TwitterFone, a new service that allows you to post to Twitter via voice by calling a number on your mobile phone has just been lit up. The application is currently in an invite-only beta so if you want to use it any time soon I suggest you hustle on over and get yourself on the list.
I’m finding the proliferation of voice to text applications interesting. While some are more useful than others what is becoming clear is that we’ve finally reached a point where reliable translation of the human voice into intelligible text messages has reached the point where we can make it work reliably – even over a mobile phone and even without the ability to see what the results of our utterances are coming out like on the other end.
This might result in some embarrassing and surprising things happening because I’ve yet to see any program that was even 85% at doing these translations and that’s sitting right in front of the computer and watching in real time as the system decoded my own voice speaking clearly and slowly which is hardly what I’d expect from someone posting a quick message to Twitter while using a cell phone in traffic. I guess if we start seeing less than sensible posts to Twitter we’ll realize that there are still some bugs to be ironed out of the whole speech to text thing. On the other hand, if we don’t see any difference it either means people aren’t using the interface that much or all the kinks have been worked out and it’s time to start brushing up on our dictation skills.
