- Lady Ada’s Electronic Garden:Adafruit Industries’ Founding Engineer is a Fertile Mother of Invention
- NO Typing: Simple Voice Commands and Sophisticated Software: Is there call to eliminate the cellular
- Impulse Technologies’ External Antenna for Air Cards // Italian Made and Available for North America
Dialing while driving laws take effect this July in California; drivers will be prohibited and even fined if they are caught using their cell phones without a hands-free device. Four states already have a law in place and 14 others currently restrict handset use when passengers are present.
As 73 percent of cell phone owners use cell phones in the car, clearly there are opportunities to help cellular subscribers comply with the laws. One attractive option for dealers to offer is a safe alternative to ‘dial and drive’ from California-based-SpeechPhone.
Their new product, SafetyPhone, which is a monthly, no contract subscription-based service provides voice-activated dialing from contact lists and is far superior to what is currently available from the handset’s or speakerphone’s voice command functions.
Subscribers can also use it from any phone whether the cell phone, home phone, office phone or even if necessary, a payphone - so it is incredibly versatile in bringing all of your contacts with you always.
Mobile phones and speakerphones have lousy voice command capability because they are limited by the small processor and memory on the units themselves. SafetyPhone uses SpeechPhone’s voice recognition software, which sits on a network of multi-million-dollar redundant servers. The product SafetyPhone allows for one-number calling. That number accesses a user’s - up to 2,500 - contacts and makes calls completely by speech. Setting-up contacts is as simple as following SpeechPhone’s steps to upload from your address book in your Outlook folder or Yahoo!, Gmail or “other” account. The accuracy of SpeechPhone is phenomenal.
Company founder Michael Metcalf said, “You will experience 100 percent accuracy 98 percent of the time”. But SafetyPhone is essentially the starter product to a much broader offering. SpeechPhone - as a full-package offering - has 37 features all with voice activation.
You can speech command everything from making and receiving phone calls from your contacts, to sending voice recorded emails and listen to your emails over the phone. There is also a virtual personal assistant that will screen calls, look for you if you aren’t at your desk, take a message, and play your choice of hold music while the caller waits to connect with you.
To review the product, I was allowed access to the service and found it to be impressive, and amazing really. I was especially delighted by the email functions.
Imagine driving while sending and receiving emails without using your hands.
It took a little practice, and a very small amount of time to upload contacts, but suddenly I was voice commanding emails, phone calls and listening to voicemails. I began to picture myself ‘voice activating’ every operation humanly imaginable. ‘Start engine’, ‘drive to publisher’s’, ‘make coffee’, ‘open door’… you get the point. Still, “send email”, “get emails” and “call husband at work” was very cool; so liberating, and unencumbered from looking and clicking and dialing. And so much safer when in the car.
You can also get SpeechPhone’s Live Conceige service on the phone, for other handsfree tasks in the car such as get directions to your next appointment, find the nearest dry cleaning store, or have flowers sent to a client.
For those who live in their cars, the cell phone is a lifeline to the outside world. Speech services like those from SpeechPhone, can reduce the stress of traffic by making people productive and safe all while in compliance with the new dialing while driving laws. Best of all dealers can make recurring monthly revenue from these services for the lifetime of the subscription.
For more information on the SpeechPhone dealer program visit http://www.speechphone.com/dealer.