Dial2Do : multiple phone numbers, Corkboard, FireEagle, and more!

We quietly put out a new release of Dial2do last week, and so I’m overdue to fill you in on the new features. Some of the stuff we’ve done is “behind the scenes” work, paving the way for further partner activity (like our recent announcement about Southwing) and Dial2Do API work. More on that down the line.

Multiple Phone Numbers

Yesssss! A feature I’ve personally been very keen to see, as I use different phone numbers from different places at different times, especially when travelling. Dial2Do now supports multiple phone numbers – so you can register up to three numbers that Dial2Do will recognise as you. One needs to be your primary or main number (which Dial2Do will use to set your country). Remember: caller id needs to be on in order for Dial2Do to know who’s calling. Now (for example), you could call Dial2Do from a home (land) phone as well as your mobile. Or, as I do, call it from a US mobile and a European mobile. Excellent.

New commands: CorkBoard and FireEagle

We’re delighted to welcome FireEagle and Corkboard to the Dial2Do “world of services”!

Fire Eagle (part of Yahoo) is a location “broker”. It does two things: 1) you can enable multiple applications and services to update Fire Eagle with your location and 2) you empower Fire Eagle to share that location, under rules you define, with other people or services. Sounds complicated? It’s not! it’s a great service for controlling how much information you wish to share about your location, and with whom. Now you can update your location in Fire Eagle by calling Dial2Do and saying where you are! Sweet.

As their tagline says : Corkboard helps you remember things. It’s an internet corkboard that you stick things in to that you need to remember. Now you can call Dial2Do and speak those things and they’ll pop right in to Corkboard. More details here.

Confirm before you send, and additional security

A popular request has been to be able to “confirm before sending” whatever you said on to Dial2Do. People sometimes want to rehearse what they want to say and “get it right” before it heads to Dial2Do-Land. Well, now you can do that. There’s a new setting in your settings page (settings is accessed via a link on the top right hand side when you’re logged in).  By default the new “confirm recordings” setting is disabled – just enable it to have Dial2Do check with you before sending anything.

In addition, we have a new security feature. You may now add an option to further protect your account using a PIN code. This works as follows: if enabled, when you call Dial2Do, you will be asked for your four digit PIN. You may speak it, or enter it using the phone keypad. On successful entry you can continue as normal.

Improved Email

We’re continually trying to improve the user experience of the services in Dial2Do. This release sees some changes to email, one of the most-used services in Dial2Do. We’ve tuned the “listen to email” experience, as follows: Dial2Do will now play a summary of each email for you, and offer the option to skip to the next email (say “next message”) or listen to it (“listen”). This gives a better “flow” if you’re trying to quickly get a feel for what’s in your in-box and only listen to the stuff you really care to hear in detail. very keen to hear your feedback on this one!

Richer Reminders

People just love reminders. Oh yes they do. And our users have had a lot of suggestions for how to enhance the reminder service to make it more useful. In this release you can now “tick off” your reminders as you listen to them – as in – mark them as “done” if they’re done. How? You just say “complete that” and Dial2Do will “tick” that reminder for you. Stay tuned for more goodies to come in reminders down the line.

Help!

Saying “help” in Dial2Do now lists your commands. You’re welcome!