Joey Call Canda

TRENTON -- A colleague on a message board touted a dictation app on iPhone called "Dragon" that e-mails you the text of what you've recorded, which is helpful for journalists trying to save time and energy as they run to and fro. Sounds great. I wondered if there was a similar app for Droid.

The Droid market has a Dragon, but it doesn't offer the e-mail service. I'm not even sure I'd want its search service based on voice recognition and the 3 or 4 results it returned.

"Joey Kulkin" was the first thing I recorded. Dragon scoured Wikipedia, Google, Yahoo video, Amazon, eBay, YouTube and Twitter and returned "Joey Call Canda."

Then I tried "Joey Kulkin writes for The Trentonian" and Dragon returned "Joey Kolton rights for the trentonian". I Googled Joey Kolton and got a ton of results, including this one for Joseph Kolton: "By Joseph Kolton ... Joseph N. Kolton is a seasoned entrepreneur, author, humorist, closet philosopher and the founder of myPhotoLottery.com." 

Then I recorded "Tony Mack is the best mayor in the history of Trenton" and Google's top link was "Embassy of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago" Only it spelled Mack's name "Mac." Josh Norris, The Trentonian's Trenton Thunder beat writer, said "Tony Mack would be a good mayor of Trinidad and Tobago." Trentonian paginator Scott Ketterer quickly added "Although if he was the mayor of Trinidad and Tobago, they might have killed him off by now." First rule of comedy: serve it up, knock it down. Good work, boys, good work.

The reason Mack appeared in that search is because the Honorable Dr. Neil Parsan, an ambassador for Trinidad and Tobago, made a speech last month at the Mayor's Commission on International Business Affairs in Philly. After Parsan's speech, Mack said, "based on the opportunities explained by Dr. Parsan, I look forward to engaging Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean." I hear they have great deals on toilet paper. We should trade the 7 members of Trenton City Council for 1,000 boxes of TP and a bushel of zabocas.

Mack and mayors of Philly, D.C., Hartford and New Orleans have been invited by Dr. Parsan to the tiny island nation for a Trade and Investment Convention in May.

Some of Trenton's top bloggers have opined about Mack's hunger to trade with African nations. Read them HERE and HERE.

Anyway, I quickly uninstalled Dragon. I did see another Droid dictation app on Google called Vlingo, and this one is promising, although the first example was only 75% accurate: "Yeah, I'd like you to tell me the history of Joey Kulkin in the NCAA tournament" came back as "Yeah, I'd like you to tell me the history of Joey call come in the nc aa tournament." 

Second example: "Josh Norris is the beat writer for the Trenton Thunder" came back as "josh norris is the be ready for the trenton thunder." Josh said he was using that on his resume. Third example: "She sells seashells by the sea shore" came back as "she sells seashells by the sea shore." 

That's a Vlingo!