Comments on: SMS Text News meets Spinvox – intro

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 05:49:51 +0000

I’ve heard of GrandCentral. Pretty neat stuff! Yeah…I’m sure Jott will hit Europe soon. I heard their first release out of Beta comes out this month! I’m sure after so…it will crawl towards your direction. Hope it comes to ya soon!

By: HeavyLight

HeavyLight — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 08:11:32 +0000

I’m in the UK, Jennifer.
Still eagerly awaiting a European version of GrandCentral too!

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 04:18:13 +0000

Oh no! that is totally lame, where are you from if you don’t mind me asking?

By: James Whatley

James Whatley — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 15:40:16 +0000

Must be some write-up you’re doing there dude…

Saying that – you’ve probably got to finish that ‘What’s in the box?’ post first eh?

By: HeavyLight

HeavyLight — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 12:04:22 +0000

I’d love to use Jott — very useful when you’re too busy to type a txt.

But unfortunately “Jott is currently only available to US and Canadian subscribers.”

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 21:59:51 +0000

I’ve been discovering these new voice to text applications lately, and spinvox seems to be one of the more useful ones. I’ve also seen Callwave and Simulscribe And jott. Jott I think has to be one of my favorites. It doesn’t limit you to just voice mail. You just call a 1-877 number, say who you want to jott, speak, then hang up! You and the recipient get both a text on your cell phone AND email WITH option to hear the audio copy! How cool is that?? AND it’s free!!

By: Martin Willitts

Martin Willitts — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 14:31:00 +0000

Why has the driver of the car in the picture got out of her car? She’s on a roundabout!
—-
More pertinently, I await your notes with eager antipicipation. Particularly on how far Spinvox have progressed with the speech to blog angle. I have a couple of powerful ideas that would derive from this for other related mobile services.

By: Ewan

Ewan — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 12:05:02 +0000

We covered this issue in quite a lot of detail during the conversation — I’ll make sure to address it in the write-up. Quick summary: Yes they do use operators, but only to help the system learn.

Also: I don’t think you could snap up Spinvox. When you truly look at their burgeoning market power and position, plus based on some direct questions I put to Daniel, I think it would take a ton of cash and a wholly agreeable post-purchase strategy for them to even consider an acquisition.

By: mobile vision

mobile vision — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 10:26:51 +0000

I’m under the impression that there is a fair amount of human auditing that happens, but also that there is some pretty clever technology involved. If I’m correct, the service gets better as it becomes more educated to the sorts of messages users leave.. I.e. it’s very good at things like; ‘Hi Ewan, Sorry I missed your call, will see you at 10am for our meeting’ since it’s made up of commonly used terms for voice mails. I believe it’s not so good for totally random messages, or ones for more bespoke services. Suspect this is the reason there aren’t more 3rd party commercial services powered by Spinvox.

By: Anon

Anon — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 10:01:56 +0000

Is it true that SpinVox says its software converts speech to text but in fact most of the fine tuning is done by human operators?

A friend of mine uses it, and although he likes it, he is convinced that they are over-hyping the technology when in fact they employ lots of people to handle the traffic – what are they doing all day if not fine-tuning what the software can’t handle?

I hope you managed to explore this aspect as many journalists don’t even seem to think this bit through. If their voice processing was really that good they would have been snapped up by a bigger player by now. Their product offering is good but their technology needs more independent verification.

I thank you for respecting my anonymity, and fully understand that you may not publish as a result – just wanted to bring this to your attention really. Keep up the great blog anyway.

By: Ewan

Ewan — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 23:19:52 +0000

Hi Anon — oh no, it’s just I’ve been sat going through my notes getting ready to convert them into a blog post! Standby!

By: anon

anon — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 22:33:38 +0000

you havn’t posted anything else ewan, did you end up going to the pub and got pissed?