Slashdot Mirror
Time For Voice-Mail To Throw In the Towel
theodp writes "Slate's Farhad Manjoo feels the end of voice-mail is nigh, and it won't be missed. Since March, he's been using Google Voice to transcribe his voice-mail messages into text that he gets as skimmable e-mail. No more listening to at least a bit of each voice-mail message, hearing the same instructional prompts between each, and worrying about whether it's 9-to-archive and 7-to-skip (or vice versa). Goodbye and good riddance, says Manjoo, to an 'absurdly backward mode of human-computer interaction' that he half-jokes must violate the Geneva Conventions."
My other half uses a transcription service, SpinVox for her mobile phone which takes the messages and sends them via text message and email. Unfortunately I have a rather non-standard accent, what with the elocution lessons my parents made me take during my childhood in Northern Ireland, spending half my life in England and my default ability to try to match the speaking patterns of who I am talking to. It consistently mangles it's transcription of my messages.
A more interesting (for me anyway) approach for me is that taken by Microsoft's unified communications stuff where I've seen your phone number route through to your computer to Office communicator, with voicemails being emailed as attachments. Of course this is very corporate centric, but it strikes me as more useful. Sure you have to listen to the attachment, but there's no risk of misunderstanding because a transcribing service got it horribly wrong.
I disagree. Voice mail will not go away. It will eventually converge with email.
Sometimes I want to hear someone speak to understand tone, sometimes I want to read to save time. I think voice and email will converge. Just because he's getting speech to text doesn't mean he'll want to destroy the speech data. What if you don't know someone is being sarcastic, or if you just happen to miss the sound of someone's voice?
Alternatively, I think a simple text to speech feature will eventually come about too. Though theoretically not quite as useful for gauging emotion (though I'm sure some "emotional emphasis" could probably be added without too much difficulty), some people may prefer to hear a text message when they're doing things like driving.
It will certainly be refined and perfected over the next decade or so, but as the summary states, it's already starting to happen.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
Over here in the UK most providers even send you a text if you missed a call while your phone was out of signal.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
Text to speech isn't anywhere near 100% yet.
Can you here me? Hello? Hello? Oh, sorry, what did you say, the connection broke up a second.
People have spoken (no pun intended) that they prefer convenience, availability, and portability over service quality. People accept lower quality audio compared to even the 60s, 70s and 80s for the ability to have more variety of music at their disposal, lower quality video (DVD, cable) over high definition (OTH, Blu-ray), and of course the unreliable wireless phone service over reliable wired phone service.
Beyond which, human voice can impart additional meaning in tone that text can't. We probably could make better voicemail systems, but I don't see a lot of effort going into that. It isn't really a revenue generator for anyone, and the existing systems aren't that bad to use. 1 button to delete, 1 to save, 1 to repeat. I'd like to see fast forward and rewind like old tape based answering machines had, but that's about all it needs.
More arguments against your own case. There is no market for a better voicemail system. Would you pay for one? I consider voicemail a last resort if the person's phone is off or whatever the sequence is when the person does not answer the phone. Odds are the call was recorded in their log, and 99.9% of the time the voicemail says "I called you, can you call me?", which is redundant because why would someone call someone if they didn't want to talk to them? Text messages, voice mail, a note, interdepartmental mail or postal mail are all asynchronous means of communicating without using voice. AND I CAN CONVEY ADDITIONAL MEANING IF NEEDED!!!!
I guess if you are musically inclined or have superior voicemail skills, then voicemail might be viewed as a feature over other means of communication. But for the rest of us, you will either call back or I'll call you back, or maybe, just maybe I'm ignoring your phone calls and voice mails for a reason, and you will figure that out in time, yet in the meantime you will only continue to annoy me by calling and, and making me delete every one of your voicemails without listening to them. Here is a typical interaction with my voice mail:
Computer voice: Voice call from 666-555-1234
Caller: "Hi, its..."
Computer voice: Message deleted
In our society, a 2 second delay at a stoplight will get a honk behind you. That simple voicemail interaction takes about 30 seconds for one message. And about 1 minute if you have to delete 5-10 messages.
Indeed as an Englishman I've only ever managed to get any speech recognition software to work by putting on a fake American accent. Considering people who leave voicemails for me regularly come from places such as The Netherlands, France or India, so are using a second language, I think it's going to be a long time before something like this is actually useful.
I have been going through this with my mother since they invented answer machines. She will call and just carry the same one sided conversation she had on her mind when she dialed. With the exception of putting the most important tidbit at the end (like the fact the family is getting together for dinner or whatever). I have not listened to recorded message start to finish since something like 1989... so I never hear these things.
I thought that email would help this. But she sends email like they are telegrams and she is paying per letter. And she treats her email like a postal box: She checks it once a month.
So these days I disable voice-mail on every device I come in contact with... just in case my daughter or my girlfriend begin to develop the same habit.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
This is like saying that fax is obsolete because we have text/handwriting recognition.
I think the fax is obsolete. Many printers have the option to create a PDF of a scanned file. This file can be sent via email or stored. It's much easier for me to send or receive via email than try to hunt down a fax machine.
*beeeeep* ...to page this user now, press pound, or leave a message after the tone" ...
