Many people believe that with the release of iOS 5 voice recognition maybe integrated into the iPhone. That we will finally see the results of the Siri purchase. I don’t know whether this is true or not, but it will be hard to do better the Dragon Go by Nuance. In fact Nuance recently updated their Dragon Go application for the iPhone to make even more useful. The Dragon Go application allows you to do search and initiate applications with your voice on you iPhone. You can do basic search by saying a single word like coffee, or phrases like “find me the nearest coffee shop”. Safari will open up and show you where the nearest coffee shops are on Google Maps or show you information about coffee on Wikipedia. Say “photos of coffee” and images of coffee will show up. Nuance has created one of the best voice recognition software there is, It has been doing simple search for awhile and is good at it.
The update they released today Sept 29, integrates other applications on iPhone into the search results. For example if I say Lady Gaga, the icons for Pandora, Spotify and Last.FM pull up. If I say “play Born this Way on Spotify” Spotify initiates and Born this Way starts to play. If you say a name of a movie one of the options you are given is Netflix, click on it and the movie will start up. You do have to be signed into Netflix for this to work. When it works, the updated version of Dragon Go is amazing. When it doesn’t work it can be very frustrating. You do have to train it to make it work well and that takes some time and practice. It does offer some tips and tricks under it’s help menu. In order for it to work with an application that application has to be integrated with Dragon Go. These apps include iTunes, Pandora, Spotify, Last FM, Netflix and Yelp. You also have to have the applications installed. Voice recognition software still has a ways to go, before it becomes mainstream but it is definitely getting better. Looking forward to how it works under iOS 5.