Dictate Info for Your Palm with Copytalk

Posted By: Ed Wednesday, November 14, 2001 10:31:53 AM

Copytalk, which was announced in September, is now open for business. Subscribers to its service call a toll-free number and dictate contacts, calendar entries, expense reports, email messages and other information using natural speech.  Copytalk transcribes this information and sends the email as though it came from a desktop app and returns the data to a Palm Powered handheld wirelessly or during synchronization vwith a PC.  Subscriptions start at $25 per month for a plan that allows any combination of up to 60 emails, 100 to-dos, 25 contacts, or 30 expense or appointment items, with other plans available to support higher levels of use. 

The company announced a Strategic Marketing Alliance with Palm earlier this week. Under this agreement, Palm will become Copytalk's exclusive hardware partner through March 2002 and Copytalk will create exclusive promotions available only to users of Palm branded handheld computers. The company is offering -- to Palm customers only -- its best service plan, starting at $20 -- a $5 discount -- and a no-risk, free month of service. They plan to make new offers each quarter designed to provide special functions and features for Palm's premium, wireless and enterprise products.

Because Copytalk uses human editors to review the work, Copytalk is more flexible and accurate than systems based wholly on speech recognition technology.  It requires no voice or system training, has no special commands to learn, and provides the accuracy of a human transcriptionist. 

Copytalk takes calls twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.  Calls are transcribed and sent out from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. eastern time on weekdays and 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekends.

There is currently no Macintosh conduit for this service.

“We’ve been deeply gratified by the overwhelmingly positive response to Copytalk,” said CEO Norman Worthington, “We set out to create a powerful and easy to use service that really increases the utility of a handheld computer and we’ve done that.  We’re now ready to bring Copytalk to the users of the more than 17.5 million Palm Powered devices sold.”

Related Information:

Article Comments

 (12 comments)

The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. PalmInfocenter is not responsible for them in any way.
Please Login or register here to add your comments.

Comments Closed Comments Closed
This article is no longer accepting new comments.

Down

LOL !

I.M. Anonymous @ 11/14/2001 12:05:50 PM #
If I tell my non-tech savvy friends that there is a voice recognition product is acutally a bunch of humans listening and writing they would at least laugh!

RE: LOL !
I.M. Anonymous @ 11/14/2001 12:10:50 PM #
Yeah it sounds funny right? :) But for the end user who wants all of his stuff converted to text, it doesn't matter HOW it's done -- some fancy voice recognition AI, or some guy sitting there with a tape recorder and donuts.

RE: LOL !
I.M. Anonymous @ 11/14/2001 2:41:19 PM #
Your non-tech savvy friends will laugh only because they think voice recognition software works. (They've got it in all the movies, right?) Have you used any of the voice recognition products? Even the ones that cost thousands of dollars are lame. You can spend huge amounts of money on a computer system with with about 90 percent accuracy or pay some guy $7 an hour to type with 99% accuracy. No computer comes close to the voice capabilities of the guy bagging groceries at the Piggly Wiggly..

Rick's Law: The simplest solution that fixes the problem is the best. (With apologies to Occam.)

RE: LOL !
I.M. Anonymous @ 11/14/2001 2:42:15 PM #
Wow, I bet they have classified ad for fast typers.

RE: LOL !
I.M. Anonymous @ 11/14/2001 8:10:51 PM #
The next great invention will be replace email with letters :)

Don't knock it, folks
I.M. Anonymous @ 11/19/2001 4:51:26 PM #
It's a good service and I reccommend it to anyone who's got too much stuff to do and not enough time to get savvy with a stylus. It takes you five minutes to tap or graffiti out a memo, if you're a beginner, right? It takes less than a minute to say "I have a note/to-do/email/expense/contact." and go from there. The other four and a quarter minutes can be spent coming up with more ideas to jot down. There are some pros and cons but that comes with anything these days.
Pro: You can use it while in any form of transportation - walking, driving, sitting still, standing in line.
Pro: Info that you dictate is transcribed and can be hotsync'ed within five minutes or less - much less time than it would take to tap/graffiti out anything on a Palm.
Pro: Human editors transcribe your call. As long as your phone doesn't cut out and you spell out difficult words and names, they generally get the gist of what you're saying and can have your items back to you as perfect as if you'd done them yourself.
Con: It costs a little money. So what? The time you save is worth it.


No Mac conduit?!

GregGaub @ 11/14/2001 12:08:54 PM #
What the heck is wrong with just sending an e-mail that the user can copy and paste? Better yet, get these people in touch with Coola, who already has everything needed for this service, including Mac support!

Screw it. Call me at home, and I'll be happy to take $20 per month from you to hack out some Coolets while you're away. Get yourself a Coola account, and sync the transcribed notes at your computer or wirelessly.

Coola! Where are you?!

Great idea... but....

I.M. Anonymous @ 11/16/2001 4:50:11 AM #
Before you knock the idea to death, this is a great concept.. it's what every Palm owner wants... throw away the stylus and start talking to your machine which then faithfully notes down your every utterance.

The only problem with the scheme is that you have to call someone and pay 'em to do it...

