Mu: Catharsis

Today I got an invite from Google to try out their new Google Voice service. So far it seems pretty neat.

I was allowed to select a phone number from a searchable list of numbers. This let me find one that was a close match for my current mobile -- a nice feature for forgetful me.

The UI is fairly simple, and resembles Gmail. They make heavy use of flash to do the audio playback, and some of the dynamic content. To collect audio they place calls to one of your configured phones (in this case my mobile). I expect some sort of integration with the confusingly named Google Talk service -- at some point. They also allow you to place long distance calls similar to how those old calling cards used to work.

I think my favorite use for this service, is as a repeater. You can give out one number, and have GV ring several devices at once. You can then take the call on the most convenient device (land line for quality, mobile for portability, etc). It also gives you the long-lost ability to screen your calls. Something that I lost almost a decade ago, when I gave up my land-line and and answering machine -- yay!

Two not-so-good things I noticed in my initial evaluation. The first, whatever switching technology they are using (some kind if VoIP infrastructure?) adds substantial delay -- perhaps as much as 300ms. When you combine this with the delay effects of your average cell phone conversation (cell to cell), the total round-trip latency starts to approach a second. I find this very annoying. I'm not sure this can be solved entirely.

The other, is that the voice mail transcription feature, while novel, and potentially amusing, is useless. They seem to use some sort of statistical algorithm(s) to match combination of syllables to English words and phrases. It produces text that consists of coherent phrases pinned together in totally incomprehensible ways. A fun game is to call up and repeat the same phrase a few times, and watch what it comes up with.
Also, it seems to filter out swearing... WTF!

Overall, It feels a little like the 'Gmail of Voicemail'. Allowing you to do things you could always do with other voice services in the past, but with better integration, and for free. Like the iPhone and Gmail, I hope this raises the bar.

Also, I'm back ;)