Review: Google Voice = Delightful Nickname Generator

To be entirely fair, Google Voice is amazing. My GrandCentral account upgraded without a hitch. I'm still routing a landline and cell phone with all the same benefits: call recording, call monitoring, call screening, blocking (never used), and more. The new features are promising: SMS and cheap-er international calling alone are huge (Skype-Goog price war imminent?).

But the voice-to-text transcription for voicemail is a joke -- literally. A rep calling from the Computer History Museum in Palo Alto Mountain View suddenly started working for the "compete against you museum." My friend "Darren" became "Karen," which isn't a big deal, except for the fact that's my mother's name (awkward!). Sure, a quick listen to the message sets things straight, but the point of the text voicemail is to be able to scroll through your inbox without having to listen. Better yet, my friend "Benita" became "Danny Ten" - which is splendid. Her husband and I agree that not only is it OK for me to refer to her as Danny Ten from here on out, but it would be silly not to.*

The speed of the transcription could certainly be hurting the precision. Depending on the length of messages, it takes between 2-6 minutes for an email notice to arrive with the full transcript. I left a rambling 3-minute message (the current max) and it transcribed the whole thing and emailed me the text 6 minutes later. Not bad at all. What did I say to myself? I read the first page of Chapter 2 in The Death and Life of Great American Cities -- reasonably simple language, but not for Google Voice (click "all sizes" for closer view). And I spoke relatively normal, not overtly slow.

The WSJ found a paid, human-based transcription service to be much more accurate (duh). Regardless, it's only a matter of time before we see incremental and bigger improvements to Google Voice's transcriptions. It's no secret Goog-411 is helping the company build better speech software. Apps linking up Android and Google Voice are starting to emerge (I recently downloaded GV). The question isn't if all of this will become seamless, but when and how. I, for one, feel privileged to be feedingback into the great big speech, search recognition machine in the sky. Even if it insists on calling me "Mr. Lexar."

*first 5 people to email steven AT boingboing.net can have their names run through my Google Voice to generate their very own Goog-Name. Warning: I will publish the results!

Update: Cut off at 11 instead. Welcome to the club! Secret handshake tbd:

Galen Pewtherer = "doing okay for"
Christopher Gamino = "christopher gimme a shout"
Kathrina Malanac = "if you know i'm back"
Jon Snyder = "it is on site here"
Rich Fulkers = "it's folksingers"
Rogier Barendregt = "rich here there and rack"
Ryan Dapremont = "ryan back from hello"
TJ Seitenbach = "TJ site and block"
Hussein Jodiyawalla = "chris saint james here while and then"
Marisa McCormick = "morrison cormac"
John Nason = "john mason"