Companies like Vocre announced at Tech Crunch Disrupt offer voice to text translations in real time, although when we tried to get a demo of Vocre it did not perform well and the translation had to be edited for accuracy. I spoke with Andrew Lauder Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of Vocre briefly about this trouble and he attributed it to microphone quality being less optimal on the iPod in comparison to the iPhone; which is what the demo girls were using to show me the translation.

Regardless, Vocre is a very useful tool and once the team works out the bugs it should grow very fast amongst iPhone travelers. What is special is that Vocre uses the corrected translations to improve the engine and accuracy for future translations. Something Ortsbo has yet to do, but is planning to. Luccatch briefly talked about crowd sourcing phrases and terms used that are not easily translatable while keeping the same meaning, like “knock on wood.” Although you and I as english speaking folks may understand the phrase, someone in swahili may not grasp the concept if directly translated. This is where Ortsbo’s Wiki will come to the rescue. Already with 85-95% accuracy it can only get better. Ortsbo web translation is being used by 30 million unique users with 250 billion translations each month. When asked how the iPhone app adoption was performing — with 114 seemingly positive reviews on iTunes — Lucatch diverted from an answer and turned to their future release of a Mango version once Windows Mango launches.

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Having aspirations to set up a speed trap on the side of the road? Perhaps you’re looking to take neighbourhood watch to entirely new levels? Well, it seems that there’s an app for that. SpeedClock can clock just about any passing object and determine its speed.

No, this doesn’t give you the right to chase someone down the highway to hand them a citation, but it is a pretty cool thing you can do with your favorite Apple cell phone. According to the developers, SpeedClock makes use of the iPhone’s “three-axis gyro and basic trigonometry” to establish distance. From there, speed is “measured using the motion sensing of the camera, timing the interval between the object entering and leaving the frame.”

Don’t expect it to be anywhere near as accurate as what the state troopers employ, as the user is still left to guesstimate the distance between the phone and the object being clocked. This won’t be replacing true radar guns any time soon, but it could make for some fun times on a country back road.

SpeedClock is compatible with iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and fourth-gen iPod touch.

[Cult of Mac via iTunes, AppMaker]

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If you’re using Google Mobile to search for things on your smartphone, there’s a good chance you may be interested in two new special features.  Google Mobile on the iPhone now has “iPhone Apps” under the “more” pull-down menu. Using that, you can find whatever apps you want for the Cupertino-sourced device. I’m thinking that it’ll only show the official stuff, but who knows? Maybe it’ll expand into Cydia and other jailbroken-only apps too.

For the more Google inclined, Google Mobile for Android has the suitable “Android Apps” category tossed in for good measure now. This does the same thing as the iPhone version, except it looks for applications being offered through Android Market.

Is this addition redundant? Yeah, a little, but if you’re going to use Google to look for everything on the Internet, you may as well look for your apps on there too. I wonder if they’ll do the same for Windows Phone 7? Or does Bing have that cornered?

SOURCE: Android Police via Giz

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Look out, Windows Phone 7. Be aware, Google Android. Don’t go throwing around that ever popular catchphrase without a care in the world, because Apple has just landed the trademark for its slogan: “There’s an app for that.”

The ubiquitous phrase can be seen and heard just about anywhere, from TV ads to Internet spots. Apple apparently filed the trademark request back in December 2009 (I thought they would have done it way before then) and the people at the US patent and trademark office just gave it the stamp of approval.

In the grand scheme of things, this really won’t make much of a difference. It’s just like any other logo, slogan, or catchphrase that any other company can make. I’m just waiting for one of those other guys to launch a lawsuit saying that they, somehow, have rights to this line. Sort of like how Cisco came out of nowhere to say it owned the iPhone name.

SOURCE:BGR

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eBay Selling app for the iPhone - Photo: eBay

eBay today announced the release of two new free apps for the Apple iPhone.  The first app is a the eBay seller tool, it will allow members to easily snap a photo of a product on their iPhone camera, enter some basic auction information, and list it on the eBay marketplace.   Their second app is a bit of a stab at Craigslist, as it’s the new eBay Classifieds application.  This one lets you post free ads on the eBayClassifieds.com website for local buyers.

And don’t forget, with the recent release of the PayPal mobile app for iPhone, you can quickly pay for your items from either eBay site.

Here are some more details on each of the apps, from eBay:

eBay Selling app:

* Point, shoot and click to list an item from their iPhones in 60 seconds or less
* Research sales trends and price ranges on eBay and list similar items for sale
* Easily and clearly view the status of items for sale
* Share listings with Facebook and Twitter social networks
* Quickly link to other eBay and PayPal iPhone apps

eBay Classifieds iPhone:

* Free ad postings in less than a minute with up to eight photos, either from the iPhone’s photo library or its camera
* Fast and simple search by keyword, location, price range and other attributes
* Single-page ad view with reply, watch, and share features – all while on the go

Two video demos below explain the services in more detail, with a bit of marketing pizazz of course.   eBay also announced their iPad app will be available at the launch this Saturday April 3rd.

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