Technology for turning voice-mail into ... text

Why do you have to listen to long voice mail messages on your mobile phone while you can read them with your eyes? It is an idea created and solved by a group of new companies, who are developing software that converts messages from messages into text messages or text messages.

Emerging service trends

In general, for those who have received voice mail messages from friends, relatives, colleagues, and sometimes to hear the necessary content, it takes several minutes to receive the cumbersome information. Therefore, a group of new companies such as Simulscribe, SpinVox and Callwave have thought of solutions to overcome this situation for busy people, ending the scene to hear the letters too long in an unnecessary way.

Although in the modern trend, mobile phones are increasingly used with many different functions, from sending messages to surfing the Internet to listening to music, but its main function is still conversation. New software such as voice-to-text (moving from audio to text) is part of a growing service trend based on voice recognition technology.

A proof that the voice recognition technology is very hot at the moment is the latest contract between Microsoft and Tellme. In March, software giant said it would buy voice recognition software maker Tellme Networks with an estimated $ 800 million contract. Recently, Tellme began testing software that uses voice commands on mobile phones, whereby users only need to speak out loud the information they need to find and immediately, the data will be transfer to their mobile phone.

That good is good .

In fact, so far voice recognition technology is not new. Most of today's trendy phones offer some kind of voice interface to help users order their phones by mouth like: ' Call Meggie ' or ' Connect to the headset with Bluetooth '.

But the most significant trouble is still to do so, those phones need a little extra 'training' to identify the voice of the person, according to Charles Golvin, an analyst at Forrester Research. order. Specifically, for each command to take effect, users must record their commands first.

To address this problem, AT & T's mobile service providers, Sprint Nextel and Cingular Wireless, offer services that use network-based voice functionality. The service allows users to upload a list of contacts to the server and whenever they need to call, the user simply says the name of the person. Therefore, users will not have to spend time to 'train' the device as well as pre-record the command. Instead, they just need to press the * 1 key or a certain code on the keyboard to turn on the software and then say the name of the person to call.

But according to Golvin, these types of services generate two other problems. First, the download process of contacts is quite difficult and relatively cumbersome. Second, the service provider charges 5 USD per month to use the service, which is too high a user fee because they have to pay an additional 15 to 20 USD for mobile subscribers.

Mr. Golvin said: ' Although it sounds like this is a very attractive service, but it is difficult to practice in reality. I think, it's just a bundled service, so the price will not be attractive to many people . '

Blooming flowers

Clearly, emerging voice-to-text services are looking to use other voice-recognition features to solve very practical problems for people who receive a lot of voice mail every day.

Instead of taking up to 3 minutes to listen to a voice mail, services like SimulScribe and SpinVox help you understand the main idea of ​​that message and turn it into an email or SMS format. That kind of brief message will appear in your email inbox after the voice mail is 'finished reading' for 2 to 5 minutes.

All the words in that voice mail are displayed in text or email messages. Therefore, if the person who sent the voice mail sent you a phone number or told you about the meeting address, you should not rush to search for a pen in a purse or backpack to record. With these messages, you can easily classify priorities for each picture and immediately know who to call immediately.

SimulScribe also allows users to save and listen to those messages in the form of voice mail or .wav files in the mailbox. The company has also provided voice-to-text services to Skype users and hopes to provide services to Vonage customers later this year.

SpinVox, a European provider of similar SimulScribe services, said recently that Cincinnati Bell will launch its voice-to-screen service, a service that converts voice mail into text messages. or email.

Last week, SpinVox announced a new blogging service on mobile called Spin-my-Blog. Bloggers can use this service to post spoken content on blogs from anywhere. Users can use any type of phone to call the predetermined phone number of Spin-my-Blog, they are automatically connected to their blogs and then the content will be transferred. from speech to text and post on their blogs.

Recently, another company called CallWave has also released its voice-to-text service. Unlike SpinVox and SimulScribe, which provides a direct conversion from voice mail to text, CallWave only offers a summary of the main content of that voice message.

Quality still needs to be assessed

According to analysts, it is true that there is a new wave of services using voice recognition technology, but both technology and services using this technology are still in place. stage. According to Roger Enter, telecommunications analyst at Ovum Research, the accuracy of those "translated" messages still needs to be considered.

He said: ' Voice recognition technology as well as message format translation has been temporarily accepted. But if the surroundings are too noisy, the quality of technology will definitely decrease . '

Jill Aldort, a senior analyst at Yankee Group, said that all service providers want to reach many customers, but it is difficult to convince users to spend more money to use voice services. -to-text. For example, with SimulScribe service, users spend $ 9.95 a month. This amount is the cost of the first 40 messages, but from the 41st message, each item will be charged 25 cents.

Even so, she acknowledged that the voice recognition service will surely be exciting, especially Tellme-like services that help find information online.

Do Duong