Archive for the ‘Testing’ Category

Amy Broghamer engaged me on Facebook a few moments ago and had a “few” questions about the Google Voice service.

Does Google email you your messages? How accurate are they at taking the spoken word to text? That is my biggest issue… that and my messages are getting cut off before I get the phone number. Does it go to your email (gmail) or to a text on your phone? (Do you use the Google Phone? or who is your service with) Do you have a blackberry or IPhone?

So I thought I’d take the advice I often give to others and write a blog post as the answer to her questions. I asked Amy to call into my Google Voice number and leave a message. I use an iPhone, so I’m with AT&T, but the Google Voice service doesn’t care. It’s entirely independent of my network. I have my notifications sent to send to me via SMS and email. It will send to any email you wish. You can see the images below. But Google Voice also stores every message online for you.

Here is Amy’s message. (Yes, you get an embed code for each message.)

This is the exact transcription:

hey jeff this is amy programer from cincinnati ohio thanks so much for suggesting that i’d give you a call to see how well google translates voice to text i’ve been having some trouble with my spending box the i guess it’s AT&T or cincinnati bell wireless and wanted to see how well it translated hi find that motormen messages or getting cut off prior to my client or customer is actually leaving their telephone number at the end of the message which is the whole point of getting it translated so that all i have to do is look in my email and just click on the number and call them back without having to almost rack my car reading the number down and then dialing it back so let’s see how long this allows me to talk and it it puts my number again my number is (513) 377-3637 i’m currently using a blackBerry and hopefully this will work very well i’m curious to see if it goes to your google mail your email or jess at text message because my current service because it’s a text message thanks so much again this is amy programer with facebook and i hope you’re having a great day and sunny california see you later bye bye

Here is how it came to me on my iPhone via SMS:

And here is how it looked in email:

I think you can judge for yourself how well Google did at converting the human voice to text. I’ve been very pleased with the improvements they’ve made to the old GrandCentral.com service. And this is one of the features I’ve enjoyed the most.

Amy, what do you think?