*beeeeep*
*beeeeep*
"Hello, you have reached the voicemail of... BIKE HELMET
*biiiiip*
- "Hi honey! Hey, could you tell me what brand hemorrhoid cream you always get? You mentioned you were out and I'll be at the pharmacy later for my allergy medicine."
"You have... ONE ...new voice mail." ...you always get? You mentioned you were out and I'll be at the pharmacy... Trusted 0nline Pharmacy, ED pills save up to 80%. ViagraCialisLevita and more. CheapestPrice & 100% satisfaction guaranteed ...later for my allergy medicine... ALSO AT WALGREENS - ZYRTIC, 20 PROCENT OFF!."
- "Hi honey! Hey, could you tell me what brand hemmorhoid cream... NEED PREPARATION? NOW AT WALGREENS - ONLY $4.95!
"end of messages"
Yeah, not gonna happen, nobody would use it if that started happening. That said - trust Google not to store/parse your voicemail->text messages and use them to deliver targeted ads to you online / to your Account / etc.?
I'm a songwriter, and sometimes I call to sing to my answering machine when I have an idea and I'm away from home. I sure hope that google thingy can write music...
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Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
Its interesting that you say that. Most peoples minds can work with five complex propositions or seven to ten simples ones at a time. You can handle more complex thinking about things your are familiar with. Your own phone number or your girl friends is probably one prop for your mind. You have assembled it into one logical object.
Someone you don't phone often on the other hand often requires your brain to deal with it as a string of digits, each using its on slot. There maybe savings when you are familiar with area and exchange codes in most cases. If you are dealing with unfamiliar phone numbers, are not accustom to the area and exchange codes, and then get saddled with some internal PBX extension that is going to be difficult for most people to remember and work with while also attempting to retain other information being delivered in the message.
A pad and paper is really your best bet. No amount of memory practice is going to enable you to perform such a task. Familiarity might. If you call people in Rochester everyday you eventually learn the area code out there is 585. Now when you hear a phone number you just remembering "Rochester" (short term) and the final seven digets (short term); eight things instead of ten and when you go to make the call you retrieve the 585 from memory (long term).
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Disclaimer: I work for a cellphone operator.
Ok, TFA has some valid points on the endless annoyance that we know as voicemail. But for mobile operators, at least, there's really no reason for them to kill this service.
And do you know why? Voicemail is considered, from a telco point of view, as a Call Completion Service. This allows the operator to generate revenue by forwarding a call that was destined for termination (B-party hung up, rejected etc) into a service that answers the call. At which point, they can charge the caller for this "previlege".
Let's say operator X has 100 million calls per month on its network where the called party has rejected the call or is unavailable. Assuming that:
* a chargeable block of 0.10 per minute
* everyone leaves a short message that's less than one minute long
The operator stands to make $10,000,000 a month in call completion revenue. By providing a simple voicemail service. Which no-one really cares about anyways. Of course, there'd be interconnect charges from other operators, but the gist is the same.
If voicemail was removed, the operator would lose this significant chunk of revenue, just because there was nothing to complete the calls. Which is why you'll never get existing operators who already provide voicemail removing it.
Voicemail == Call Completion == Cash Cow
Where I'm working, revenue from this call completion bit contributes around 20% of the monthly voice traffic revenue.
Another fun factoid: voicemail retrieval stands at 10% of those deposited.
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You can at least in Canada, leave voicemail without actually calling. I don't have Bell's voicemail anymore but there was an option to leave a message for another number .. "To send a message press 1" or something. After that you could enter any phone number.
Kind of funny but back in the nineties I did exactly that one day to a friend. I left her voicemail after I got home from work but her parents freaked when they heard the message. It took a bit of explaining but apparently they though I called at 4:30am.
Back to the original post though, I wonder if the author works for Google because I smell BS. Voicemail isn't going anywhere, let alone to Google. It's bad enough we (again, in Canada), have entire government agencies quietly moving their Email and custom applications over to Google without even a second thought as to the privacy implications (Children's Aid Societies, Fire Departments, etc.). But I'll be damned if they will be able to translate and index voicemails too.
It's interesting that we are moving toward societies where laws (AUP, Privacy, etc.) seem to be deemed accepted and enforceable by proxy. For example, yes I agreed to be friends with Foo, but I didn't agree to Facebooks terms when Foo posted pictures of me online. Yes, I left Foo a voicemail but I didn't agree and nor was it indicated that I was, leaving said voicemail for Google or any other third party to translate.
Internet/SMS kids may communicate with one another effectively on daily trivialities but that doesn't mean they write well. They've just learned a different set of jargon, cliches, and idioms for the common repetitive events in their lives. (Just like older folks would do with trivial in person or phone conversations.)
Sadly, only a small percentage of any generation really seem to be eloquent, and another small (but larger) percentage seem capable of actually comprehending truly novel or eloquent expression.
From what I have seen, kids are less inhibited about transcribing their ungrammatical speech into textual media, as well as using what are essentially textual idioms in their speech. Older folks are aware of a different, traditional standard for written prose, and afraid to engage in written communication without adopting the attitude of correspondent or essayist.
I wouldn't say that the written word is dying, but I also wouldn't say that short text communiques are carrying the torch. Internet folks have just discovered the application of text transmission to idle chit-chat, whereas technophobic people still tend to associate textual formats with formal writing.