Review: Plantronics Voyager Pro HD, Jabra Supreme UC Bluetooth Headset – Bonnie Cha – Product Reviews – AllThingsD

Review: Plantronics Voyager Pro HD, Jabra Supreme UC Bluetooth Headset – Bonnie Cha – Product Reviews – AllThingsD.

Clarity reveals Fortissimo speakerphone for folks with mobility issues (Engadget)

 

Clarity reveals Fortissimo speakerphone for folks with mobility issues — Engadget.

Geekwire Tips (with hat-tip to Dial2do)

Nice set of tips about time wasting in Startups over at GeekWire. Includes the following hat-tip to Dial2Do:

But if you must continue driving, use tools like Dial2Do to at least capture the good ideas you’ll have that otherwise would be lost to the road.

We find many of our users working with Dial2Do in this way: using it as a one-button way to save thoughts, idea sand to-dos while driving. Especially with features like Evernote integration using Voice2Note, it makes never losing that killer idea a snap!

Voice2Note among TheNextWeb’s Top Ten Evernote Add-ons

TheNextWeb just published a handy list of top ten add-ons to make the “insanely useful” Evernote Service even more useful. And Voice2Note (powered by Dial2Do) is first one in the list:

Couldn’t have said it better ourselves. Full article here, and Voice2Note details here.

Dial2Do for Jottsters: an offer you can’t refuse

As we mentioned before – the sun sets on Jott’s consumer service on May 3rd. Dial2Do has stepped forward with an offer for any Jott Users who would like to switch to Dial2Do.

• 3 months of Dial2Do Basic FREE  : This lets you capture reminders for yourself quickly and easily
• Upgrade to Pro during the 3 months and get your 1st year’s subscription to Dial2Do Pro for just $35 – SAVE $24.99!

See here for all the details and to register.

Sorry to see you go, Jott

We were surprised by the news this week that Jott was to close its service, effective from May 3rd. Dial2Do and Jott are often mentioned alongside each other as being “in the same space” (as the analysts like to say :-)), although both companies really focused on slightly different things. Jott concentrated on speech as a core UI for productivity tasks, while Dial2Do has focused on the Handsfree experience: making it as easy as possible to get what you want to get done, handsfree.

We’ve tracked Jott’s progress from startup through to acquisition two years ago by the “Big Gorilla” of the Speech Universe : Nuance. It looks like the plan is to focus their energies on their carrier channel, and end the consumer facing Jott.com service.

So what’s a Jott user to do? Or should I say, 2DO ?? 🙂

Well – Dial2Do makes a great replacement for Jott. If you haven’t had a chance to try it out –  you can head straight to Dial2Do and get started for free! Many Jott folks were especially keen on reminders – which is included in the DialDo Basic plan for just $25 a year.

Jottsters might also choose to use Dial2Do bundled by one of our partners:

• Voice2Note: if you’re one of the 5M+ Evernote Users – you can have your Evernote Voice Notes converted to text by Voice2Note
• Jabra: You can get the Dial2Do Handsfree Assistant with any of the Jabra headsets from the Jabra App Store
• JawBone : Add the Dial2Do Handsfree Assistant to your Jawbone Headset in the Jawbone MyTalk zone.
• Plantronics: Buy a Plantronics headset and get Vocalyst free (powered by Dial2Do)! Reminders, email and much much more!
• SuperTooth: Have just announced the SuperTooth Handsfree Assistant (powered by Dial2Do) – about to hit the stores soon – details here.
• DriveNTalk: Offers Dial2Do Handfree Assistant bundled with their Car Kits

And of course – you can always go straight to Dial2Do and try the Handsfree Assistant. It works on any phone, it’s live in lots of countries worldwide, and it’s free to get started! Plus, our apps are available free on Blackberry and Android today. Try it now.

InfoVision Awards : The Interview

Last post about Broadband World Forum Infovision Awards, we promise! As part of the awards process, Dial2Do CTO (Sean O Sullivan), did an interview with the Informa folks, and here it is.

Could you briefly describe what the product/service does?

The HandsFreeAssistant from Dial2Do is a phone service that targets drivers who would like to get more done, safely, while driving. From a consumer perspective, the service is simple: dial a local number, and speak to get things done.

Say “Text” to send a text message, “Email” to send an email, “listen to email” to hear your email, and so on. There are over forty services in Dial2Do, including twitter, reminders, google calendar, remember the milk, and more. Users love the fact that it lets them safely get more from their time in the car.

Behind the scenes of course, Dial2Do offers a voice platform that enables partners to rapidly voice-enable whatever they want – in effect to offer “voice as a service”. Our initial focus has been to partner with the manufacturers of Bluetooth / Handsfree hardware: Bluetooth headsets and car kits. They bundle the service directly with the hardware and offer the end user a fully “joined up” experience – out of the box.

To date, Dial2Do has announced partnerships with many of the world’s leading handsfree equipment brands, including Plantronics, Aliph/Jawbone, Jabra, EnusTech, and others. We’re also voice-enabling fantastic online services such as Evernote, enabling them to rapidly offer voice interaction to their 3M+ users. The platform is hosted, multilingual and extensible – so partners can choose the set of services they wish to offer, the branding and style they wish to use, and even the voice style and interface for user interactions.

