Google Voice Transcription – Tested

As you may have heard, a long while back Google bought a little start-up called GrandCentral.com.  I was lucky enough to get a GrandCentral account setup while the beta was still available, and use it as a contact number for work-related calls, so I don’t have to give the 4,000 people that see my e-mail signature my true personal mobile number.

Google was quiet about its intentions with GrandCentral for a long time (besides a few web leaks here and there), so when lifehacker.com posted a story that GrandCentral users were now being given the option of converting their account over to Google Voice, I jumped on it. (I now regret being hasty in this decision, as I’m not sure what the long-term impacts will be, but I’ll talk about that in my full review later.)

One of the most useful, most awesome, and simply freaking about time brilliant features is the voice transcription of messages.  I do this manually at work to ensure I have a digital copy of any voicemail that I can stick an attachment to on reply, or simply reply to it if I don’t feel a call is necessary.

As a test this morning, I gave myself a call and left a brief message to see how the transcription worked. Here is the screenshot of the results.

My actual message said: “Hey Seth, this is Seth. Just testing google voice to see how the voice transcription does.  Looking forward to reading this. Thanks, bye.”
If you feel like testing to see how it does, give me a call at 614-441-8175.  I’ll try to post the results of what shows sometime this weekend.