Recently moving 15 miles North, in effort to get closer to SFO and the city San Francisco itself, I'm also starting to migrate my phone number to a Google Voice interface. Basically how it work is I get a call to this virtual number, it then calls all the other numbers I have registered with it (cell, home, office, home office, etc.) at the same time. Then I answer the call wherever I am. This is all configurable from a web-based user interface. I also get a transcript of the voice messages left either via email or text message - whatever I configure on the web interface. All in all pretty cool, Google likes this (free) service because they can now add voice dialog to their advertising platform, and intelligently serve me links and advertisements based on content I exchange via voice.
Voice to text transcription technology came first onto the market in the 90's. Hollywood gave us dreams of simply talking to our computers (think Star Trek) in full duplex and having intellectual intercourse. Then the PC became quite ubiquitous and we all learned to type probably as fast or faster than we talk, or at least harness our thoughts with (fewer) characters than syllables, and enter the era of text communication, IM, SMS, social media and other latin character visual letters trading. However this technology never really evolved to the point of reliability. We have all spent time talking to customer support queues through the phone yelling, "AGENT!" to try and get a live human on the phone, as the computer fails to properly recognize our words when spoken.
Now the security and privacy implications of this, particularly in a corporate setting, are an entirely different topic for another day. I would however like to share (a) one amusing exchange, and (b) one useful exchange I've had in the last 24 hours:
Amusing: My friends voice messages always sound like a two-year-old talking jibberish. Last night a caller said, "I called you back on your Google Voice but don't trust it so calling here. I'm home now. Bye." Now the text message I got was, "Can you give me back in your google voice but thanking courses. It's a good tax. Misfigure started now I'm home. Bye." The irony of this error is not lost on me.
Score: hilarity - ONE; usefulness - ZERO.
Useful: While on a conference call this morning I dodged a call to my cell phone. One minute later I got a text message, with a transcription of the voice message I had just been left:
"Hi Good Morning Quinton, This is [landlord's assistant] calling from [landlord's company] in South San Francisco. I am just calling because [landlord] was leaving. How many notice that your car was parked on the right side of. I guess Dayton avenue today and it's street. We need to face will give you a ticket if you don't move your car before they get there. Anyway, I hope you get this message before then. If you have any questions give me a call back and my extension is 101. Thanks. Quinton bye bye."
As you might guess, this is not quite exactly what the message said verbatim, but was enough for me to get the point, "move your car ASAP or you're getting a ticket." I raced out and moved my car, and avoided getting a parking ticket for street cleaning.
Score: Google Voice, transcription technology, SMS technology, [landlord & assistant] and Quinton - ONE; parking ticket police - ZERO.
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