Now that the iPhone 4S has been released to the world, people are using its advanced technology to create entirely new uses for it. The flashiest new feature on the 4S was Siri, which allows people to speak commands into the phone, which Siri, the automated voice in the phone, would complete.  Despite the fact that Apple hasn't released Siri's public API yet, the voice intelligence on the 4S  has improved to accommodate it. And now, it's been taken a step further with Air Dictate, by Avatron.

This app is simple to use, yet extremely useful. People can download the Air Dictate app for iPhone 4S from the App Store for only $0.99, and can download the the Air Dictate receiver for Mac computers for free on the Avatron website. Once both are downloaded, users need to connect to the same wifi connection with both the 4S and the Mac. After that, it’s simple. After pressing the record button, Air Dictate will receive anything being spoken and transcribe it on the Mac, in their word processor of choice. Unfortunately, the technology only works for iPhone 4S phones and Mac computers, but the app is impressive nonetheless.

This seems like an ideal app for college students. Instead of everyone going to class, one person could simply press record, transcribe an entire lecture by a professor, and share the document with everyone else in the class. It might be a pain to be the odd man out that has to show up for class by himself, but that person doesn’t even need to pay attention to the lecture. After pressing record, that person can kill some time (Sporcle, anyone? That was my staple during long lectures) and read all of the detailed notes at his or her own leisure. This could also be useful for business meetings where there isn’t a secretary or someone present to take notes on what was said.

Another use for this app is for people that need to write a document. Instead of sitting at a computer and writing out an entire document, people can speak what they want to say and have it transcribed. Avatron has a whole list of commands to say on its site to help to control dictation and avoid many mistakes. This could be very useful for people that are slow typists, for whom punching in letters on a keyboard hinders productivity. Being able to take a conversation and turn it into note form can be very useful, and it isn’t something that’s going away. People always will need a record of what’s been said for future use. This is the most advanced voice-to-text use of the iPhone yet, and the sky’s the limit for how far this app can go. Jotting down text has never been this simple.