One of the best features of Google Voice is the ability of the service to transcribe voicemails and send them to you via email or text message. Sometimes it is easier to read the message rather than calling or using the Google Voice Application on my phone to listen to the message. This is extremely helpful if you are in a place where you can’t answer your phone and want to see what the call is about without having to listen to the message.
After a couple months of using the transcription feature I have seen varying results on the usefulness. It seems to be fairly good at getting the correct information from telemarketers and companies that talk slow and clearly. With calls from my friends and people that talk like you would in a normal conversation, the results need some improvement.
As usual, Google is always working to improve their products and released some information on their approach to improving the transcriptions on the Google Voice Blog. In the past, there was an option to select a checkmark to indicate whether the transcription was helpful or not. Now when you select whether the transcription was helpful, Google asks if you would like to donate the voicemail so they can review it to make the transcriptions more useful. Read the rest of this entry
