IM + Update: Voice Recognition And Push Notifications For Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo

The IM + instant messaging application has been updated in the last few days. You now recieve push-messages when you receive a new email in your Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo account. Also, you can use the new animated emoticons while chatting.

But perhaps the most important feature of this update is the voice recognition. This feature was announced a while ago and can be used for entering text, such as when you are in the car and need to keep your hands on the wheel. This feature is not free, you need to pay a monthly subscription £0.79. This is done by in-app purchase, a payment method available since iPhone OS 3.0 was released, that developers can use in their applications. Unfortunately, voice recognition is only for use with the English language. Whether it is a good replacement for the keyboard is still the question. It takes at least ten seconds before the application turns the voice into text and the results are still not completely accurate, so you still need the keyboard.

This update also fixes several bugs and works a lot smoother.