One of the ways that I made my Motorola Droid phone work for me is signing up for a Google Voice number and using that as my voice mail service. So when you call my cell number and leave a message, that message is actually saved to my Google Voice number which offers online retrieval and, more importantly, transcripts of the message.
This is a free service which is good, because if I was paying for this service, I’d be really disappointed. But since it’s free and isn’t any worse than my carrier’s voice mail system (aside from the delay) I’ll keep using it. You see, while it’s pretty good at transcribing the messages I get, it only gets about 70% of the message right. That’s enough to get the gist of the message prior to listening to it but not enough to rely on it for detailed information. Case in point, below are a couple of messages I received this weekend. One from my wife, and the other from a good friend of mine.
Hey love, it’s mike another year now and we’re walking up for the front gate, so just want to let you know. Hopefully we’ll be able to meet you there. Man will see you soon. Thanks. Bye.
Hey Babe, It’s just me. I, I just left starting it and I just wanted to see Al Gore invented the thing. Hopefully you were able to concentrate and he was the as well for you so love you. I’m heading over to the party now. Love you bye.
The italics represent the words that Google Voice wasn’t sure about. It uses various shades of grey text to represent it’s confidence in accuracy But as you can tell from the actual messages, even that isn’t completely reliable.
My Friend My-Friend
My Wife My-Wife
Hahaha! This was so funny. It reminds me on mad libs when you read my message out loud because it wasn’t even close to what I said. I for sure wasn’t talking about Al Gore. Ha! Julia
I love that line “Al Gore invented the thing”
I might just sign up for the translations!!!
That is so completely entertaining.
It was nice to hear Julia’s voice. I miss you two.