YOU ARE AT:WirelessVIDEO REVIEW: Hiccups limit effectiveness of SpinVox's voicemail transcriptions

VIDEO REVIEW: Hiccups limit effectiveness of SpinVox’s voicemail transcriptions

This week, I took a closer look at SpinVox, a service that transcribes voicemails into text messages, word for word. Well, most of the time anyway.

// By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and C
// found at http://corp.brightcove.com/legal/terms_publisher.cfm.
var config = new Array();
/*
* feel free to edit these configurations
* to modify the player experience
*/
config[“videoId”] = null; //the default video loaded into the player
config[“videoRef”] = null; //the default video loaded into the player by ref id specified in console
config[“lineupId”] = null; //the default lineup loaded into the player
config[“playerTag”] = null; //player tag used for identifying this page in brightcove reporting
config[“autoStart”] = true; //tells the player to start playing video on load
config[“preloadBackColor”] = “#FFFFFF”; //background color while loading the player
/*
* set the player’s size using the parameters below
* to make this player dynamically resizable, set the width and height as a percentage
*/
config[“width”] = 486;
config[“height”] = 412;
/* do not edit these config items */
config[“playerId”] = 14602122001;
createExperience(config, 8);

Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly feature, Yay or Nay. Every week we’ll review a new wireless application or service from the user’s point of view, with the goal of highlighting what works and what doesn’t. If you wish to submit your application or service for review, please contact us at rcrwebhelp@crain.com.

Application: SpinVox, running on the Nokia 6263 with Cincinnati Bell service.

Yay: Easy to use, and voicemail-to-text transcriptions happened automatically, so not a lot of work required.

Nay: The service is currently only offered through a handful of carriers for around $5 per month. If you’re not a subscriber of one of these carriers, you’ll have to pay $10 per month to get SpinVox. Further, the transcriptions — which have a character limit — can miss potentially important words.

We say: SpinVox provides a relatively accurate and useful service, although transcribed voicemails can take up to 10 minutes to arrive and are in some cases truncated. If you prefer to read transcriptions of voicemails via text messages — and are willing to pay between $5 and $10 a month for a sometimes inaccurate service — then you may well be interested in SpinVox.

ABOUT AUTHOR