Keepal – Great app for hands free driving – reads your messages out aloud in the car

New app from an Australian based team of developers offers a safe way to receive messages, emails, and information whilst behind the wheel.

Keepal (www.keepal.com) is designed to keep you focused on the road while staying in touch with the outside world. Apparently one third of all traffic accidents are attributed to driver distraction and increasingly this is as a result of interaction with a smartphone.

Keepal is like a PA in the car, reading out SMS, email, calendar events and social messages, and even replying to some.  An additional feature allows news headlines to be relayed as well.

Founders Mike Wilkinson and Mike Shaw wanted an answer to driver’s woes and have created features that do not cause distraction. “From the outset Keepal was designed to interact with the user, not the other way around.  We have only added features that would not distract the driver.  In time we plan to add more at no extra cost”

Interestingly Wilkinson is an ex Royal Navy Pilot and current QANTAS pilot, presumably he has been involved in the design and understands a thing or two about distraction in the cockpit. His partner Mike Shaw is an experienced corporate software engineer.

Keepal’s has been specifically designed not to ruin your night vision, with the white icons turning to black in low light conditions.  (ED: This is a great idea)

The app uses text to speech technology, but does not send data to a server so it does not draw heavily on data plans.

Keepal is now live for the Android market with the Apple and Windows version due out in the New Year.