There are times when you are away from your computer and you got something very urgent. May be you have to send an email to your sales team, or you want a reminder for yourself about your grand ma’s birthday or you simply want to send a text message to your girl friend to say, I Love You.
No matter what it is but you don’t want to wait for getting access to internet. And you never know, you are driving in a remote area where internet is out of question.
Don’t worry…two services (Dial2Do and Jott) are there which lets you do all that and much more with just a phone call. You have to setup all the services you want to use just once and then you can do everything with a phone call.
I am gonna explain more about Dial2Do here as it is a Free service by which you can do all activities for free, whereas with Jott, you will have to buy premium plans to access Premium links.
So what all you can do with Dial2Do (remember if your preferred services is not listed, you can add your own command to add it.) See the side image. Rememberthemilk, Calendar, Email etc. all services are paid on Jott, but are free on Dial2Do.
Dial2Do is a free alternative for Jott. You have to pay for everything on Jott, but it is free on Dial2Do. Though both services are exactly the same. (At least in my opinion.)
To learn more about it, see this video:
Though the service is not flawless. There are couple of things which I would love to have like:
- When I call, it might give me some suggestions to start with. (Update# 04/16/09: Say ‘help’ to get information on various commands you can say, check out latest improvements at Dial2Do.)
- The call might start with a greeting. (not necessarily though.)
- There should be the ability to add more phone numbers to call from. Currently I can have only one number to use with Dial2Do. (Update# 04/16/09: Now you can, check out latest improvements at Dial2Do.)
- The speech recognition could have been better.
- While using it for blogging, it doesn’t ask for Title, just starts with the post content.
- As soon as you end speaking, it says that your task is done. Instead it could ask, if you want to add something more. (Would be beneficial for writing long blog post or emails.) (Update# 04/16/09: Now it confirms before sending commands, check out latest improvements at Dial2Do.)
- It is available for more countries, specially for India.
The BEST thing about this service is that when it sends an email, it attaches what you spoke over phone as an audio file in the mail. So if the message is not understood well, the recipient can at least hear what you said. (Might be beneficial for non-English speaking people.)
I am a great fan of Dial2Do and will definitely recommend to my blog readers. Tell me your experience when you use it. Did you like it or not. Why and why not? What more you would like to have in it?
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Hi there –
Sean from Dial2Do here. First off – thanks for a great article – we really appreciate it!
As for you comments – let me make brief comments on them here.
1. When I call, it might give me some suggestions to start with.
We try to strike a balance between being too “wordy” and getting out of your way so that you can get what you want to get done, done. It’s likely that down the line – we’ll offer you some settings to control the verbosity yourself.
2. The call might start with a greeting. (not necessarily though.)
I’d answer this as above. Some new users may like this, and then after a while, they want the service to “just shut up and get out of their way”
. So again – probably a setting.
3. There should be the ability to add more phone numbers to call from.
Yep! Totally agree. Working on it.
4. The speech recognition could have been better.
This is a constant focus for us – to keep improving the speech recognition.
5. While using it for blogging, it doesn’t ask for Title, just starts with the post content.
Yep – we decided to omit the title request for now, and just use the first few words of what you say as the title. Once again, we did this to simplify the dialogue for the user and not have the experience be like “20 questions” which is frustrating. For “power bloggers” though, they may like this.
6. As soon as you end speaking, it says that your task is done. Instead it could ask, if you want to add something more. (Would be beneficial for writing long blog post or emails.)
We are experimenting with a “confirm” step after you finish – for example, a “send it” question – allowing you to cancel if you’re not happy. So hopefully you’ll see that soon
7. It is available for more countries, specially for India.
We’re always adding new numbers and new countries – we’ve some new areas ready in the next month or so. Will check if we can support India at that time.
That’s it – hope the comments are helpful!
Cheers, Sean
@Sean,
Thanks a lot for your input about the service and details about the future improvements. Looking forward to it.
Yes, lot of things I mentioned are related to settings only.
I am sure, readers of this blog will find this service useful.
Cheers
Anurag Bansal
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