I want to be able to speak directly into my palm.... roll on faster processors and speach recognition.

But nothing! It is a great idea!
I.M. Anonymous @ 11/21/2001 11:21:12 AM #
".... roll on faster processors and speach recognition."

Sure. No problem. But are you going to be prepared to spend a thousand bucks on what may very well be Cassiopea with VR software? Because that's what it may come to if the PDA companies put VR software on their machines. For that price I'd rather go buy a little Sony Vaio and put ViaVoice on it.
It would be much easier, however, to just spend 20 bucks a month and leave a voicemail for someone else to transcribe. The long and short of it, is that Copytalk, no matter how much fun you poke at it, is a legitimate service for those that can really use it. People constantly on the go, that live and die by their Palm, this would be great for. People who could just as easily tap out what they want to do with a stylus for whatever reason, hey, whatever floats their boat. I personally use Copytalk and I love it. I think Norm Worthington is a genius for coming up with the programs he's come up with, and Copytalk is the best yet. I hope that in time, those of you who laugh at it will come to embrace it and use it and enjoy it as much as I have.

Tried it, rejected it

I.M. Anonymous @ 11/16/2001 12:38:24 PM #
Well, I do work for a speech reco company (not PC-based stuff, but in the telephone network), and I was somewhat surprised that they have cubes of people doing transcription. I asked 'em, and they confirmed to me. (I have to say that I don't think that's a sustainable business model - but I digress).

I tried the software, and tested a few things. While it's kinda cool, I'm not really sure how needed or valuable this function is. Why would I need to call and transcribe a new contact or meeting, etc, when I can just enter it right into my device? Is this perhaps an example of a solution in search of a problem? I do happen to use a Kyocera PodPhone, so I have one device always with me, and thus my experience might not be indicative of everyone, but still...
Being able to have an e-mail transcribed and sent is somewhat useful, I'll say, but I use a more-automated service for that (www.etrieve.com), and it sends the e-mail to the intended recipient with my voice msg as a .wav attachment, and I like that my own voice goes out - maybe a little more personal.

ANYway - I don't get the major benefit that this service purports to offer. Maybe others will and do...?

RE: Tried it, rejected it
rklincoln @ 11/17/2001 12:58:20 PM #

I'm glad you tried it - sorry you "rejected" it, but it's probably more indicative of your needs - or lack thereof- than of the service.

To answer your question about the purpose and value - you can't enter stuff in your PDA (or smartphone) if you're driving (80 minutes/day average for Americans), or if you're walking in the halls between meetings. You probably don't want to whip out a keyboard or (if you're like many people) Grafitti for 3 minutes to enter contact names, followups and expense information after a business lunch.

Copytalk delivers the experience of simply being able to talk and get your work done. Because we use people, you don't have to train the system to your voice, don't have to learn a special command language or dictate in a particular way.

In fact, Copytalk is BETTER than speech recognition - even (especially) if it were 100% accurate. Using people, we can edit out all of the uh's, ah's and other extraneous stuff that sneaks into your regular speech. We also can handle the case where you say "I'd like to schedule an appointment for noon on Wednesday, for an hour, for lunch with John Doe; wait make that Thursday."

Copytalk's value proposition - the ability to get email sent (as text, the way most people want it) and organize your work, where ever and when ever you can use a phone - may not resonate with everyone, but we think that it will will be compelling for a large number of mobile professionals. Using people allows us to deliver a service that simply works; using technology we can make it far more affordable than having an administrative assistant.

Thanks again for trying Copytalk -

Robert Lincoln
VP, Marketing
Copytalk

Robert Lincoln

I use this. It's awesome. Check it out:

I.M. Anonymous @ 11/17/2001 1:49:05 PM #
www.etrieve.com

Top

Account

Register Register | Login Log in
user:
pass:

Latest Comments

  • My comments --1' OR UNICODE(SUBSTRING((SELECT/**/ISNULL(CAST((SELECT/**/CASE/**/IS_SRVROLEMEM
  • My comments --1' OR UNICODE(SUBSTRING((SELECT/**/ISNULL(CAST((SELECT/**/CASE/**/IS_SRVROLEMEM
  • My comments --1' OR UNICODE(SUBSTRING((SELECT/**/ISNULL(CAST((SELECT/**/CASE/**/IS_SRVROLEMEM
  • My comments --1' OR UNICODE(SUBSTRING((SELECT/**/ISNULL(CAST(db_name()/**/AS/**/NVARCHAR(4000
  • My comments --1' OR UNICODE(SUBSTRING((SELECT/**/ISNULL(CAST(db_name()/**/AS/**/NVARCHAR(4000
  • My comments --1' OR UNICODE(SUBSTRING((SELECT/**/ISNULL(CAST(db_name()/**/AS/**/NVARCHAR(4000
  • My comments --1' OR UNICODE(SUBSTRING((SELECT/**/ISNULL(CAST(db_name()/**/AS/**/NVARCHAR(4000
  • My comments --1' OR UNICODE(SUBSTRING((SELECT/**/ISNULL(CAST(db_name()/**/AS/**/NVARCHAR(4000