My daughters like to name the different voices for GPS navigation software I have on my smartphones and my wife likes to joke that these are the only women I listen to when it comes to navigation. Nokia just launched a rather unique free service that I think can make GPS navigation fun for a lot of people. With their new Nokia Own Voice for Ovi Maps application loaded onto your Nokia S60 device you can record any voice you want and generate a voice pack for use with Ovi Maps GPS navigation program. You can record your own voice, your wife’s, your kids, or even your mom’s voice so you can setup who you want to listen to. You will also have the option to share that voice pack with your friends or the world and find other voices to use with your Nokia device.
After loading the application onto your smartphone you need to record the voice 53 times by following the instructions in the program. The recordings are then uploaded to Nokia’s servers so a voice pack can be generated for use on your device. You do not have to share the voice pack if you don’t want, but Nokia makes it easy via Facebook and Twitter too. With 10 million downloads of the free Ovi Maps navigation program I imagine we will soon see thousands of available voice packs for you to choose from.
Whose voice do you plan to use for your navigation?
Matthew Miller started using a Pilot 1000 in 1997 and has been writing news, reviews, and opinion pieces ever since.
Disclosure
Matthew Miller
Matthew is a professional naval architect by day and a mobile gadget freak at all other times. He purchases his own devices and then sells them on eBay or Craigslist to buy more. Many other devices are sent for review on a 30-day loaner basis and then returned to the carrier or manufacturer. If any are provided as “long term loaner units” this will be clearly disclosed in his reviews.
Biography
Matthew Miller
Matthew Miller started using a mobile devices in 1997 and has been writing news, reviews, and opinion pieces ever since. He is a co-host with GigaOM's Kevin Tofel on the MobileTechRoundup podcast and an author of three Wiley Companion series books. Matthew started using mobile devices with a US Robotics Pilot 1000 and has owned over 125 different devices running Palm, Linux, Symbian, Newton, BlackBerry, iOS, Android, webOS, Windows Mobile, and Windows Phone operating systems. His current collection includes an HTC Radar 4G, Dell Venue Pro, Apple iPad 2, HTC Flyer, Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Nokia N9, Apple iPhone 4S, MacBook Pro, and many more, along with tons of accessories and classic devices like the Apple Newton MessagePad 2100 and Sony CLIE UX50. Matthew can be found on various discussion forums under the user name of "palmsolo".
