Vlingo on OG Droid

Have you heard of Vlingo? It's an application that works with Android, iPhone, Blackberry, and Nokia and allows you to transcribe emails, text messages and make phone calls with using your voice. It can also read your e-mails and your text messages to you using SafeReader, a setting within Vlingo.

Some people have been having trouble with getting Vlingo to read text messages or e-mail on Android. Here's how to do it.

1. Download Vlingo from the Android Market Place.
2. Open Vlingo
3. Tap your phone's menu button
4. Tap "Settings"
5. Under "Behavior", tap "SafeReader settings"
6. Ensure "Play texts" is selected.
7. Tap "Play email" to put a check mark on it.
8. Tap "Email accounts" to add an email account.
You can add a GMail, Windows Live Hotmail, Yahooo! Mail, AOL/AIM Mail, or "Other" email account. If you click "Other" you have to manually specify your account settings. It supports IMAP, and POP3. IMAP and POP both support SSL and TLS and allow you to change the port. You can add more than one email account.
9. After you've setup your account, go back to the Vlingo main page. At the top left of the screen you'll see a speaker. If it has an "x", that means SafeReader is turned off. Click on the speaker to turn on SafeReader (it should now have sound waves next to it, and you should hear a voice that says, "SafeReader is now turned on").
10. Vlingo should now read back your texts AND emails. It will read both texts and emails to you in regular mode, and InCar mode as well.

It seems that it will not read back to you over Bluetooth. It will respond to you over speakerphone.

If you have a BlueAnt Q2 it reads EVERYTHING back to you over the Bluetooth headset. I just got mine, tested and it works!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As far as I can tell after a couple of hours of searching, this is the only app in the Android Market Place that "reads" back your emails to you. It seems to read my work emails OK.

As of December 2011, Nuance is moving to acquire Vlingo. I'm optimistic that this is going to improve Vlingo (my hope is that they will be able to get Vlingo to speak through Bluetooth).

Test it out, and let me know what you think, or if you have found a better app on Android.

Cell Signal Extender

A while back I bought a cell signal extender. It turned out that the one I bought didn't work too well in my area. I had bought a zBoost YX500PCS. This works in the upper frequencies . It escapes me what frequency it was at, but it worked well for 3G internet connections, but not for phone calls (which I cross referenced on forums and it turns out that cell carriers sometimes split data and voice to take up more power on a certain frequency). I'm on Verizon Wireless, and in my area it seems VZW works on the ~800MHz range.

At any rate, I sold it on eBay and got a YX500CEL. I tested using it and saw a bar or two more on my Droid. When i placed a call, it would jump to four bars. My data went from RTTx1 to 3G. I put it away, and spent the next couple weeks thinking how to mount it. Outside would be best, but I live in an apartment on the bottom floor, and the walls outside seem to be made of a concrete of sorts. After further reading of the manual it also seems that I would have to ground the antenna for the extender. Even after all of that, I still would have to drill a whole to bring the coax inside from the antenna to the base, or get a window cable replacement that zBoost sells. Time to hit the manual again and see what my options were.

The manual says that the easiest way to setup is inside near a window. So I tried holding the antenna near a window and did some testing. Success! Good signal, and OK coverage. Had my wife check, and she didn't like seeing the coax hanging off of the curtain rod, so i took it down, but knew what I could do. The next day, I mounted it near the window, ran the coax through conduit I've laid out for my gigabit cabling i did a while back, and voila. All good, AND concealed behind a curtain.

So far, so good. I'm getting good coverage and wrote this blog on my Droid using only Blogaway and a 3G connection. The pics are the antenna mounted (revealed, and concealed) and the base.