Valid question Michael. First on the subject of disclosures: the NYT has strict policies in terms of disclosures that I’ve signed my name to. I have no ties (financial or otherwise) to any of the companies mentioned. As far as how companies are picked: a freelance feature story is a morphing, fluid entity. I pitch a story idea (not a list of companies) and if the editors think the audience would benefit from said idea, we work together to flesh it out. In that process of back-and-forth (there’s a lot of this) we look for products and/or services that fit. We may come up empty and have to change the story idea.

Unfortunately, it’s not possible to include every compelling service or product due to deadlines, word counts and several layers of editors. Hope that sheds a small amount of light on the process and explains why some companies aren’t mentioned. It’s not necessarily because they don’t provide a good solution (both that you mention do), but other constraints.

I’m curious how you picked which companies to plug in your article? I have been using voice to text for a long time now and love it. In fact, I will get an iphone when it goes 3g and will not even consider visual voicemail. it is far inferior to voice to text, imho. But you only mentioned GotVoice and not some of their competitors like spinvox and simulscribe–both of which I’ve used and enjoyed. I’m a huge fan, but just wonder if there are more “disclosures” to be made here?

Good stuff, Kevin.

OOPS….that’s what the “preview before post” is for. JKOTR of course.

Excellent article Kevin. Combining my two favorite web sites: NYT and JKTOR. You ARE the man!