Zeroing in on that important missed call is YouMail's number-one feature.
(Credit: YouMail)Since its inception, YouMail, a visual voicemail service for mobile phones, has had one big problem. You could view and play your mobile phone's voicemail messages online, or--beginning lat June--by pointing the mobile browser to YouMail.com, but messages weren't stored on the device itself.
Starting Wednesday, YouMail has begun to change that with a native YouMail in-box for BlackBerry phones. Visual Voicemail Plus is a free downloadable app that stores your incoming voice messages along with the caller's name, number, and time of call.
In addition to viewing and playing messages in any order you'd like, those who have signed up for the free or premium transcription service will be able to read the message content.
Other online features have carried over as well, including interacting with the voice files by downloading, saving, and forwarding them, or posting them to social networks.
The latter has always been the creepiest application, and in my opinion, a misguided attempt to tap into social networking trends. It's true that replaying calls for amusement, blackmail, or punitive action has been a common fate of cell phone messages for much longer than actor Alec Baldwin's damning outburst back in 2007, but why make it so easy to push a private call to the public domain? Let's just hope I'm the only Debbie Downer here envisioning embarrassing abuses of an innocent call.
But back to the app at hand.
YouMail's free and prmeium transcription services carry over to the mobile in-box.
(Credit: YouMail)While I'll certainly be the first to welcome this native app with open arms, I will point out that it's a bit basic in the design department. We're sure to see more style come to the download in future releases.
The opening of YouMail's API, now in limited beta, means we're sure to see a proliferation of development, including YouMail's porting to other mobile platforms, and to other apps and widgets as a plug-in.
For now YouMail's Visual Voicemail Plus application will work on the BlackBerry Pearl, Curve, Bold, and Storm running version 4.3 or higher of the operating system, and only if you're with Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile carriers. New users can sign up for a free account from the Visual Voicemail Plus interface or online.
How would you like to have your own secretary for taking and delivering voice messages? It sure beats slogging through your phone's voice mail menu, especially if you're short on time or if you want to quickly refer to a saved message.
YouMail's new transcription service, launched from beta on Thursday, adds a (premium) human touch to its otherwise free "visual voice mail" service. In addition to receiving automated transcriptions of cell phone voice messages online, YouMail users can now pay for real people to transcribe their messages and send the gist through SMS or e-mail.
Human intervention boosts the transcription accuracy to 95 percent, estimates YouMail CEO Alex Quilici. That's compared with an estimated 75 percent to 95 percent accuracy of automated transcription, a rate that varies due to factors like voice clarity, idiom use, and call quality.
YouMail is offering its human transcription service in four tiers, two of which are aimed at people with smartphones and the other two for owners of standard phones. Prices range from $3.99 per month for YouMail to text you the meat of 50 messages, all the way up to $17.99 for unlimited transcriptions sent over e-mail.
There's also a freebie that lets YouMail users have the messages from one contact auto-transcribed to text, or to have the first five calls per month from any caller converted to text. All transcriptions will also be available from your YouMail in-box online.
This move offers direct competition to voice-to-text services like VoiceCloud, which also charges a monthly fee to have people--instead of computers--type up your voice mails.
Related stories:
YouMail puts voice messages on the mobile screen
Voice-to-text services seek a human touch
If you want to convert a series of 1's and 0's to text, ask a computer. If you want to convert a voice message into a text message, ask a human.
VoiceCloud transcriptions are made from people!
(Credit: VoiceCloud)That's the crux of the argument given by VoiceCloud, which launched into the voice-to-text fray on Tuesday with a speedy, employee-focused transcription service.
Speech-to-text is a huge trend in wireless and Web apps this year that--judging from the numerous services showcased at the CTIA Wireless conference in Las Vegas this week--is heating up as an important frontier in cell phone software. You may have read about Spinvox and SimulScribe, and CallWave, but according to VoiceCloud CEO Gerald Marolda, his company's service gives a faster, more faithful experience than letting software do linguistics.
