Vlingo

In a sea of 10,000 iPhone apps available for download in the App Store, a few truly stand out above the rest. My goal in this review is to find out if Vlingo, released last week, is one of those star performers.

Vlingo is a voice-activation service that not only enables the user to voice dial when making phone calls, but also to speak desired locations as well as facebook and twitter updates. Such voice-activation technology has been available for the iPhone prior to Vlingo’s release but was primarily used just for voice dial. The ability to have the phone dictate full 140-character sentences for you is a brand new concept.

So now we can Twitter or do Facebook while we’re driving. Does it live up to the hype? Is it worth the download? Let’s go in-depth to find out.
Types of Vlingo Voice Commands

Voice Dial. “Call Bob at home” or “Call Gina at mobile” are such examples if you are on the home tab. In the phone tab specifically, simply say “Bob home” or “Gina mobile”. This works great with your contacts; however, I attempted to say digits of a phone number and it couldn’t understand what I was dialing — I hope this will be remedied in an update.

Maps. Essentially this is the same process as the google maps app that comes on the iPhone already, but it gives you the ability to speak what you’re looking for, instead of having to type it out. This certainly can come in more handy when you are driving and need to find a certain place in a hurry.

Web. Want to do a google or yahoo search? From the home tab speak “web search” and then what you’d like to look up, or do it directly from the search tab. You can specify which search engine you’d rather use in the settings.

Social. This applies to both Facebook and Twitter updates. For example, I say “Twitter I am testing out vlingo for my review period” and this is what appears:

Then I simply hit the update status button and Vlingo does all the work for me. There are many times I’m not in front of a computer and am too lazy to type a Twitter update on my iPhone, so I prefer to use Vlingo instead.

Vlingo works a lot better than many of the paid apps in the App Store, and it’s offered for free. It’s not 100% accurate when picking up your voice, but it’s pretty darn close. And if it doesn’t pick up everything completely right, it’s easy enough to tap the “press+speak” button and redo it.

One really nice thing is knowing the technology is there to expand out to other features and services. If Vlingo can let you do Facebook and Twitter updates, what’s to stop them from adding other social media sites? Why not let me write full blog posts with the power of my voice? I’m excited at all the possibilities out there, and I’m keeping Vlingo on the front page of my iPhone for now.

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NDrive G800 gives Sat image overlay for GPS!

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My favourite independent Mobile kit retailer, Expansys, mailed me the other day to let me know about this cheeky new bit of kit from NDrive. In a neat development, the G800 is a Sat Nav unit that is able to utilise Sat imaging, rather than the crude vector graphics we are used to normally.

Apparently 29 major cities are mapped currently, and I’m sure this will improve over time – and from the looks of things, you can decide your perspective on the viewing angle, much as you can zoom in/out with most Sat Nav units.

There are some neat other features too, highlights below:
* Choose between 4 diagonal perspectives, plus a vertical perspective to navigate in photo mapping
* Voice prompts/Dynamic Routing/Auto re-routing
* Routing Options – Shortest/Fastest/Car Mode/Pedestrian Mode/Tolls/Speed
* Multimedia features – plays music, videos, watch photos and read e-books
* FM transmitter – put your favorite songs in the G800 memory and listen to them on your car audio
* Bluetooth receiver – turn your NDrive G800 into a loudspeaker of your phone calls
* Games
* Calculator

If this whets your appetite, then I’d invite you to mosey on over to the Expansys site and take a look.

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Get your Da Vinci on with the Cryptex phone concept

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Want to try out a phone that takes its design cues from an idea by Leonardo Da Vinci? Check out this nameless cryptex mobile phone concept. It takes the shape of, well, a cryptex, and sure enough the numbers, as well as a few keys come as part of the rotating dials.

You simply have to turn the dials towards certain directions to initiate phone calls, answer incoming ones or hang up on the other party. It’s got it’s own dock, where you’ll be able to find the “phonebook” and will also most probably be used for charging it.
The designer of this mobile phone concept had this to say about it:

You turn the dial of every element to the desired cipher. If you entered the number you turn the first segment “to phone” (green LED). If you want to hang up the call you turn the first segment to “hang up” (red LED). The phone works without buttons and without a display and based on the old dial phones.

