Is Vlingo better than Jott?

SANTA BARBARA, CALIF. -- I told you back in March about Jott for BlackBerry, a free app that lets you reply to e-mail on a BlackBerry by talking, rather than typing. Today, a company called Vlingo rolled out voice command for BlackBerry phones. Which is better?

In fact, Jott and Vlingo are two very different services. Jott for BlackBerry is simply an extension of regular Jott. You need a Jott account to use it. In general, Jott is a service that enables you to send messages by voice command. To use Jott, you call the service's toll-free number (speed dial is recommended), where a recorded voice asks, "Who do you want to Jott?" You reply with a person in your contact list, or the word "myself," then say the message. Jott then converts your spoken words into written text and sends it as the message, along with a link to the audio. Jott for BlackBerry uses the same voice-recognition technology to reply to e-mails.

Vlingo, on the other hand, is more of a general-purpose voice-command system. You can launch Web searches or applications, send e-mails or texts and do other things, all by voice command. To use Vlingo, you press one of the side buttons on your BlackBerry (you get to pick which one during setup), and say your command. Vlingo both interprets and obeys your commands, and takes "dictation" for your messages. So, for example, if you say, "Send e-mail to Janet subject lunch tomorrow message are you free tomorrow question mark if so let's have lunch," Vlingo will go find Janet's e-mail address from your contacts, then tee up an e-mail to her with "Lunch tomorrow" in the Subject line, and "Are you free tomorrow? If so let's have lunch." You press the Send button and off it goes. That's probably one of the more complex Vlingo tasks. Usually, you can just say "Open Calendar" or "Search Web best Italian restaurant in Texas."

Although Vlingo and Jott are two completely different services, I believe most users will employ them for the same simple job -- capturing reminders for themselves to do something.

For this narrow task, which is better?

Before trying Vlingo, I assumed it would be superior to Jott for sending reminders to myself for three reasons: 1) I thought I'd be able to use it when on flights or in foreign countries or other situations where I couldn't -- or wouldn't want to -- connect with my cell phone; 2) I thought it would be faster because I don't have to wait for the calling process; and 3) I thought it's more flexible options (you can choose to get notes to self via e-mail, chat, memo or task) would be beneficial.

After testing those assumptions, however, two proved to be false. Vlingo processes voice commands on a remote server and requires a connection in order to function. Also: Vlingo can take a while to process commands, so it wasn't always faster than Jott, either.

Regarding the flexible options, these will be an improvement over Jott for those who end up putting self-directed reminders into tasks or memos. I don't however, and prefer e-mail. And I don't like how Vlingo does this.

Vlingo has a feature called the Note2Self Action. Just press the button, say "note to self," and whatever you say after that gets sent or placed in the user-determined location. I have separate e-mail addresses for my phone and desktop computer. I want to send notes to my desktop, as I do with Jott, but Vlingo uses the phone's e-mail address, and I couldn't find a way to change it.

And Jott has one major advantage over Vlingo for "notes to self": It sends not only the recognized text, but also a link to the audio. So if the recognition engine gets it wrong, the audio will make it clear what you were trying to say.

So my initial belief is that for self-directed reminders, Jott is the best way to go.

However, Vlingo is still very useful. Since both are free, you don't have to choose. BlackBerry users can have it all, and use each whenever the occasion demands.

Here's a link to the press release on Vlingo, where you can read up on the announcement, and learn about Vlingo features.

So give Vlingo a try. But don't expect it to replace Jott as the best way to send reminders to yourself.

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