Dial2Do offers convenience, questions

On Monday, I saw a Tweet from popular technology guru Leo Laporte saying that he was trying out a service called Dial2Do. I decided to try it out myself and I have to say, within the limits of current technology it's a pretty nifty little service -- although with a privacy issue that some people may find troubling.

Dial2Do (dial2do.com) allows you to call from your cell phone and dictate e-mails, text messages, Twitter updates or reminders. You can also have your incoming e-mails, reminders or tweets read to you.

The service is relatively easy to set up. You give it the cell phone number from which you will be calling; the service automatically recognizes your incoming call from caller ID, and so you don't have to log in each time you make a call. In order to send e-mail or texts, you must set up a contact list on the Dial2Do web site. You can enter the information manually or import it from various common services. (You must make sure that each contact name is something which Dial2Do is capable of understanding and interpreting when you speak it out loud.) Right now, during the beta test, you are limited to 100 contacts.

To use the service, you simply dial the Dial2Do phone number, and then say what you want to do -- for example, "E-mail" or "Listen to e-mail." If you are sending an e-mail, you will then be prompted to speak the name of the contact as it's entered in your contact list. Then you simply speak the message, and when you stop speaking, Dial2Do will send the message.

I tried a couple of test messages to see how well the service worked, and I was pleased that messages like "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition" turned out correctly interpreted and spelled. In case there is any ambiguity, your dictated e-mail message or tweet includes a link where listeners can listen to the original audio of your dictation. (E-mail messages also contain a little promotional message for Dial2Do appended to the bottom.)

But there's a catch. I wondered why some of my test messages took a few minutes before showing up, and I think I found my answer in the service's frequently-asked question list:

"[W]e use a combination of technology and human quality control to transcribe your message and check it for quality. Under certain circumstances, transcribers just listen to your audio and check it for accuracy.

"Transcribers will not see your name, they will just hear your audio and be able to edit the transcription for quality."

The company's reassurances aside, some people won't like the idea of someone else listening to their e-mail messages. You need to be aware of this and make your own decisions before you use a service like this for particularly sensitive information.

Right now, the company says it is in open beta test and the service is free for everyone. The FAQ states that the company hopes to maintain some sort of basic service for free, introducing premium-tier paid services on top of that. There are no specifics yet about what will be free and what will require payment. I'm guessing it will be more expensive to maintain a staff of humans to double-check audio messages than it would be to use computers only, and I'm sure that will figure into the economics.

Still, this could be a potentially-useful service for people on the go to send notes to friends, family or co-workers. It will be interesting to see how and if it develops.

--John I. Carney is city editor of the Times-Gazette and covers county government. He is also the author of the self-published novel "Soapstone." His personal web site is lakeneuron.com.