Within the next week or so I’ll be posting about .pdf annotation apps. There are a bunch of new apps that were recently released that I’ve been testing and a few of them look very promising.

In the meantime I wanted to share a new iPhone app with you that I stumbled across last night. It’s called Yap Voicemail. Yap essentially “Google Voiceifies” your iPhone’s voicemail.

Voice messages are transcribed using their speech recognition system, and you also receive an audio file of the message. The transcribed messages and audio file arrive within a minute or so and you can then forward the transcription and audio file of the message via email. 

You can choose to be notified of new mesages via email or an iPhone notification.

Because the messages are transcribed, they’re easily searchable as well.

I like this app because I keep my Google Voice and cell phone numbers separate. I use my Google Voice phone number as my contact number for my online presence and use my cell phone number for business and personal use. For sometime now I’ve thought how great it would be if my iPhone voice mail system had the functionality of my Google Voice system. And, now, with this app, it does!

I highly recommend this app. It makes the iPhone’s voicemail system more flexible and accessible. And, best of all, it’s free. You can access it in iTunes here.

Related articles

• Yap Converts Voicemails to Text for iPhone (eon.businesswire.com)
• Yap Transcribes Voicemails On Your iPhone For Free (techcrunch.com)
• Yap Brings Free Voicemail Transcription to iPhone (gigaom.com)
• Yap Brings Free Voicemail Transcription to iPhone (nytimes.com)

Image via CrunchBase

     I think this summer will be the tipping point for iPads. Why do I say that? Well, for a number of reasons.

     First, over Easter weekend, a number of friends and family members were considering buying iPads and asked me for my opinion regarding specs, etc. These are people who are not particularly techie. To me, the fact that so many people unrelated to one another and from different walks of life were simultaneously researching and buying iPads—just a few months after the iPad 2 was released—is a definite sign that iPads are beginning to have mass appeal.

     Another reason I think we’re reaching the tipping point for iPads—lots of famous people are getting them—from the President of the United States and the Queen of England, to celebrities like Kate Hudson to Justice Scalia. And all sorts of institutions are using them, from law firms  and hospitals to preschools to grade schools, high schools, colleges and law schools. Soon the iPad will be ubiquitous in every setting.

     They’re already showing up quite frequently in all of the places I predicted they would just over a year ago: in airports, on trains and at coffee shops. That’s because iPads are supplanting the use of other devices in those settings—smart phones, eReaders and laptops. In fact, based on a recent Nielsen study, some are asserting that, based on recent sales figures, iPads are replacing those devices.

     As I’ve often said in the past, I don’t think that iPads will replace those devices in all settings—in the business setting, laptops and desktops aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Instead, iPads fill a niche that many weren’t aware of until they got their hands on one. iPads are the perfect device for content consumption—and content creation, in a pinch.

     Whether iPads will rule the tablet computer market down the road remains to be seen. I think that Android-based tablets, like Android-based phones, will ultimately take at least half of the market share. But, for now, iPad sales have eclipsed the sales of all other tablet combined.

     Either way, tablet computers, led by the iPad, are about to reach a tipping point. Come fall, I think that my prediction will have come to pass and it will be evident that tablet computers are undoubtedly the next stage of computing for the everyday consumer.

     What do you think? Let me know at the Legal iPad Facebook page.

I brought home my iPhone 4S last week and am impressed by the Siri Assistant and the built in dictation system, which I demonstrate in a video in this earlier post.

When I tried to use Siri, I encountered an error that appeared intermittently, but seems to have subsided. Disconnecting and re-connecting to my wifi connection usually solved the issue. The Siri fail is shown in the video below:

I also figured out that I could require my phone to refer to me using something other than my name, and it now calls me “Sexy Mama,” to my endless amusement. If you’d like to do that, just tell Siri “Call me ‘X’” and voila! (If you ever send your contact info. to others from your iPhone, I would avoid this, since it adds your nickname to your contact profile.)

This particular command can result in a funny Siri Fail, as seen below:

Below are screenshots two of my more memorable interactions with Siri:

(In case you were wondering, Siri wasn’t able to perform the web search because my iPhone is password protected and I hadn’t yet unlocked the phone by entering my password. Sometimes Siri will prompt me to do so if issue a command that can’t be performed if the phone is still locked; other times, it won’t).