YiZRi LLC Introduces World's First Hands-free and Eyes-free Web Navigation Platform
BURLINGTON, Vt., May 22, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- YiZRi LLC (http://www.yizri.com), a Vermont-based software innovator, today unveiled VoiceSee, the world's first hands-free, eyes-free web navigation platform that uses mobile apps to read aloud recipes, digital newspapers and Wikipedia entries for smartphone users.
Daniel Ben-Ezri, YiZRi's founder and CEO and a former IBM software engineer, simultaneously launched a $100,000 fundraising campaign on Kickstarter.com (http://kck.st/Jap0tl) to raise the necessary funds to bring VoiceSee to market by the end of the year and to create a much more extensive range of apps.
"The possibilities are infinite," says Ben-Ezri, who has spent the last several years developing and refining VoiceSee, which "will revolutionize the role that smartphones play in our daily lives."
VoiceSee's flagship beta application, Culinary Pal, is a cooking web navigation mobile app for the Android smartphone (with iPhone and iPads to follow).
Culinary Pal will follow your voice commands to search for recipes and choose the one you want. Sadie, the voice of VoiceSee, will then read aloud the ingredients list followed by preparation and cooking or baking instructions. She will pause at your command so you can finish each task before listening to the next one.
"Culinary Pal's groundbreaking eyes-free, hands-free technology makes cooking by recipes much easier," Ben-Ezri says. "But more importantly, it reduces the risk of damage to tablets or laptops in the kitchen and the transmission of germs through dirty fingers."
Currently, Culinary Pal, which may be downloaded free through Google Play, accesses m.allrecipes.com, but Ben-Ezri says that more cooking and recipe sites will be added.
Two other VoiceSee apps are now available for beta download. With News Pal, Sadie reads aloud selected articles in the publicly available digital editions of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Wiki Pal permits you to search for and listen to Wikipedia entries.
Funds from the Kickstarter campaign will be used to expand the scope of Culinary Pal, News Pal and Wiki Pal and to develop a host of new applications that "will transform the way people and technologies collaborate," Ben-Ezri says.
"This is just the beginning of great things to come at YiZRi, with future applications addressing people's needs in education, healthcare and social media."