Spinvox

I was watching the local news the other night and they talked about a service called Spinvox where your emails are transcribed as text messages.

I got so excited when heard that. You see, I hate listening to voicemails. I sometimes know that the person just called to say “I’m on my way” or to say hi. But I still have that voicemail icon on my phone so I have to call my voicemail, listen to the voicemail and then delete it. Or what’s worse, people tend to ramble on the voicemails and you have to listen to the whole thing.

So I went to the spinvox website (kind of a creepy site) and I saw that they are a UK company about to launch the service in the US. I emailed them and asked when it’d be ready and they told me that if I wanted I could be a part of their beta test in the US. I agreed and I received activation instructions.

And you know what? It works amazingly well. I’ve had a couple of people call my phone and I sent them to voicemail. Less than a minute later I had a text message with the contents of the voicemail. For example: “Hi David. it’s Heather. Just thought I’d call & say hi. Talk to you later, bye.” Punctuation and all. Apparently they have a couple call centers with people who just transcribe voicemails as soon as they are recorded.

I don’t know how much this is going to cost, but if it’s not expensive, I can imagine getting it.

Now if they could only do the same with my voicemail at work ….

Update 3/8/07: I’m allowed to “give away” 5 free accounts on Spinvox so if you know me, and I know you, drop me a note and I’ll tell you what to do.

Posted by david at 7:11 pm | Permalink |

Filed under Personal