With VoiceCloud, the voice message is broken into chunks using an in-house, proprietary software, and each audio segment is sent to an available transcriber who types the section and resubmits it. The software takes over from there, recombining the textual fragments and pushing them, quickly, to an e-mail or SMS message--your choice.
"Many companies claim to use voice-to-text software," said Marolda, when asked why he preferred people power. "But there is no technology in the market that exists right now that gives you the accuracy you need." Instead, VoiceCloud's CEO suggests that many competitors outsource editors or have humans double-check software transcriptions. VoiceCloud's free beta service is available from any cell phone browser and is optimized for the iPhone.
Crowdsourcing gets it right
YouMail's CEO, Alex Quilici, agrees that voice-to-text as it stands is essentially broken. But instead of employing Homo sapien ears like VoiceCloud, he opts for community cooperation and socially-derived ratings as the sure fix, believing that bipeds can be leveraged to correct transcription mistakes over time.
A new feedback loop joins the readable voice-mail service of YouMail, a neat bit of webware for managing voice mail like e-mail. A pop-up feedback form on the online account offers the opportunity for the masses to send programmers ratings, red flags, and helpful edits that will be integrated back into the transcribing process. Oft-repeated errors will be the first to undergo scrutiny, and responsive users giving sound feedback can help speed the correction process, Quilici added.
In addition to releasing the voting function for transcription quality, YouMail also has rolled out SmartGreetings, a feature that personally greets callers whose names match entries in a database of 4,000 "common" names. Maybe YouMail will get people power to grow that database, too.
When it comes to editing incorrect voice-to-text transcriptions, Homo sapiens have the magic touch.
(Credit: YouMail)
One of the more interesting voice-to-text companies out there is SpinVox, which has been kicking around for the last four years. This week they've added a really cool new feature that adds voice-to-text support for some popular "microblogging" networks like Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, as well as status update and wall support for Facebook. Once you've registered your logins with the service, you can call a single telephone number and post to all of them at once, or pick which ones you want your message to go to.
The service is aimed at people who don't want to spend time typing out messages on their mobile handset or spend money on an SMS message. It's also worth noting this is one of the easier ways to use Pownce from your phone, short of going through its unofficial iPhone application.
What interests me more than this is Spinvox's blogging component called Spin-my-Blog. Like the social networking integration, you can set up your personal blog to work with the voice-to-text service. Calling your special number and leaving a message will automatically convert to a written blog post that will auto-publish to your blog. Blog owners can also publish their special number to their blog page, letting their users create their own posts. I asked if the company was working on a system similar to this to handle user comments on blog posts, and the answer is that it's "in development."
Here's a useful concept: say you're really sick of dealing with your phone's tiny keypad to type in text messages. What if you could simply say what you wanted to write down, and have the tool fill it in for you? Yap is a new service that's trying to fill that need with their new mobile phone client. It's aimed at teens, who the company claims 66% of text while driving. Yap will read off your friend's responses, meaning you don't have to pay attention to what they're writing. The service works both ways, so your friend who has it installed could theoretically have an asynchronous text-only conversation with you too.
In addition to the text app, Yap throws in some integration with popular Web services like Amazon, Digg, Wikipedia, eBay, Facebook, Google News, AOL search, Flickr, Google Photos, Twitter, and Orbitz among others. You can simply say a search term, and it will convert it into a written search query on the correct service right on your phone's browser. The one for Twitter is especially cool since you can just say your status update, and it will convert it into a live Tweet.
The company is planning to support its service through "real time advertisements" which will pull context from your conversation, and serve up relevant ads. Their example showed a conversation about coffee, wherein the app pulled up a link for listings of Starbucks nearby. The service is still in private beta, and launching at this morning's TechCrunch40 conference.
Related: Highly useful: CallWave transcribes your voicemail
Each of these messages came from text-to-speech conversion from Yap. No more typing on your tiny key pad.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
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