What is Vocalia?
What is the basic workflow of Vocalia?
How does the new vocal navigation work?
Which languages are supported?
How can I check Vocalia uses English speech recognition (and not French)?
I can't get speech recognition to work. What should I do?
Vocalia crashes at launch. What should I do?
Does the way I pronounce names matter?
What do you mean by "Vocalia shows up to 10 names"?
What is the prefered distance from the phone? How loud should I speak into the mic?
Do I need any network connection?
Does Vocalia send my personal data to some servers?
Does Vocalia work in a noisy environment (like a shopping mall)?
Do I have to provide additional information before speaking?
How to add alternative voice shortcuts?
How do I activate "Shake to retry"?
What is the "Split Names" option?
What is the "Ready Vibration" option?
What does exactly happen when I click "Reset Phonetizations"?
What is the failsafe mode?
It takes 20 seconds to launch. Is it normal?
Do I have to pay in order to get bug fixes and new features?
I want to upgrade to the latest version but I have to click a "Buy" button in order to start downloading. Are upgrades not supposed to be free?
I am a third-party application developer and I would like to integrate speech recognition in my product. Have you got an SDK?
Is your question not listed here? Do you need some help?

What is Vocalia?

Vocalia is an iPhone application for Voice Dialing. Speak and Vocalia will quickly find contact names in your address book. Future versions may provide additional features.

What is the basic workflow of Vocalia?

1. Start Vocalia by clicking its icon.
2. Speak the contact's name.
3*. Choose the contact in the result list by saying the number before the name: "one", "two", "three"....
4. Say where you want to call: "home", "work"...
(*) not required if you set the number of results to one.

NB: As you will use your speech recognition tool very often, we advise you to drag and drop Vocalia's icon to your application short list so that you can open it more easily.

How does the new vocal navigation work?

From now on, after a speech recognition process, you don't have to tap the screen anymore in order to select the person and the number to call.

Go to the Settings, and choose "Navigation Mode". There, you have 3 possibilities:

Manual Taps: the old way for those who like to touch their iPhone's screen.

Voice: when you see the result list, just say the number before your contact's name (1, 2, 3,...) to make his information appear. At that moment, select which number to call by saying "home" or "work".

Timer (2 sec.): let Vocalia call for you. Neither tap nor speaking needed. 2 seconds after showing you the result list, Vocalia will automatically call the 1st result.

Which languages are supported?

Currently, only English and French are supported. We plan to add other languages in the future.

How can I check Vocalia uses English speech recognition (and not French)?

Vocalia's default language after installation is the one your iPhone uses by default. If you want to change this language or to check which language is currently used by Vocalia, go to the settings and click "Spoken Language".

I can't get speech recognition to work. What should I do?

Speech recognition is a technology that has to handle the huge variability of human voices. All voices are different and may have variable degrees of success in a speech recognition engine. Moreover, background noises can also disturb the recognizer.

What you could do to get better results:
1. Check Vocalia actually uses English as Spoken Language.
2. Avoid background noises, especially other voices.
3. Speak clearly as you would do on the phone with someone.
4. Use the iPhone external mic (built into the headset).
5. Set the number of results in the settings to a higher value.
6. Add bynames like "Mum", "My boss", "My cousin" or "Honey".
7. Ask someone else to speak into the mic (a friend, a colleague, your dog...) ;-)

Vocalia crashes at launch. What should I do?

Switch to failsafe mode (see related question below), and click "Reset Phonetizations". If it doesn't solve your problem, delete the application and take it straight from the App Store again (it is free). If you still have the problem, send an email to vocalia at creaceed dot com.

Does the way I pronounce names matter?

Vocalia phonetizes your contacts' names as they are recorded in your address book.
Let's say a friend of yours is recorded as "John Smith". The first time you launch the application, Vocalia phonetizes "John Smith" and it is the only phonetization it will save. If you pronounce "Smith John" or "Johnny", Vocalia could have problems finding the right name.

Fortunately, the option "Split names" enables you to pronounce either "John" or "Smith" only. So, you don't have to remember how you recorded every single contact name in your address book.

What do you mean by "Vocalia shows up to 10 names"?

We mean that when the speech recognition process is over, Vocalia selects the 10 names in your address book which are the closest to what you pronounced.
It doesn't mean that you can't have more than 10 contacts in your address book. Vocalia will work properly even if there are several hundreds in it. :-)

In the settings, you can choose how many results you want Vocalia to give you after a speech recognition process (1, 2, 3, up to 5 or up to 10). You should use Vocalia a little bit so to see how right the results usually are, and then you can change this setting.

What is the prefered distance from the phone? How loud should I speak into the mic?

Speak normally, mouth 2 or 3 inches from the mic (the mic is on the right side of the connector).
Vocalia can cope with some volume variation, the waveform display shows current sound amplitude. You can use the external mic from the iPhone headset as well, let the cable down straight from your right ear.

Do I need any network connection?

The whole speech recognition process occurs locally on your iPhone. Therefore, you don't need any network connection.

Does Vocalia send my personal data to some servers?

Vocalia doesn't send anything to any remote servers (no contact names, no email addresses, no phone numbers). All data stay on your iPhone.

Does Vocalia work in a noisy environment (like a shopping mall)?

Most of the time, it does. Background noise usually has a much lower amplitude than your voice since you are much closer to the mic than the noise sources.
However, speech recognition results may be less accurate in very noisy environments. If the background noise is too loud, Vocalia will go on recording endlessly because it isn't able to detect when you start and stop speaking. In such circumstances, you have to tell it when you stop speaking by taping Vocalia's Eye. Then, it will start the recognition process.

Do I have to provide additional information before speaking?

No, you don't. Vocalia is able to phonetize most English-sounding names correctly. However, you may be interested in adding alternate speech shortcuts (phonetizations) for some contact names. For instance, you may add "My best friend John" in addition to the default "John Doe" entry.

How to add alternative voice shortcuts?

You can add one or several voice shortcuts to your contact names, i.e. bynames like "Daddy", "My cousin" or "School". When you want to call someone, you can pronounce either his/her name as listed in your address book or the voice shortcut you added.

Here is how to add a voice shortcut to a contact:
Screen 1. Click the i button in the upper right corner.
Screen 2. Click the arrow next to "Edit Phonetizations" and choose your contact's name in the list.
Screen 3. Click the "Edit" button and then the arrow next to "Add New Phonetization..."
Screen 4. Type the byname you want to add as a shortcut and click the "Phonetizations" button.