Vlingo is launching a new application for Blackberry on Wednesday that allows you to control just about every important feature on the device by using your voice. Once you've downloaded the it (from here starting at 8am et), Vlingo walks you through setting up the software so that one of your convenience keys (left or right) can provide access to Vlingo. Once that is done, holding down that key allows you to issue voice commands to your Blackberry to perform tasks like emailing, text messaging, making calls, and searching the Web.
Meanwhile, for simple tasks like making a call, it just goes ahead and dials, giving you an opportunity to press cancel in case it got it wrong. The voice recognition certainly isn't perfect – trying to reply to an email brought up a Web search for the word "reply" in one of my tests – but it's a huge improvement on the fairly basic voice dialing that comes pre-loaded with most Blackberries. Additionally, Vlingo promises that the voice recognition improves over time. Here's a demo from the company:
So will I actually use Vlingo on my Blackberry? It'll be hard not to at least a little bit. Having such easy access to it via the convenience key is a nice feature, especially when driving, when one really shouldn't be texting, emailing, or searching through their address book. The ability to search the Web is also a big plus, as the traditional way of first navigating to a search engine, then typing terms, and then trying to browse is a major pain, and immensely distracting when trying to you know, operate a motor vehicle ;)