Simulscribe converts your voicemails to text
Rather nifty:
SimulScribe utilizes cutting edge voice recognition technology to convert your voicemail messages into text. We will deliver your transcribed voicemail, along with the original audio, to your mobile phone, PDA, and/or email account. This process will streamline your communication flow, saving you both time and money.
Steve Procter of iTAGG uses something similar to this but I can’t remember it’s name. Simulscribe looks rather useful if you get a lot of voicemail. If I get time tonight I’ll take a look and try it out — I often get a flurry of voicemails so this could solve that ‘voicemail box full’ issue.
that’ll be Spinvox you’re thinking of (http://www.spinvox.com). I use it and I love it! I never thought I’d find it useful, but for the purposes of testing new stuff, thought I’d give the free trial a go. That must have been 2 years ago. I haven’t looked back since. Customer service is good. About 99% accuracy. You can still dial in to get your messages if you need to and you can reply to your voicemail text messages if the caller called from a mobile to begin with. Genius.
Posted by technokitten on November 20th, 2006 at 10:28 pm.I have been using Simulscribe for awhile and the voicemail box has yet to fill up. I have not had to dial into my voicemail since it comes to my email trascribed as text and with an attached .wav file, but every once in a while for fun I’ll dial in just to see what my voice mail count is. Today I’m at 651.
Posted by pmobile on November 21st, 2006 at 12:38 am.yep I’ve been using Spinvox for what seems like donkey years and absolutely swear by it as reading a text or email to see my messages is so much more time efficient than dialing an answerphone.
steve procter
Posted by steve procter on November 21st, 2006 at 9:28 am.If you’re in a business where any of the phone messages might contain sensitive information (example: “the director just approved sale of that major asset”) how do you keep these kinds of people from “eavesdropping”?
Posted by Tim on November 21st, 2006 at 11:05 pm.the spinvox service does tell message leavers what’s about to happen so that person has the chance to not leave a message or leave a different type of message which is less easy to eavesdrop on. But if someone wants to listen in to our calls, voicemails or texts, it’s all possible now anyway.
That said, the spinvox system is somewhat although not entirely automated. I believe there is human intervention in the process (or at least that’s what I was told by a friend of mine) to ensure that the messages are transcribed correctly.
Posted by technokitten on November 22nd, 2006 at 12:52 am.yes Ewan, could you ask Spinvox for a definitive answer as to whether spinvox is automated and/or how many get listened to by humans? We constantly have debates about it because we are just “too impressed” by it’s success rate to believe that it is all automated.
I once left a message for myself that said “hi can you tell me if you are a robot or a human” - but they just converted it as normal rather than answer me
steve procter
Posted by steve procter on November 22nd, 2006 at 10:37 am.Colleague of mine left a rather ranting voicemail for me earlier on Spinvox, and much to my amusement I found out it’s not always 100% accurate at recognizing swearing.
F***ers got recognised ok. W**kers had a G before the K, and c***s came out as Tombs(?)
Apart from that, quite impressed so far - had it on trial since reading this very thread yesterday.
Posted by Alex on November 22nd, 2006 at 11:47 am.I tried using Spinvox, but they told me they don’t offer their service in the U.S.
I think it breaks down like this: SimulScribe is available in the U.S. and in the U.K. there’s Spinvox.
When I checked into SimulScribe I found that they offer their service in the U.S. and use two types of voice recognition software for their initial transcriptions. It doesn’t say anything on their website or their voicemail message, but when I called the company I was told that if you don’t like the way the software transcribes your voicemail you just reply to the transcribed message and a human will transcribe the message more accurately for you. I’ve been using SimulScribe for awhile now and am really digging the service.
Posted by pmobile on November 22nd, 2006 at 10:47 pm.SimulScribe was at the CES show in Vegas, and a rep there said that your voicemail goes to a secure server which can’t be accessed unless you send a response back to SimulScribe with an ID number to re-transcribe your message. Only then does it get pulled from the server and transcribed by a human. I’ve also found that profanity isn’t transcribed accurately or comes back as symbols. I just love that I never have to delete messages — I met this guy in Vegas who had like 6,000 voicemails in his inbox, he puts my couple hundred to shame.
Posted by Asher on January 17th, 2007 at 9:09 pm.