iPLATEu wins Digium Innovation Award

iPLATEu is thrilled way beyond the edges of this web-browser to announce that we've won the 2007 Digium Innovation Award for Most Unique application!

This award is truly an honor and we'd like to thank everyone for being so very supportive of this project. Special thanks to Shawn and everyone else at NYU's ITP program, the awesome people at Lumenvox and of course, Digium for giving everyone an awesome platform called Asterisk to launch ideas from.

Once again thank you to all. I PLATE U, I really really do!

From the Digium Website :
http://www.digium.com/en/company/awards/innovation.php

One of the many press releases sent out:
http://iplateu.com/press/Innovation.pdf

New!!! SMS Directly!

This just in... Yet another way to plate someone!

You can now send an SMS to either (depending on your mood):

loveiplateu.com

-or-

hateiplateu.com

And include the License Plate Number of the person you are plating in the body of the SMS in this format:

NY ABC123

Just enter the 2-letter state abbreviation followed by a SPACE and the license plate number. You'll instantly get a call from iPLATEu asking you to leave your voice message!

This is perfect for when you don't feel like dialing the hotline!

SMS & iPLATEu

Hooray!!! Another way to plate someone!

You can now use your cell phone to SMS the license plate # of the person you want to plate! This is a great alternative to speaking phonetics like "Alpha, Bravo, Charlie". This means you can still plate someone even if cell phone reception is bad and the voice recognition software can't understand the plate number you are speaking.

How to use SMS with iPLATEu:

1 - Dial 888-iPLATEu (475-2838)
2- Say "Love" or "Hate" or press 1 or 2, respectively.
3- When you're prompted to "speak the license plate number" press the * star key.

You'll be transported into SMS mode. Then you just leave your voice message as usual and after you're done, you'll get an SMS text message to your cell phone from iPLATEu asking you to reply to the SMS with the license plate number of the person you're plating. If the person has a New York license plate with letters ABC123 you would reply to the SMS in this format:

NY ABC123

Just enter the 2-letter state abbreviation followed by a SPACE and the license plate number and you're good to go. Pretty cool huh!!!

iPLATEu Beta

Finally....

After a lot of experimenting with voice recognition engines for Asterisk, we totally dumped Sphinx and are now running the Lumenvox speech engine, which is a lot more consistent, but still isn't anywhere near perfect. With that said, iPLATEu is totally ready for use by anyone that can dial 888-iPLATEu (4752838). Tell your friends. Tell everyone. Try it out and let us know how much you love or hate it.

Expect a lot of frustration, especially while learning how to master the voice menu, specifically getting the correct license plate number to be recognized. Tips are to try to speak clearly and not too fast. Also try not to have the music blaring or the wind blowing too hard, as that will freak out the recognition software. Cell phone signal strength is also a major factor, and something that is really out of our hands. If there is a bad connection, the static and echo will totally mess up the recognition and the computer won't know anything you're saying. The best thing to do in situations like those is maybe leave yourself a voice memo of who you want to contact and what you want to say and try it again when the reception is better.

Since this is a beta launch (probably more alpha then beta really) we need your help! Please leave us comments or suggestions below or contact us so that we can improve our system and make it better for you. Thanks guys. Enjoy!!!

How to use iPLATEu>>> http://www.iplateu.com/index.php?how_it_works