Cost: Free or $25 per year – URL: http://reqall.com

For only $25 per year (about $2 per month) you can record 30 second messages that are then transcribed and then sent to your e-mail or other application of your choice.   The most simple way to use ReQall is to record messages that are sent to your email address.  If you want to get a bit more sophisticated in your use of ReQall, you can setup a link to Outlook, then you can send transcribed messages to Evernote, Google Calendar, Outlook Appointments, or Outlook Tasks.  All you need to do is install a small ReQall application on your computer to interface with ReQall.

The quality of the transcription is quite good, and in my experience is typically only inaccurate when I do not speak clearly, or if the word is not commonly used (like some legal vocabulary may be).  The service uses real people to transcribe the notes, so that you have a better chance of getting the message transcribed correctly than most computer based voice to text programs are.

Need to remember a list of things to do back at the office: You’re having lunch on campus and as you’re eating you remember a number of things that you should do before the end of the day.  You don’t want to forget them, you you launch ReQall on your iPhone and tell it what you need to remember.  Within one minute your to do list is sitting in your email inbox ready for you to return to your desk.

One other feature that ReQall touts, which I have not used extensively, is it’s ability to be locationally aware.  So if you are your local grocery store, it will use the iPhone’s GPS capabilities, to recognize where you are, and remind you that you need to pick up milk and bread.  This is a very cool feature indeed.  I’ll do some testing to see if it works as advertised.

ReQall will actually work on any Cell phone (not just an iPhone), but it does have an iPhone application that makes it easy to look at the transcribed messages. To use ReQall on a regular cell phone, all you do is call ReQall’s 1-800 number and you can give jot your message to transcribe, and tell it where you want it to go.  Very cool indeed!