Using a voice-to-text service or digital assistant is often promoted as the “safest way” to ‘text’ while driving. Is that really true though? According to a new survey by the Texas Transportation Institute, it actually dulls your reaction just as much as actually using your fingers to type out messages.

The study examined traditional messaging versus voice-to-text, and determined that reaction time still took about twice the length of time for these folks as it would for someone that wasn’t trying to use their phone at all.

In research leader Christine Yager’s words:

“Eye contact to the roadway also decreased, no matter which texting method was used.”

So how many people were actually tested in this research? They keep the participants at 43 drivers and performed the research on a test track that was obviously free of other cars to prevent major accidents. Part of the problem with voice-to-text is that the technology doesn’t always get it right, requiring you to re-say what you wanted to time and this could lead to additional distraction that hinders your reaction time.

The biggest issue though is simply that people believe that voice-to-text is safer. Because of this, they have a false sense of security that could also hinder their reaction times because they get too comfortable.

It is certainly an interesting study. What do you think of the results, do you agree that voice-to-texting could be just as distracting as traditional text messages?

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The post New Research Indicates Voice-to-Text Driving Could Be Just As Dangerous As Regular Texting appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Hang on to your seats texters, SwiftKey is getting close to the public release of its new update, SwiftKey Flow.

Signups are now complete for beta testing of the new release. Yesterday Evan Tapper, SwiftKey’s community manager sent out the following message to the beta testers:

Hi,

Thank you for registering your interest in SwiftKey Flow. We’re very pleased that so many of you are eager to help us test it out.

SwiftKey Flow is very nearly ready for beta testing. When it is, you’ll receive an email with instructions on how to download it and how to leave us feedback. Your comments are very important to us – you’ll be a vital part of making sure that the public release of SwiftKey with SwiftKey Flow is our best keyboard yet.

To make sure that you receive the SwiftKey Flow testing email and it doesn’t end up in your spam folder, please add feedback@swiftkey.net to your list of contacts.

In the meantime, why not nominate SwiftKey in the TechCrunch 2012 Crunchies? We’d love it if you could nominate us here http://bit.ly/skcrunchie and let your friends know.

All the best,

Evan Tapper,
SwiftKey Community Manager

An official release date hasn’t been given, but with beta testing starting, I’m sure we can expect it very soon.  SwiftKey Flow will be an update to the already existing SwiftKey 3. if you haven’t updated to SwiftKey 3 yet, head over to the Play Store to download it for just $3.99.

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The post SwiftKey Flow Nears Release As Beta Testing Begins! appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

The SwiftKey app for Android is supposed to be intelligent. It gradually learns your typing habits and your favourite words to help speed up your typing, then gives you a predictive text experience that is more personalized than that lousy autocorrect. The keyboard picks up all the special and uncommon words you frequently use and stores them in a library, then offers them up as word suggestions the next time you begin to spell the word.

Now TouchType have released a second version of the app called SwiftKey X, which takes predictive text even further by accessing your SMS, Facebook, Twitter and Gmail to create a profile that captures the way you speak. The app is constantly learning how you use language to offer a text prediction experience that might give you the eerie feeling that it’s reading your mind.

SwiftKey X uses word context and personalized language models to think about words like you do, helping to ease the strain of typing on smartphones. It is continually learning from the way you write to give more accurate predictions and allow you to type faster and faster. SwiftKey X adapts the touch-sensitive area of its keys, based on your actual touchscreen input actions, resulting in predictions that are based not just on the words you tend to use, but also the way you type. Since the app knows how you type, it should eliminate those awful autocorrect fails where phrases you used once come back to haunt you.

SwiftKey X is available as a beta app, but if the idea of SwitfKey going through your personal accounts freaks you out, you can get the regular SwiftKey for $1.99 on the Android Market. SwiftKey is also working on a version for the Android tablet, and that beta version should be coming soon.

The post Swiftkey X Android App Now Even MORE Predictive appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Text’nDrive should work through in-car speakerphones and Bluetooth headsets, so you don’t have to give up that solution for your voice calls either. It’ll really depend on how accurate the speech recognition software is. If you can help it, it’s probably better just to pull over or wait until you get to your destination.  You can find the free app on the iTunes App Store or BlackBerry App World. A “pro” version chimes in at $19.95, though it’s not entirely clear what the “pro” features really entail. They’re working on an Android app too.

[TextnDrive.com]

The post Text’nDrive iPhone and Blackberry voice-to-txt app keeps your hands on the wheel appeared first on Mobile Magazine.