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Yodal launches BlackBerry dictation service

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16th Aug 2011
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UK digital dictation company V7 has introduced an online digital dictation service for BlackBerry smartphone users called Yodal. John Stokdyk reports.

While most smartphones have a voice recorder built in, what sets Yodal apart is the way it streams the data live to back-end servers. “What’s significant is that it streams the data in real time up to a cloud service. All the other apps are really note takers and send a complete file,” said V7 owner and managing director Simon Westcott.

“So it’s as near instant as it could be provided there’s a good connection.”

The Yodal servers emails the recorded file on to whoever the user specifies, and theBlackBerry app comes with free transcription software that runs on any PC. The service costs £50 a year, which is “very cost-effective” in comparison to other client server applications, added Westcott

Moving to a Cloud business model driven by smartphone apps is part of Yodal’s strategy to bring down the cost of digital dictation and undercut a market based around server and client software licence fees. The approach also does away with the need to maintain your own servers, he continued.

“[The Cloud] allows us to synchronise the recording and it’s much more resilient and robust than any hosted environment. It’s extensible at the press of a button and we can make it as secure as it possibly can be. I see digital dictation going cloud-based and we can add functions very easily to that.”

Because it is so quick and convenient to use, Yodal will appeal to people who have previously avoided digital dictation, Westcott claimed. But the service is also winning converts among tranditional users who can junk their tranditional handsets and transcription machines.

“Because the player is free it’s very easy for them to use it because they don’t have to buy new software. We wanted to remove the barrier of having to install the traditional software,” he said.

Although Westcott claimed that tranditional suppliers such as Dragon and Big Hand are not his main targets, Yodal has already won a convert in a major City law firm. “This is a new way of dictating. I’d like to distribute it new users,” he said.

At the moment Yodal is available for BlackBerrys only, as it is the preferred mobile phone in the corporate market. But as iPhones and Android mobiles grow in popularity, Yodal plans to cater for them too. “We will announce Yodal for other platforms later,” Westcott said.

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