It surely is an interesting phone concept, and when you add the fact that it also has a nice vibrating feature, it will surely be a hit with users, especially the ladies.

LG KF300

KF300 is a new, recently introduced model from LG. The phone is a slim clamshell, thin enough to be comparable with Sony Z770, although far behind Motorola’s RAZR in this area. What’s remarkable about the KF300 is how easy it is to use for people with big fingers. You will surely like this model if you hate the small keys on most mobile phones – but we’ll talk about this a bit later.The front panel is made from plastic; a transparent layer, and under it another textured one which gives the phone’s face cover a nice reflection effect under light. A downside is the front panel being prone to finger marks – then again, it’s a problem of most modern phones.
There’s a small metal stripe located at the top of the front cover, which in my opinion doesn’t fit the overall design very well. Not that it looks bad or anything – it just feels like something’s missing when you look at the front panel of the KF300. There also are similar metal stripes with chrome finish along the edges of the phone. The back panel is made from soft-touch plastic, pleasant to touch and nothing out of ordinary. Now for the problems we noticed. First of all, the back cover stays a bit loose. Second, the memory card slot is located unconveniently under the battery, so you need to turn of the phone to swap it. Typical problems with many LG models, these two. Another problem we encountered was the color chiping off the volume control buttons on the side of the phone after fairly short time of use; hopefully this will be corrected in commercial versions, although I’m afraid it might stay this way, too. As for the inside of the phone, it looks very interesting. First thing you notice is the keypad with simply enormous (for a modern mobile, anyway) buttons and big, clear labels on them. The KF300 would obviously be a good choice for a present for an elderly person who won’t be using it for anything much besides phone calls and will appreciate the ease of dialing a number. The navigational buttons are also proportional in size to the number keypad and large enough to be used comfortably by almost anyone. What’s more, the KF300 has separate buttons for launching what LG thinks are the most important functions of the phone. I agree with the choice of Alarm Clock, but I’d question whether Organizer will be widely used by the consumers the phone is targeted at. There’s also a button for Images and one for Favorites, which allow you to add any function you want to the list.

Software

Now let’s move on to the menu. What I’d like to note right away is one of the LG “things”: the company has good concepts in their phones, but they’re incomplete. That’s the case with the KF300 as well: while the keyboard is big and easy to read, and the clock displayed on the external screen is huge, the menu font is tiny (be it menu icons, messages or anything else). You’d think they would go all the way in making the phone as accessible as possible, but like I said – good idea, yet not realized to it’s full potential.As for the menu itself, it’s very similar to that of KF320, but the menu choices are arranged differently and the applications are located in different submenus. That’s usually the case with LG models, where the menu varies slightly from one model to another, depending on what the company considers the most important features of the phone are (these are usually put forward as the first menu icons). I don’t really think that’s the right strategy, because a fan of LG phones would probably like to find his new device from the company as familiar and easy to use as his old one, like it is with Nokia, Sonny Ericsson, and to an extent, Samsung phones.

Conclusion

LG KF300 is a standard mid-range model with a 2 megapixel camera, player application and FM radio. If you don’t need superior multimedia functions, and mostly use the phone for calling or writing SMS messages, you should find the phone interesting. The reason is first and foremost the big, comfortable keyboard; the 2.2” display is large enough too. Besides, the design is not bad either. Personally, I’d only buy such a phone as a present for an elderly person, or someone who has a bad eyesight and is primarily interested in using the phone for talking or writing messages.

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Google’s mobile voting locator tool helps volunteers in encouraging citizens…

With U.S. elections just around the corner, political parties and non-partisan groups are sending out volunteers to encourage citizens to vote on November 4. To assist these volunteers, Google launched a mobile voting locator tool to help them find home addresses of registered voters and their voting locations. The tool is made so that a volunteer can use it in different instances — whether they’re in an office making phone calls, are working from a booth set up outdoors, or are going door to door. While on the go, Google wants them [volunteers] to rely on Google Maps to find address and display directions to voting locations.

Finally, between talking to potential voters, volunteers (and anyone else for that matter) can check out the “Elections” section in Google News for mobile for the latest updates…

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