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08-10-2010, 08:22 AM
One of the coolest promises of Google Voice and probably any future unified communication (UC) suite is the voice-to-text voicemail transcription feature. Probably the major reason other UC offerings do not employ this wiz-bang technology is that the software still leaves much to be desired.
PCWorld has an interesting investigative article into the world of Google Voice transcription with comparisons of actual messages to their robot-transcribed counterparts. The service grays-out words it is unsure of and tries hard to fill in blanks, but often the results are not helpful. As the user noted, the grayed out text was a good indication but so was the fact that a sentence was made of complete gibberish. The tester found that even when the same messages were left, the system transcribed them differently each time.
Sometimes, some semblance of meaning could be gleaned from the transcribed messages--like when the service caught the word barbecue, helping the writer realize he was being invited to one--but often it was necessary for the user to listen to their voicemails still.
The day when all our communications can be siphoned right into our Gmail are still out on the horizon somewhere.
For more:
- read the report (http://www.pcworld.com/article/202683/google_voice_transcripts_failures_in_communication .html)
Related news:
Google Voice adds pseudo-mobile number portability
(http://www.fiercevoip.com/story/google-voice-adds-mobile-number-portability/2009-10-27)Google to release enterprise Voice in 2010 (http://www.fiercevoip.com/story/google-release-enterprise-voice-2010/2010-02-08)
More... (http://www.fiercevoip.com/story/google-voice-transcripts-offer-miscommunications/2010-08-09?utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss)
PCWorld has an interesting investigative article into the world of Google Voice transcription with comparisons of actual messages to their robot-transcribed counterparts. The service grays-out words it is unsure of and tries hard to fill in blanks, but often the results are not helpful. As the user noted, the grayed out text was a good indication but so was the fact that a sentence was made of complete gibberish. The tester found that even when the same messages were left, the system transcribed them differently each time.
Sometimes, some semblance of meaning could be gleaned from the transcribed messages--like when the service caught the word barbecue, helping the writer realize he was being invited to one--but often it was necessary for the user to listen to their voicemails still.
The day when all our communications can be siphoned right into our Gmail are still out on the horizon somewhere.
For more:
- read the report (http://www.pcworld.com/article/202683/google_voice_transcripts_failures_in_communication .html)
Related news:
Google Voice adds pseudo-mobile number portability
(http://www.fiercevoip.com/story/google-voice-adds-mobile-number-portability/2009-10-27)Google to release enterprise Voice in 2010 (http://www.fiercevoip.com/story/google-release-enterprise-voice-2010/2010-02-08)
More... (http://www.fiercevoip.com/story/google-voice-transcripts-offer-miscommunications/2010-08-09?utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss)