VocaNote: One-touch voice-to-email/SMS

[elmo99]

Hi all:

I've just released VocaNote Beta in the Market. I wrote it for sending notes-to-self when driving and wanted a single-button-click solution. It took some doing, but I got it working and it does not use the standard email sending, which requires selecting an email app and then pressing "Send". It it just a single click to fire off the program, it records your voice, converts it to text, and sends it to your designated email address or SMS phone number.

You can read more about it at:
https://sites.google.com/site/vocanotesoftware/

Just search for VocaNote in the Market and you will find it. Feedback, suggestions, accolades, stock tips are all welcome at vocanote@gmail.com.

Craig Hamilton a.k.a. elmo99

 

[Johnny Cakes]

This is a good app but the dev has no privacy policy listed. This app uses your email address. There needs to be a policy stated that the email address will not be harvested and sold/rented/given/disclosed and also that the email address will never be used for any other purpose. Until then, I can't use this app despite its obvious appeal.

 

[elmo99]

This is a good app but the dev has no privacy policy listed. This app uses your email address. There needs to be a policy stated that the email address will not be harvested and sold/rented/given/disclosed and also that the email address will never be used for any other purpose. Until then, I can't use this app despite its obvious appeal.

Thanks, Johnny Cakes, for the reply. Personal data in vocanote is used solely for its intended purpose and will never be harvested or used in any other way. How do you suggest making this policy apparent to the user? I checked on Android Developers and there doesn't seem to be a defined or suggested mechanism, although I may have missed it. Do you feel that a statement in the Welcome screen would be sufficient?

Thanks,
Craig
vocanote developer

 

[Johnny Cakes]

Thanks, Johnny Cakes, for the reply. Personal data in vocanote is used solely for its intended purpose and will never be harvested or used in any other way. How do you suggest making this policy apparent to the user? I checked on Android Developers and there doesn't seem to be a defined or suggested mechanism, although I may have missed it. Do you feel that a statement in the Welcome screen would be sufficient? Craig, vocanote developer

That would be perfect or just a statement on the app's home page would be sufficient.

Sorry to be so suspicious. Vocanote is a great app, which works exactly like it should, and is totally FREE -- it's just that momma told me to be weary when something is too good to be true, but you've put my mind at ease. This app's a winner!

 

[elmo99]

That would be perfect or just a statement on the app's home page would be sufficient.

Sorry to be so suspicious. Vocanote is a great app, which works exactly like it should, and is totally FREE -- it's just that momma told me to be weary when something is too good to be true, but you've put my mind at ease. This app's a winner!

OK, I have put a privacy statement in the app and on the webpage. There have been a number of updates to VocaNote which you can check out. Any feedback on problems, suggestions on features, etc. would be most helpful.

Craig

 

[jae_63]

This seems to work OK on my 2.2 Eris running KaosFroyo 37 (not quite sure that I've configured it correctly and I'm not receiving the requisite email, but I think that this is operator error).

But I have a suggestion/request for a related app. Using the commercial "JOTT" service, I'm able to add an appointment to my calendar by saying something like "At 13:30 pm meet with Rodney" or "Tuesday at 12pm lunch with Bob." I would very much like a single-button-click Android app which would do the same thing. I believe that most of the parsing of the string is done by the Google Calendar API.

 

[elmo99]

This seems to work OK on my 2.2 Eris running KaosFroyo 37 (not quite sure that I've configured it correctly and I'm not receiving the requisite email, but I think that this is operator error).

But I have a suggestion/request for a related app. Using the commercial "JOTT" service, I'm able to add an appointment to my calendar by saying something like "At 13:30 pm meet with Rodney" or "Tuesday at 12pm lunch with Bob." I would very much like a single-button-click Android app which would do the same thing. I believe that most of the parsing of the string is done by the Google Calendar API.

Please let me know if you have trouble getting the email setup, I'll be glad to help.

Yeah, I used to use Jott and liked it. I'll certainly take a look at adding appointment handling - great suggestion. I've already put in a few voice commands.

Thanks very much for the feedback, I really appreciate it. If you have any other questions, suggestions, etc. please let me know.

Craig

 

[jae_63]

This is working for me now, but I don't understand the purpose of the 'sender password' field.
At first I thought that it was supposed to be the password to my smtp server, but so long as I use the default email sense sites, I don't need to set this password.

In version 0.55, if you say 'time' at 4:05pm, the speech omits the zero digit.

 

[elmo99]

This is working for me now, but I don't understand the purpose of the 'sender password' field.
At first I thought that it was supposed to be the password to my smtp server, but so long as I use the default email sense sites, I don't need to set this password.

In version 0.55, if you say 'time' at 4:05pm, the speech omits the zero digit.

Glad you got it working.

Your voice message is sent as an email FROM some account TO some account. The FROM account can be vocanote@gmail.com and you don't need to enter a password in the Preferences, just leave it blank. If you had rather have your email sent FROM somewhere other than vocanote@gmail.com, for example, bigbird@gmail.com, then you need to specify the gmail password for bigbird@gmail.com.

I'll try to clarify this better on the website.

Craig

 

[Johnny Cakes]

I noticed that new field also. Does the program now permit sending from any site rather than just the VocaNote site?

 

[elmo99]

I noticed that new field also. Does the program now permit sending from any site rather than just the VocaNote site?

Yes, you can send the email from your own gmail account, if you wish, or any gmail account for which you have the password. Some users didn't like the idea of vocanote@gmail.com having a record of all sent emails, so this way they can send using their own gmail account. It would be nice if the android API allowed authenticating using the phone's gmail account and not having to provide the password (like the GMail app does), but that is not allowed by the API. I wish there were some way to just stick a message into the Inbox on the phone.....

Craig

 

[amer28]

Hi, great app. Is there a way to take notes exactly as with vocanotes now but to compile them possibly with one touch for each note and then at the end easily send it as an email. An example would be random intermittant notes while driving or taking notes while reading a text book. In this way you could have many notes as one email/text message instead of many,many emails.

 

[elmo99]

Hi amer28:

That is a useful suggestion and I will put it on the future-feature-list. It shouldn't be too hard to implement, maybe a voicetag "append" would just append the text to an existing note, then later you could manually send the note to wherever you want to.

Keep those ideas coming, (you can email me at crhamilt AT gmail DOT com)
Craig

 

[jae_63]

Jott is shutting down its service :-(

So now there are more opportunities for android apps like this.