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."
..if you live in America. I'm pretty sure Google Voice isn't available elsewhere.
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.
... will be a text-to-voice service that will read your Google Voice mail to you...
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
I also ignore my voicemail. Big problem though: Mom.
Hearing "Hello you have reached 'Mother, please, we've been over this, do NOT leave a message, I'll call you back without checking my voice mail anyway, and voicemail is annoying'..." only makes her leave upset messages on my voice mail. Failure to set up my voice mail so that she can't leave any message only leads to that being the sole topic of conversation every time we actually DO talk on the phone.
I'm sure I'm not alone in saying "Please, let voice mail die faster so my mother can't leave extremely long rambling messages which I have to listen to or face the penalty."
Yeah, I'm sure all your friends will be glad you finally stop ignoring their voicemail messages. Until now they must've been thinking you were rude.
Listening to drunken messages left on my voicemail is often the highlight of a Sunday morning hangover.
If you move out, she won't have to leave you a message saying dinner is ready.
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'd be careful to think that voice mail is only an 'absurdly backward mode of human-computer interaction'. Since I am hearing a person's voice, it is a 'human-human' interaction and one that's rich in information if you care about details.
There is more information and meaning in a 15 second voice mail than in any text. Is the caller angry? Sad? Frustrated? What did the environment he was calling from sound like?
If you think that simply converting all voice mail to text is going to solve the problem, you're missing out. I would think that a jog-wheel to allow me to speed up the voice mails, along with some audio or visual cues to let me know when the message ends would be much more efficient than speech-to-text while maintaining all the meta-information. Just get rid of those stupid menus completely. Since it's trivial to speed up a person's voice without altering the pitch using DSP you'd still be able to understand the message at 10x speed (or more) and still keep the subtler message intact.
I know some voice mail systems already allow speeding up the message, but it's not very intuitive and you still get those awful menus. Plus, the voice on the menus speaks So. Fucking. Slowly. When. They. Tell. You. What. Time. The. Person. Who. Left. The. Message. Called.
I would think that information could be imparted to me much more quickly. Yes voice-mail systems suck. Text is not necessarily the answer unless I can get a great novelist to pre-screen the messages and then write me a few paragraphs describing what the person said and how they said it, etc. Even so, I like hearing my wife's voice. She's got an accent that is like music to my ears and never fails to make me smile even after all these years. Happy mothers day from the kid and me, ljubavi.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Oh. My. God! I have this same problem with my father.
Call #1: Short and sweet, "Hey, son, gimme a call."
Call #2: with an angry tone and bent, "How come you never answer your phone. No one can ever get a hold of you."
Makes me *really* want to call him back. Not.
Call #3: Just as angry....same message as #2, now with more filler and far more colorful.
Call #4: So angry there is about 10 seconds of silence on the phone, then, "Fuck it!" and hangs up.
Seriously, if they weren't so full of hate because I wasn't able (or unwilling) to answer, they'd be hilarious.
Recently, and this is a no shitter. I called my parents to get the number to one of my cousins. Got the number and gave the cousin a call. I left a message because he wasn't there. Hours later I'm mountain biking in an area with VERY bad reception (mostly only enough reception for text messages).
My phone rings a few times. Three messages are left. I imagine it's my cousin trying to return my call. (I dont stop while mountain biking in a bad reception areas because it's usually futile.)
Here's a transcript of those messages:
Msg #1, (Cousin): Hey, man, I got your message, just returning your call.
Msg #2, (Cousin): Ok, just me again, you must be busy.
Msg #3, (father): (in an angry voice from the *start*!) Carl. Kevin called us and he is *trying* to call you. You called him to get a hold of him because you had specific questions and now you wont answer your god damned phone. No one can..yadda yadda yadda.
Yeah, I'm thinking that killing voice mail makes a lot of sense. Of course, if that happens I'd have to listen to my father directly. Yeah, that's going to be fun. Not.
Prolog
While I wrote this up expecting Informative I'm sure it's going to get modded Funny.
Also, save your typing. We all know father has issues.