fun :)
  • Have also been playing with Google-411, it's pretty slick and the first thing I thought was they'll be returning maps/directions next. No Java app needed, just a browser. I personally don't need full text transcribing but could see where it might be handy for some (Twitters).
  • Will
    Take a look at Rory's latest C9 vid on WM 6.0, that's also pretty cool with the speech to text stuff.
  • I see a future where I'll be talking to my wife on the phone about shopping and an advert for the local supermarket pops up because my phone was "listening in" and sent me context sensitive ads.
  • I agree with Zoli to some extent. The technology is still not there. For all I could imagine, this will go bust like how the desktop apps went. I somehow feel that we have a long way to go before we can get rid of our keyboards. It might cater to a smaller segment of people who have the patience to train the software but not with everyone. But if this application proves me wrong on my assessment, then it got to be a truly killer app.
  • SteveNYC
    I highly doubt that this will be a feature native to a device. Processing power is simply not there. I would love to be proven wrong however. More than likely, this will be a service offering where the device connects, via a 3G data plan, to a back-end server that does the processing. This is already being done on a limited basis. Look at VoiceControl for a Nextel 7520. Same concept. Personally, I think its genius and I very much look forward to its deployment. I am confronted with a hundred different comments and thoughts and tasks in any given day at work. Imagine being able to take that as dictation so you can search though your daily activities. Sign me up...
  • You'd be surprised what's cooking in my office...
  • Gary Clayton
    Tell us more Ajay ;-)
  • I'd love to see a device like this, but I think a greater use for it than for our voice recognition commands is in allowing communication between the deaf and hard of hearing, especially when such deafness is brought on by age and the individual has not learned sign language, etc.
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