Translate voicemails into text messages

[JamesEverton]

When I was buying a new mobile phone the other week the man in the shop tried to get me to sign up to a thing where your voicemails get translated into text messages automatically. I've asked a question here and also talking to my mate and I don't reckon it's possible. So how do they do it (or am I wrong about how good voice recognition can be)?

[AliFlump]

well you can actually send a text msg to your house phone and a robotic woman reads it out. Try it! So i guess they can do it the other way around

im with T mobile and if a i get a missed call it texts me to tell me.

[Oneeyedvic]

With orange, you can sign up to orange email. This then gives you a text alert to let you know when you have received an email, who the sender is and the subject line.

Further, I can then phone up my orange answerphone and it will read out my email message (was quite funny with ebay - says item number1 billion, ninehundred thousand blah blah)

Technology is bloody amazing.

Don't forget, the old pager system (whcih I haven't used in over 5 years) relied on people calling a telephone number and a computer would then translate it into a pager (text) message.

[joko]

I heard of a guy sending an explicit text message to his phone so that the woman would read it out - free phone sex!! ha ha!

[robski]

As much as the idea of it sounds a bit out there, it is possible and has been around for a while.
1 company has a monopoly on it so check out www.spinvox.com for a free trial

Only works on contract phones (except VIRGIN) and 3Pay prepays. It understands swearing also!!!

Enjoy

[JamesEverton]

That was the thing they tried to get me to sign up to. I didn't sign up for it because there doesn't seem to be any point to it. What I don't understand is, if they can do voice recognition that good, why don't they use it for other things? The man in the shop definitely said it was automatic. joko - I'm sure they wouldn't be allowed to have someone just listening to the voicemails and typing them up.

[Jay70]

Can someone please tell me why you would wan this service??????

[robski]

The official line on Spinvox a.k.a talk2text is that its not everybodies cup of tea, i.e after your free trial, why pay for something when on some networks, you get voicemail for free.

Target audience are people who cant be bothered listening to their messages, people who cant actually use their phones in work to dial into services, but can get away with reading texts etc etc. It is a niche market but the market is there. When text messaging was invented after the first digital mobiles were produced, it was dismissed as nothing more than a gimmick. That Giimick now sends 6 billion text in UK per year!

Where it REALLY is useful, is if you are abroad, as if you did pick up voice messages, they cost a bomb, whereas SPINVOX once you pay your monthly sub, send you the voicemail text free so this can save on roaming fees and extortionate voicemail fees.

So to summarise, not gonna rule the world, but clever nonetheless, so why not try it for free!

[JamesEverton]

robski do you have any idea how it works, though?

[robski]

Yep, it is purely voice recognition software with no 'human' interaction at all. If the s/w cannot understand the message or the message is too long, SPINVOX will send the actual voicemail through to the customer.

So it either works and you get a text, or it doesnt and you get the voicemail anyway!

[JamesEverton]

Thanks for the response robski. Do you work for Spinvox? (you sound a bit like a salesman)

I was talking to a bloke who works in the computer lab of a University and he reckoned that there was absolutely no way that it could be automatic. According to him it's not yet possible to translate normal speech reliably so it would be impossible to do it over the phone.

I'm really interested in this sort of stuff and I'd love to know how it works.

[robski]

Sorry for the delay James, been offline for a while.

Your mate in the lab is a bit behind the times as the technology has been around for a while, just needed a bit of fine tuning. Yes your right, I am a salesman, and I worked for the company who own spinvox.

Motorola are bringing out their new phones with something called INTELLIGENT VOICE RECOGNITION which is voice dialling but taken to the next level.

Normally when setting voice dials on your phone you record the name then hope you make the same sound as you recoded for it to work.......well IVR does not need 'training' or 'tags' to recognise you.

You just speak and it recognises what you say! I saw prototypes of it about 9 months ago as I get access to mobile phone manufacturers at a Head Office level.

It uses the same theory as spinvox i.e it recognises sounds of words not sounds of people. The technology is now at the stage where it is able to recognise different accents and languages and spinvox are busy developing WELSH for its products

Hope that clears it up for you

Rob