Nuance

Competition is heating up among companies in the speech recognition arena, and those not yet involved want in on the action, which can only be good news for the consumer. Though speech recognition has been available for personal computers since 2001, Bill Meisel, editor of Speech Strategy news, believes speech recognition "is on the cusp of a curve" in the cell phone and other markets. This is due to the competition among a plethora of companies, from startups to well established corporations.

Vlingo is one such company. Last year, Vlingo introduced a small Java application that allows you to dictate texts to your mobile device rather than thumbing them out. Unlike older speech recognition systems that confined you to a set amount of phrases, Vlingo lets you speak naturally and will adapt to