ShoutOUT sends the speech file to a remote server for transcribing, but lets users review the transcribed message for errors before sending to intended recipients. While the product is targeted at the consumer market, it could be useful to business users especially if it is extended to e-mail and calendaring, as the company promises.

"The iPhone is going to come into businesses whether businesses want them to or not," Shipley notes.

Businesses looking to improve collaboration may be interested in Cc:Betty, a DEMO company that aims to make e-mail conversations more productive by sorting through messages and parsing "conversations, files, images, media, dates and places, in the spirit of saving time while collaborating and coordinating with groups of people."

"We're conducting more and more business dialogs via e-mail, a tool that is great at delivering information, but not so effective when it comes to parsing and organizing it," according to DEMO.

Cc:Betty turns e-mail messages into Web-based collaboration spaces, and be useful "across a variety of business and personal productivity applications," DEMO organizers say.