Tellme's Phone Portal

from the missing-link dept

I have to admit that when I heard of Tellme I wasn't particularly impressed, a voice activated channel that would allow you to access many of the thing you've grown use to on the internet, yeah right! However, after hearing a little more about the service and reading a review of it I think I've started to be converted. This might be the ideal way to get information when you're on the go, instead of fiddling around with a WAP phone, why not call up Tellme instead. Have any Techdirt readers tried this service (I'm going to register and use it when I get back to the US), if so do you think it marks the end of current WAP phones?
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  • icon
    Mike (profile), 22 Jun 2000 @ 2:51pm

    Not impressed

    Yeah, I'm not impressed. I've tried both TellMe and Quack.com (which is very similar) and the interface is actually quite annoying. The thing is when you're using a browser it's easy to run through information quickly. With these voice portals, it takes forever. For example, if you're looking for a movie listing, it starts reading off all the movies which you have to listen to, and then say "Tell me more" or whatever when it gets to the one you want. Very slow. With a normal browser, your eyes find what you're looking for quickly and it's easy to move to it. Also, both services often had trouble understanding what I said leading to frustration. The last time a friend and I were looking for a movie we used TellMe for about 2 minutes and found it was so annoying that we hung up and brought up the browser on the phone. I think they need a lot of work...

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Ryan, 22 Jun 2000 @ 3:06pm

      Re: Not impressed

      That's what I was worried about, I remember the best voice recognition software that I had when I was last in the bay area (on my phone) would require me to say a name about three times before it would call one of my friends. I guess tellme haven't improved on this technology, pretty disappointing.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        ScooterBoy, 22 Jun 2000 @ 4:31pm

        Re: Not impressed

        actually, i've been playing with the tellme.com service, and find it pretty useful. the voice recognition is pretty good (provided that you don't use speakerphone), and once you kind of get used to the interface, it's pretty easy. so.. i like it.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Alexander Bethencourt, 24 Jun 2000 @ 9:06am

        Re: Not impressed

        Hola Ryan, espero ya estes en los finales para venir a Florida, yo como siempre mirando en dirt tech yo encuentro esta pagina muy interesante, ya que siempre me ha enteresado la tecnologia, estas haciendo muy bien, espero que con tu amigo todo vaya bien, pero si no recuerda que aqui siempre tienes tu casa y puede ser que en Fisher Island, te pueda conseguir algo, muchos abrazos y suerte. Recuerdo de Alejandra, Nieves y yo Cuidate mucho

        link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    =), 23 Jun 2000 @ 10:44am

    Re: Not impressed

    Two things:

    1) You _MUST_ try blackjack. Funniest thing I've heard in a long time. Something about playing cards with Sean Connery that even makes me laugh thinking about it. *grin*

    2) Free 2 minute phone calls (keyword phonebooth). MyTalk had this feature too, but recently they disabled it for payphone use - which was the only time I really needed it. *sigh* Hopefully, TellMe will keep this running for a while (though I doubt it).

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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