Dragon dictation iPhone app review

One of the problems with the iPhone is that it is a pain to type out anything longer than a sentence therefore it is difficult to create a quick blog post while you are on the move.

Today I found an app that may go some way to solving this problem. Dragon dictation for the iPhone converts you speech into text which can then either be sent to an email, shared on twitter, sent via SMS or posted to Facebook. It claims to be 5X faster than typing on a keyboard and on an iPhone probably 10X that.

It is multilingual and currently supports U.S. English, U.K. English and German. French, Italian and Spanish support will be added later this year. If you are stuck not being able to understand word or phrase in one of these languages then get the person to speak into the app and paste the text into google translate for a dirty DIY babel fish.

The upside of the app is it is free, very easy to use and does work; the downside is it makes many mistakes, you need to speak slowly and clearly and there seems to be a word limit on how much speech it will convert to text.

Useful but not perfect – 6/10

Posted via email from fakingIt

Why only tumble or poste when you can do both

Just been considering the merits of the mini blogging platforms Posterous and Tumblr which inhabit a space somewhere between Twitter and Wordpress. Both of these platforms aim to make it as easy as possible to share several types of rich media content and are useful for short spurts of consciousness as well as more considered posts.

The nitty gritty:

• Registration - Posterous makes it simple and easy to register, no wait... you just need to post to post@posterous.com to get started. Tumblr has a registration form, but it doesn't match for Posterous' registration-free service. Winner: Posterous
• Posting - Posterous has only one content type (no offence to Posterous). Tumblr has a lot of content types. But do you need all these diffrent content types? Simplicity is best.
• You can post by email through a simple email address, while Tumblr makes up an email address that you might forget. Winner: Posterous (email)/Tumblr (flexiblity)
• Themes - Tumblr and Posterous both have good themes but as the more established platform Tumblr has more and better quality themes. Winner Tumblr.
• Focus - Tumblr is very much like your lifestream, while Posterous acts as your email version of ping.fm.
• Comments - Posterous has built-in comments. Tumblr requires you to use Disqus as your comment system. Tumblr doesn't have built in commenting. Winner: Posterous.

Tumblr has a great iPhone App and better themes but for sheer ease of use Posterous is my winner.

I would recommend using both platforms and linking them together. Posterous makes it so easy to share content through email that I have linked both my Tumblr and Blogger sites so any email I send with blogger+tumblr@posterous.com pings the content to both.

Surely the more spaces you can get your content on the better and Posterous allows such easy posting that why choose when you can use both for free.

PS - Posted with an email to Posterous to my:

• Blogger site
• Posterous site
• and Tumblr site

Posted via email from fakingIt

The future of travel publishing is the app

Travel guide publishing is the canary in the coal
mine for the printed book with sales down 38% in five years. If this rate of decline continues then the last LP or Rough Guide will be published in 7 years.

Spurred on by the recession and with people to choosing to use the internet to do their own research sales of printed travel guides can only continue to fall.

Let's face it lugging a travel guide book around with you is inconvenient.

The future of the travel guide is the app.

It has convenience combined with features impossible to do with the printed book:

• Point your phone at an interesting building and get its full history;
• automatically build an itinerary based on your preferences;
• get restaurant and hotel recommendations combined with discounts streamed to your phone for the area that you are standing;
• speak into your phone for automatic translation into the local language;
• and a whole host of social features that could make discovering new people as easy as finding new places.

Although the future of the printed travel guide book is bleak, the information that it contains is soon to liberated in a much more exciting way.

Posted via email from fakingIt

All you need is love, says Clay

I just read Internet guru Clay Shirky’s new book Cognitive Surplus

The basic premise of the book is that we have spent too much time passively watching television rather than doing stuff.

This is now changed as the online generation turn away from TV to the internet where they hangout in social networks, comment on posts and upload videos.

They are using their spare time which 100 years ago people had very little of to do something creative. OK most of the stuff done is trivial but for every 100 cute cat videos there is one video of real worth.

The problem with the book is that although Clay paints a convincing picture that the internet is groovy and it brings the world the 60’s ideal of peace and love in bytes, this is only half the picture.

The heart warming stories like wikipedia and the online charitable giving of time and money are great, but they need to be balanced with the fact that the internet can be used for ill as well as good: the Jihad movements plotting the next terrorist outrage; the Russian hackers attacking a Balletic state; pedophiles grooming children online.

Clay radiates nothing but goodness, but beneath this goodness lies a dollop of evil.

Click and Add Value

Many people forget that one of the biggest advantages of the web to traditional publishing is its interconnectedness. The web allows for easy sets of links to be added to stories that can help build information around content.

It exasperates me when I see web journalists re-write press releases rather than linking to the original and trying to add something unique.

A journalist shouldn't be a stenographer, if they are then perhaps they are in the wrong profession.

A couple of examples of publications that do it well:

• FT.com
• Guardian.co.uk

And those that don't:

• Brighton Argus
• The Times

Posted via email from fakingIt

Get Your Finger on the Pulse

I've been playing around with the Pulse iPhone app and I'm loving it. Very simple idea it takes 20 of your favourite rss feeds and displays them in a grid pattern with a prominent picture. It's a very similar concept to the BBC app.

It may seem gimmicky but having the pictures there makes a real difference and shows the power of imagery in grabbing attention.

If I have any criticisms they are that you can only add 20 feeds, and most annoyingly - lots of my feeds don't have pictures combined with the stories.

Get it from the app store for £1.19 for the iPhone.

Posted via email from fakingIt

Facebook and identity

We need to develop a network that allows for the complexities of identity, Facebook hasn't & is not willing to do this.

Posted via email from fakingIt