Things are happening really fast here at VoiZapp as we hit our stride at turning out requested updates to our existing apps and building new ones. Friends Aloud 3.0 was approved in record time by Apple, and has been for sale in the App Store for about a week. Even at the higher price of $2.99, sales have surpassed expectations, and reviews are great as usual. 

We also completed giving Tweets Aloud 3.0 similar Siri-like tweet dictation capabilities, and have now submitted it to the App Store for approval. Hopefully, that will be forthcoming this week, so that you will be able to not only listen to but also dictate your tweets from now on, resulting in a totally hands-free Twitter experience.

Next up will be Read It Aloud, a completely new app that will let you read aloud your saved InstaPaper or Read It Later articles, as well as anything on your Google Reader RSS news feed. We are expecting Read It Aloud to make it out of our development lab before the end of November and into the App Store just in time for you to stay in touch with your personalized news sources during the crush of holiday shopping.

We have just submitted Friends Aloud 3.0, with Nuance-powered (Siri-like) speech recognition to the App Store. If they approve in the usual week or so, it should go live towards the end of next week. We are all excited to have this one almost in the hands of our loyal users.

Tweets Aloud 3.0, with similar new features, is in beta and following hot on the heels of Friends Aloud 3.0. It could make it to the App Store as early as next week, too.

We were delighted to read a Forbes article about how Apple stock could more than double on the sheer power of Siri. As a developer who is exending Siri's speech recognition to the several million existing iOS devices, not just the latest and greatest iPhone 4S, we are sympathetic about what that article's author had to say about the importance of speech recognition to the future of mobile devices:

• Siri is bringing in new customers who were previously Android users or who were not using smart phones.  I initially drew this preliminary conclusion from my conversations with a number of AT&T store managers.  Now there is a variety of data from a number of sources supporting this conclusion. 
• Siri increases stickiness of Apple phones.  High stickiness means that once someone starts using Siri they are unlikely to switch.  When asked to call my wife, Siri responded with question wanting to know which one of my contacts was my wife.   After about 10 minutes, when I again asked Siri to call my wife, it knew who my wife was.  Imagine Siri learning about you and what you do for two years and then giving up Siri for an Android phone that does not know you!
• In due course Siri will migrate search revenues from Google (GOOG) to Apple.
• Siri raises the bar for Google Android and Microsoft (MSFT) Mango to compete. 

We at VoiZapp, like Apple, believe that the future of mobile devices is speech-enabled!

Last month we released a new version of Friends Aloud 2.0, and follow up this week with a new version of Tweets Aloud 2.0. The main feature we have just added is the ability to compose new Status Updates, Comments, or Tweets using the built-in iOS keyboard. However, as VoiZapp is focused on speech, we are delighted to note that the just-released iPhone 4S now comes with a little microphone button next to the spacebar on the built-in keyboard, thereby enabling you to compose using Siri's automated speech recognition capability. Naturally, Siri misses what you said sometimes, in which case the full keyboard is still available for correcting what it heard. 

This upgrade is, of course, free to existing users. If you just purchased an iPhone 4S and don't already own Friends Aloud or Tweets Aloud apps, you can purchase them from Apple's App Store for $1.99 apiece. Then you can stay in touch with your friends via Facebook and Twitter strictly via your voice, both coming and going!