Review: vlingo for the iPhone

I saw Jerry Taft tweeting about vlingo, so I thought I'd check it out. Vlingo, available for the iPhone and Blackberry, is described on the company's website as:

a voice-powered user interface that unlocks access to mobile phone wireless data services.

Basically, vlingo is supposed to allow you to use spoken commands for a limited variety of services on your smart device. It's a great idea, but its far from perfect and has a lot of room for improvement.

I played with it for a while on my iPhone 3G. The interface is clean and attractive. In the middle of the screen, various examples of commands are shown. Below that, is a smaller button that leads to more detailed instructions. Below that, a very large button that you use in a push-to-talk manner. And an icon bar at the bottom allows you to select different types of searches.

One example of a search vlingo can attempt is a google search. Hold the button, and say "Google vlingo." It really only works with Google and Yahoo! I tried using it with Wikipedia, and it simply did the search on Google.

The real trouble is, it doesn't understand much. I've developed a newfound interest in fountain pens. But when I said "Wikipedia fountain pens," vlingo thought I said "wiki pedia elgin cams." Elgin is a town near my home of Chicago, so I give it credit for proximity! A second attempt got "wiki pedia function test," which sounds closer. A third try got to fountain pens.

The application did better with phone requests, usually successfully finding my contacts. But if I only specified a first name, the program only presents me with the first match. It would be nice if it would be able to see which contacts are on my iPhone's favorites list, and check that first.

Lastly, I tried posting a tweet to my twitter account. Twitter starts posts with my name, so to finish the sentence, I said "hates to admit it, but his Macintosh is not feeling well." Vlingo rendered it as "hate to admit it but his mcintosh is not feeling well" . So no punctuation, a dropped S on the first word, and even though this is a geeky tool, it doesn't go to the proper noun Macintosh. So I had to edit the post. It would have been easier to type the tweet in the first place.

The app is free, so if you feel like playing around with primitive voice recognition on your iPhone, the price is right. But don't expect this to become a regular part of your iPhone toolkit.