The Appcast #54: February 21st, 2010 – Voice Recognition Search Apps

This week’s show: Voice Recognition Search Apps. We take a look at apps that are meant to help you look for what you want with just the sound of your voice.

Episodes can be downloaded by clicking the Episodes tab above.

Intro Music: Borderline D.U. Mix  from Mixter Two – I Don’t Know What I’m Doing by Brad Sucks.

 

Show Outline:

  1. Introductions
  2. Listener Feedback
  3. News: Apple Takes Your Sexy Back
  4. News: US 3G Download Limit raised to 20MB
  5. News: ngmoco drops the ball on Rolando 3
  6. News: Google buys ReMail
  7. News: Apps starting to require firmware 3.1.3
  8. Notable Apps of the Week
  9. Core Topic: Voice Recognition Search Apps
New Apps Discussed on February 21st, 2009:

  1. Extensions – Free – If you’ve ever had to call the same office repeatedly, but only really wanted to store the extension numbers to that one office (instead of create a profile for each extension), then this app can help you do that. It’s quick, simple, and even lets you import your contact lists via a CSV file. It’s quite handy if you tend to call offices a lot.
  2. B-Boy Beats – $2.99 - A simple game in which you use two fingers to tap and hold to the beat. Kind of like DDR for your fingers, but mixed in with timed taps and holds that are meant to simulate your feet moving and hopping around a dance floor. There’s a good amount to do given that there’s a campaign in addition to the free form dancing. However, I didn’t like how the Hard difficulty isn’t unlocked from the start since the Easy gets boring very quickly. There’s some promise here for a unique rhythm game.
  3. Keygrinder – $0.99 – For those of us that don’t use enough unique passwords, Keygrinder can help you generate passwords and store them all behind the remembrance of your information. You can even use the same password to generate all other passwords for other sites. It’s all in the interest in keeping up the variety in your security at a price that’s much lower than losing your information.
  4. Drift Sumi-e – $0.99 - For anyone that’s played DrawRace, this will come off as a stylized version of that game. For others, it’s a simple game/simulation in which you draw your course of action on a race track and watch as a 3D car goes down that same course, drifting and accelerating to get the best time. However, there’s a lot more style to this game as it incorporates the look of Japanese Sumi-e, or brush painting. You have to see screenshots to understand, but it’s just a gorgeous presentation. I had some qualms with the fact that loading and preparing each simulation was a bit on the slow side, but that’s hopefully something we see fixed down the line. If you want something pretty and unique to look at, then this app fits very well
  5. Find In Page – $0.99 Premium version or Free Lite version – Using a workaround method in which you customize a bookmark for your browser, Find In Page can work as a method of finding specific keywords within the content of a web page. It provides an actual interface to finding words on the page and works to try and maintain the look of the content while also keeping away from searching within the usual hidden markup language built into the HTML of the page. The Lite version is limited in that you cannot use the UI interface of looking through all found keywords on the page.
  6. Meebo – Free - Watch out Beejive! Meebo, the popular online multi-client chat app has now hit the iPhone for free. All your usual IM networks are here: AIM, GChat, Yahoo, Windows Live, Facebook and more. You also get push notifications when Meebo is closed and can get your chat history through your phone and from Meebo.com. I found the interface to be simple, but also efficient for getting to where I needed to go. Overall, it’s hard to recommend Beejive at it’s high price when Meebo is very close for ordinary features.
App of the Week:
  • Plants vs. Zombies - (Bob and Kevin) - Wow. The entire game of Plants vs. Zombies seems to be here and it runs very well. For those that missed it in 2009, Plants vs. Zombies is PopCap’s original game that featured a tower/castle defense gameplay campaign that incorporated many types of towers/plants and many types of creeps/zombies. Sharp graphics, impressive gameplay, a lot of humor, and many options make this one of the best games of 2010 for the iPhone, though it is a port of the PC version. I like that the price is a fraction of the original’s and that we really don’t get shorted on anything here. Well worth your time and money.
Silly Apps of the Week
  • Crash!! The most stupid race - (Kevin) – Free – Race down a series of walls and arrange your shirtless muscle man to fit within the holes. Innuendo if you want it.
  • Stock Market Hero - (Bob) – Free – Run and jump along stock market data. That is: levels generated using the actual stock market points that are going on right now.
Core Topic: Voice Recognition Search Apps
We take a look at some of the search applications that use voice recognition to make your life seem more like you’re just talking to a computer. However, in the end, Siri made itself the most unique and slick competitor in this category. With great voice recognition, several methods of searching, and a cool and modern interface, we really felt like Siri stood tall among the other voice-based search apps. Google Mobile and Dragon Search also worked fairly well. Bing didn’t live up to much, unfortunately. All of these apps were Free.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

categories The Appcast | suberunker | datetime February 23, 2010 2:10 am

No Comments

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.

WordPress Themes