What wider market trends do you hope to address with this product/service?

There are a few trends that are driving demand for the service.

• Lots of people spending lots of time in the car: in many countries, including the US where we launched Dial2Do, there are a lot of people who commute regularly for 30-60 minutes per day, and would like to get more from their “driving time” than talk radio and phone calls.
• Speech with everything: it’s becoming more common to see speech used as a core interface with many things, from iPod Nano’s to cars. People are more open to the idea of talking to your favourite web service now to get things done, whether it’s productivity stuff like email, calendars and reminders, or “fun” stuff like listening to twitter or your favourite news feeds as you drive.
• Handsfree legislation: we’re seeing legislation roll out worldwide making it illegal to text or hold a phone while driving. As consumers go looking for handsfree solutions that enable them to comply with the new laws, they are looking for “value add. The HandsFreeAssistant from Dial2Do addresses a burgeoning consumer need to stay safely in touch with your favourite services while driving.
• Everyone’s looking for value-add: in consumer electronics, such as in the Bluetooth headset and hands-free equipment market, many of the players are looking to engage in a deeper way with the end user. One of the great ways to do this is to offer compelling cloud-based services that “wrap around” the consumer electronics offering (think for example of how backup has become a kay value-add service for netbook and laptop providers). The HandsFreeAssistant gives Dial2Do partners a great own-brand way to create longer term engagement with the end user, who is often totally unknown to the manufacturer of these devices.

Why do you think your product/service was shortlisted by the judges?

One of the things that may have stuck out was our route to market. We’ve taken a voice service with a lot of functionality, and simplified it so that anyone can use it, and bundled it with consumer electronics from our headset and hands-free partners. It’s a genuine win-win for us, for the equipment partner and for the consumer, and is a little bit innovative in the market today.

In addition, perhaps they liked our roadmap of where we see things headed with voice: as you get more intelligence in both the phones and even the headsets. there is great potential to really orchestrate all the moving parts end to end to offer the end user a beautiful, Apple-like experience, beyond what they get today.

Finally, we’ve seen great feedback from users with the service to date, and we encouraged the judges to try it for themselves (there’s one month free trial when you register at http://www.dial2do.com). So who knows – maybe they tried it and liked it!

What major developments do you expect to witness in the broadband technology market over the five years?

The most obvious is the continued growth in mobile broadband, whether via dongles, “pucks” such as those announced by Clearwire recently in the US, or even via handsets-as-hotspots such as we’ve seen with Google and Android. Aside form that: bandwidth and increasingly, embedded broadband in everyday devices, including cars.

You can read all the nomination interviews here.

InfoVision Awards

Collecting the award for Best New Service….

And all the happy winners….

Looks like someone missed a memo re: dress code 🙂

Press Pack for the Awards here.

Kudos and Thanks : We won!

So – we won! Against formidable competition – the “SuperTankers of the Telecom World”  – we picked up the “Best New Service” award at the InfoVision Awards last night. And man, are we delighted! 🙂

An initial reaction – three things:

1. We were honoured to have been nominated, and now are over the moon to have won. We really appreciate the fact that an industry panel judged us worthy. It means a lot to us, our customers and partners.
2. The crew at Dial2Do have had a hectic year. We launched “for real” at CES in January. We quickly signed partners. We added features, billing, territories, languages. And more. So this award is (cliché alert) very much an acknowledgement of the team effort: massive Pats-on-Backs to all – “top job!”
3. For anyone here at our Blog for the first time because you saw us at the awards and on the BBWF material, or heard about us on the innernet – welcome! We’re proud of the service – go to http://www.dial2do.com right now and try it out – for free – and let us know what you think! Follow us on twitter here or drop us a line.

The official release is here. The Eiffel Tower even put its sparkly dress on to congratulate us.

Wish Us Luck at InfoVision Awards Tonight!

Oui – c’est vrai! Dial2Do was nominated for a prestigious InfoVision Award at the BroadBand World Forum Conference that kicked off today in beautiful Paris. Well – tonight is awards ceremony night and Dial2Do will be at the event and hoping for the best. Of course, we’re already thrilled to be nominated in the Best New Service category – especially considering the other nominees in that category. And of course, since our nomination, we also announced the launch of Plantronics Savor M1100 with Vocalyst.

The awards take place on a boat – no less! Apparently hors d’oeuvres and a tipple (and much much more by the sounds of it) will be served while we hear the names of the lucky winners announced. A dirty job, but someone’s got to do it 🙂

Anyway – win or lose – the conference looks set to be a great event, and we’ll update here with any interesting news that catches our eye. We’re on not one, but two panels about developers, APIs and ecosystem on Thursday at the show, with Alan Quayle, and will be on the conference floor and at the sessions for the duration. For an example of Alan’s continued excellent work to motivate the telecom Industry – see this recent post from his blog.

Anyway – we’re here all week (longer – depending on the planned industrial action) so do drop a line if you fancy meeting up. Meanwhile: À tout à l’heure !