Final MobileBeat nominees: mBit, Gupshup, Vlingo, Yap, Greystripe, Soonr, BIM
The countdown to the MobileBeat2008 conference continues.
Today we’re adding seven more companies to the list of nominees for best mobile company, or the one with the biggest, baddest idea and that has a decent chance at being a business hit. The top 30 winners will be shortly and invited to the conference. There, an overall winner will be announced.
The latest nominees, and the final ones to be added to our list, are as follows:
mBit — a… Continue Reading
Vlingo’s speech recognition for Blackberry officially outcools the iPhone — for now
Vlingo, a Cambridge, Mass, speech recognition company, has just launched an awesome voice-powered interface for Blackberry smartphones.
In a recent post about speech-to-SMS provider Yap, we posited that the ultimate mobile interface would let us navigate a phone using a combination of voice and manual input. Yap’s goal was to get there eventually. But Vlingo, which launches such an application today, has left Yap — and even Microsoft’s heavyweight TellMe — choking on dust.
While voice-activated search… Continue Reading
Yahoo teams with Vlingo to offer voice search
Updated
With just-announced improvements to its mobile service, Yahoo oneSearch gives customers the ability to search the web by simply speaking into their phones. To make this happen, Yahoo is partnering with startup Vlingo and has led Vlingo’s $20 million second round of funding.
Yahoo isn’t the only big tech company to set its sights on the voice market. Google, for example, may be in talks to acquire internet phone company Skype. (Ebay acquired Skype at the… Continue Reading
Vlingo: tell your phone what to do
Mobile phone interfaces are notoriously difficult to use — hence, the hype around Apple’s iPhone and its unique two-fingered method of navigating its mobile web browser.
Vlingo has a different answer to clumsy mobile interfaces: speech recognition technology so sophisticated that you can speak what you want into your phone.
This helps avoid having to tap your way through mobile web menus or speak your way through audio menus.
Let’s say you want to do a search for… Continue Reading