Dial2Do Review

Voice Enabled Mobile Service From Dial2Do Allows You To Get Things Done Quickly & Completely Handsfree By Speech Alone

Following my Voice Command review as well as the HTC Touch HD review I’ve become very interested to look more closely at voice enabled mobile services such as Dial2Do which offers the ability to get things done quickly while on the go completely handsfree and thus without the need to use your keyboard or touchscreen.

At its most basic Dial2Do allows you to complete common tasks – such as sending email, text messages, record reminders, post updates to web services such as Twitter, listen to news and a whole lot more – by simply making a phone call (for example when you need to be completely handsfree while driving), speaking your commands (for example say “email” to send an email) and saying what you want done (in this case you simply speak your email message).

I got started with Dial2Do not only because I found it to be an absolutely awesome service but also because as it is currently in Beta it also happens to be completely free and therefore (temporarily at least) offers the best value.

All that you need to use Dial2Do is

1. register for a free account online,
2. set the commands that you would like to use,
3. type or import your contacts (supports importing contacts from AOL, Gmail, Jajah, Outlook, skydeck, Windows Live and Yahoo) and then;
4. just call your Dial2Do local access number (the service currently supports English commands only and works in 19 countries including USA, UK, Canada, Mexico, France and Spain).

Although the voice-to-email service was the command that I was most immediately interested in the fact is nonetheless that you can do a whole lot more with Dial2Do including:

Communicate

• Business Card: Send contacts to your phone as business cards
• Email: Send emails, Listen to your inbox and even reply to your emails. Supports gmail, aol, yahoo and more.
• Jajah: Voice-enable your Jajah account - set up cheap calls and sent texts with Jajah.
• Mosio: Get an answer to any question with Mosio.
• Text: Send a text message to one of your contacts or groups and you can even get a copy. 
• Translate: Translates what you say into another language and sends it back to you as a text message.

Organize (Tasks, Reminders, Calendar, Expenses)

• Calendar: Listen to your calendar and add appointments
• Evernote: Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere
• Remember The Milk: Listen and post to Remember The Milk
• Reminder: Let Dial2Do help you remember stuff. Record a reminder and we convert it to text and send it to you in an email.
• Sandy: Send requests to I Want Sandy - your personal email assistant
• 30Boxes: Post and listen to your 30Boxes Calendar and Task list.
• Toodledo: Listen and post to your Toodledo task list
• Vitalist: Listen and post to your Vitalist task list.
• Xpenser: Post expenses to your Xpenser account

Socialize

• FriendFeed: Post to your FriendFeed page
• Identica: Listen and post to Identi.ca
• Jaiku: Post to your Jaiku page and listen to the latest updates
• PingFM: Post to your default Ping.fm services
• Twitter: Post messages to your Twitter page, and listen to your timeline. You can even record replies for your friends while listening.

Blog (Post to your blog)

• Blogger
• LiveJournal
• Tumblr
• TypePad
• WordPress

Listen (Listen to the RSS or News feed for any of the sites below)

• GigaOm
• Huffington Post
• jkOnTheRun
• Lifehacker
• Mashable
• New York Times
• Perez Hilton
• Read Write Web
• TechCrunch
• Weather: Listen to the weather for your location
• Web Worker Daily
• Yahoo Finance
• Yahoo News
• Yahoo Sports

As you can quickly appreciate from the above list, the number of available commands that Dial2Do supports is truly awesome.  To initiate any one of these commands all that you need to do is speak the name of the command (for example say “Xpenser” to post expenses to your account).

Additionally, the really cool thing is that you can also create your own custom commands – play an RSS feed of your choice, Record and Email, Record and Post to URL.  For example, I created a custom command called “Email Andrew” to make it even faster to email myself notes and reminders.

Furthermore, a “My History” tab within Dial2Do online keeps the complete list of all the commands that you have executed, allows you to read the transcription message for each and also allows you to play them back online.

Here above is a sample email received after I sent myself a message.  You can change the “signature” to anything else you like and because Dial2Do only sends emails from “verified” accounts your recipients can also easily reply to the message that you sent.  The only minor thing is that you cannot (yet) specify a Subject for your email.

Overall, there is no doubt that Dial2Do is an absolutely terrific service (particularly in its current free incarnation) and I can not more highly recommend that you register and start playing with it. 

Whether you’re looking to use Dial2Do for “basic” tasks – such as email or texting a contact, add a calendar item, appointment or reminder – or if you’re looking to do even more by using Dial2Do to integrate by voice with some of the most popular web services/apps such as Twitter, Jajah or Evernote I am pretty sure that like me you’re not only going to be extremely impressed but soon realize that it’s so much easier to get things done with your voice.

Tip for Treo Pro & Treo 800w Owners with Microsoft Voice Command:

To make the entire Dial2Do completely handsfree, if you have a Treo Pro, Treo 800w or other Voice Command enabled smartphone I suggest using it with your Bluetooth Headset (I highly recommend the Jabra BT530) and triggering the call to Dial2Do via a press of the button on the headset then speaking your command and message/task.

Separately, you may also want to have a look at another voice enabled mobile service called Jott.  Jott offers many similar functionalities as Dial2Do but only the very basic service is free (premium plans cost from $3.95 to $12.95 per month) and it’s only available in the US and Canada (versus 19 countries for Dial2Do).  On the plus side, Jott does offer some additional features such as Jott Apps (for desktop, Outlook, BlackBerry and iPhone) and integration with a few more web services/apps such as Facebook, Kwiry and Recommendr.

Treonauts are always looking for awesome services…