Useful internet software, websites and blogsites.: Use Your Voice To Get Things Done With Dial2Do

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Use Your Voice To Get Things Done With Dial2Do

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Use Your Voice To Get Things Done With Dial2Do

via MakeUseOf.com by David Pierce on 2/12/09

Computer junkie that I am, there are still times I'm not near my computer to enter ideas into my system.

Just about my whole life is computer-based, so when I'm out, emails, tasks, calendar events, and the like can all fall by the wayside.

Or, I can just pick up the phone, dial a number, say a few words, and everything gets done for free, using Dial2Do.

Dial2Do is providing a great way for users to use their voice to do all kinds of things, and interact with all kinds of services - it's like what Jott used to do, but without the sudden added cost.

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Here are just a few of the many things you can do with Dial2Do: add stuff to Evernote, add tasks to Remember the Milk, send emails, send text messages, add calendar events to Google Calendar, listen to your email or RSS feeds, or post updates to your Twitter account. And that's only a few of the choices.

Once you create a free account with Dial2Do, and associate your phone number with your account, all you have to do is dial a given phone number (the service is available in 24 countries, each one with a different phone number).

A voice comes on the phone and says "What would you like to do?" You tell it, say, "Calendar." You're prompted then to speak your calendar event, like "lunch with Bill, today, 2pm." There's a brief pause, and that same voice comes back and says "that's done." Either hang up or stay on the line to record more. Once you hang up, you're done! Your event shows up in your Calendar, your Twitter, or wherever you told it to go.

The true usefulness of Dial2Do is that it does interact with so many services - there's nothing new to learn or check with Dial2Do, because it already integrates with the services you already use.

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Even if you're not a user of all the services though, Dial2Do still offers a bunch of great features. By adding contacts to your account, you can send emails or text messages on the fly without typing a thing. Contacts can be added manually, or imported from a number of different services - Google, Yahoo, Outlook and the like. Texting while driving's a dangerous, but popular, enterprise - Dial2Do makes that both easier and safer.

The transcription service is one of the most accurate I've seen in a service like this, better even than Jott. In all of my first few transcriptions, the only mistake Dial2Do made was to transcribe "parliamentary" as "polimentary." Apparently polimentary is a word in Dial2Do's world, but still - the success rate was impressively high.

The biggest drawback to Dial2Do, and one that's common to applications like this, is that every service and contact you use has to be set up beforehand. If you decide "oh, I need to email John," but John's not in your contacts list, you're out of luck. Same goes for adding to calendars, or checking email, or anything - whatever you want to do, it needs to be done at your computer.

My advice would be to set up every service you might possibly use (they're simple and quick to set up), and add every contact you can (Dial2Do allows 100) - you'll be surprised how often you use them, especially given how good the transcription is.

If Jott is any indication, Dial2Do won't be free forever. For now, though, it's a totally free, totally useful service that helps you get all kinds of things done with a simple phone call. Use voice-activated dialing, and you may never touch your phone keyboard again.

How do you, or how do you wish you could, get things done with your voice?

Photo Credit: PartsnPieces