If a few states have their way, drivers who like to drive and text will be given DWT (Driving While Texting) citations and fines according to a New York Times story.
This means services that have IVR with Speech to Text capability and Text to Speech are going to be very big. This will help explain the acquisition of TellMe makes so much more sense now.
Its funny that the first of the states that has DWT legislation signed into law was Washington, home of TellMe acquirer Microsoft, a point missed by the New York Times.
Is that sheer coincidence or part of a greater plan by Microsoft? Regardless, laws like these are why Yahoo and MSFT both have moved aggressively into a speech based data entry and reply mode for applications and services. We live in a mobile society and mobile phone service is everywhere, and mobile data use, especially with Blackberrys and Windows Mobile 6.0 devices. People won’t stop using them, so a voice interface while driving via a headset or in car speakerphone will be the way to do it, to avoid DWTs.