Dragon Go! for iPhone gets smarter by adding more services

Dragon Go! fron Nuance was already a great way to find information by voice on the iPhone. It's free, and I often used it as a demo to show what the iPhone could do. Then, along came Siri and it got the Lion's share of attention from users and the press.

With a new version of Dragon Go!, released today, the app has gotten smarter and does a few things Siri can't do.

The app has added one big source of travel information, Expedia. which gives it a competitive edge against Siri and newcomer Evi.

As an example, I asked each app to find flights between Seattle and Las Vegas. Dragon Go! came up with the options quickly. Siri responded "I can't help you with flights. Sorry." Evi referred me to the web and provided a link, but couldn't get me there directly.

Asking Dragon Go! to book a dinner reservation in Phoenix with Open Table didn't work directly. It did provide me a list of restaurants that use Open Table for booking and I could click on one. Siri ignored the part of the query that mentioned Open Table but found the restaurant I mentioned. Evi offered me the Open Table website. All 3 apps can get you weather forecasts for any location. You can dictate an email or text message directly into Siri, Dragon Go! doesn't allow it at all, but its companion app Dragon Dictate will let you do that. Evi won't send mail or text messages either.

Apple, of course, has a big advantage with Siri, because it can directly interact with your calendar, alarms, mail and messaging. All 3 apps have their voice recognition powered by Nuance technology, so in that regard, one is as good as another. If you can't run Siri, Dragon Go! does a few tricks Siri hasn't mastered yet. Evi, after a slow start with lot's of server issues, has also become a very helpful tool, even for those lucky enough to have Siri on their iPhones.

Besides the newly added Expedia, Dragon Go! features information from AccuWeather, Ask.com, Bing, Dictionary.com, ESPN, Facebook, Fandango, Last.fm, LiveNation, Milo.com, OpenTable, Pandora, Rotten Tomatoes, Spotify, Twitter, Wikipedia, Wolfram|Alpha, Yelp, YouTube and Yahoo!

There is no one voice powered app that can do it all, but Dragon Go! has stepped up its game and is worth a download.