Orange Wildfire

["Malcolm Surgenor" <malcolm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

One of my most used and most useful pieces of automation is being taken
away
from me tomorrow - and I'm devastated!  :-)

For almost 5 years I've talked daily with Wildfire as she's helped me place
calls and listen to calls *completely* hands free whilst driving.

Orange have confirmed they are finally closing the service down at the end
of July and I need to find an alternative.

For those that haven't used the service it was (in my opinion) one of the
best and most useful voice recognition systems around.  Just by either
pressing and holding 1 or calling her via voice dialling I was then able to
make calls completely hands free either getting her to place a call from
set
up contacts (any number - work, home, mobile, etc) or most usefully dial a
number just by speaking the numbers.  'She' could also return calls after a
receiving a voice mail message (if the number was 'captured').

The only alternative I can see is to set up voice dialling on my mobile but
that's limited to a small number of contacts and it's no substitute for
returning calls left on voice mail or dialling numbers not already set up.

Orange are removing the service on cost grounds - not enough people use it
(not surprising really since it has been actively marketed for several
years!) and technically it doesn't (cannot) offer services such as answer
phone call returns, missed call text alerts, email handling and group
messaging.

A real shame and something, for me, that will be sorely missed.

Malcolm

PS just found details of a new Sony Ericsson Bluetooth based car kit that
will allow the dialling of numbers by speaking the individual digits. 
Shame
I've just pulled out my BT car kit and gone wired!  :-(