Meanwhile there is another voice dialer called voicethis which is way better in my opinion as it only takes about 1 second to voice dial.

Things have gone progressively downhill with each update. I just downloaded the latest update and scored a perfect 0 for 10 in recognition while sitting at my desk.

And don’t fall for the Mkayama Voice Dial. It is now $15, down from $25 and is even worse.

jboshear,

The problem you are having is unususal. It most likely has to do with the raw number of contacts you have (although that shouldn’t make a difference). And it definitely shouldn’t go through its one-time initialization more than once (after that, the phonetics of your contacts are updated in the background, without interrupting you). My guess is that you phone is going to sleep before the original set of phonetics is sent to our servers.
I would be happy to trace exactly what is going on if you would like. Simply contact support@speechcloud.com and we will fix the problem. I apologize for the inconvenience.

— support@speechcloud.com

The first thing I attempted to d/l from the App Store was SpeechCloud. The d/l failed and when I attempted it a 2nd time I got a message saying the program was no longer available. I kept trying everyday and today I was able to d/l it again. When I selected it I got a message saying (sic)

“SpeechCloud is performing a one-time initialization which make take a few seconds”

Except for the obvious typo I was fine with that. I have 6,420 contacts so I understood why it took a little longer than a few seconds. The display went dim and then black and when I woke it up it was still initializing. OK. Finally it finished. I pressed and held the big button and said “Call…” but before I could say a name I got a “Contact not found” message. I tried several times but it is not possible to say anything before the message pops up. I decided to try again later.

Every time I select the SpeechCloud app it tells me it needs to perform a “one-time” initialization (the nice thing about Alzheimer’s is that you get to meet a lot of new people).

I also agree with Rustyhoge’s observations about how it should work. I am encouraged to see SpeechCloud responding to this post.

PatrickJ,

I appreciate the review of our application, and apologize for the problems you experienced. It certainly flagged a serious problem with the application that has since been fixed. Obviously, the word “null” should not be part of a contact lookup. When this error occured, it threw the speech recognition part for a loop.

This problem did occur in about 25% of our user base (it was very dependent on the contacts we were looking up against). It has been fixed on our servers and all existing and new users should now benefit from the fix.

If you wouldn’t mind giving it another try and letting us know your results (support@speechcloud.com).

Also, I appreciate rustyhoge’s comments too. We are working on some of the very features that he/she mentioned.

Thanks again for your review and help,

— support@speechcloud.com

I have tried SpeechCloud and I like it as far as it goes. I found the recognition to work fine, finding the right contact most all the time out of my 1000+ contact list. Here is the deal with voice dialing, it must be able to be used without looking and touching – that’s the whole point.

I want to be able to get the dialers’ attention by holding the call button on my bluetooth headset or by saying something, like “attention”. Then speaking the name, followed my “work” or “home” or something.

SpeechCloud is way too slow in my limited experience, and it is probably a problem that you have to select the application to use it.

I am looking forward to seeing how the development goes and I will take a look at SpeedDial, although the “jailbroken” Speedial required way to much set-up.

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284994083&mt=8