Archive for June, 2010

Cell phones and water…do not mix.

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010 | located in Things That Make Us Laugh | No Comments »

Our chairman, JP Rangaswami, was assisting BT’s David Morgan in a Ribbit Mobile demo recently in London. JP was supposed to come in, drop an old blackberry into the vase, and roll into a discussion about how you can still use your ‘phone’ even without your handset (Ribbit has a web based calling feature).  However, JP reached into the wrong pocket and the rest is history.

I think he is still drying it out…

Not all voice to text transcriptions are created equal.

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 | located in Features | 2 Comments »

So you’ve decided that this whole reading voicemail thing is a pretty good idea.  How great would it be to not have to listen to an endless string of rambling messages? You think, “I’m ready.  Sign me up!”

But then you find out that there’s more than one company with their hat in the ring.  Which do you choose? I mean, how different can they really be? The answer: very different. If you’ve done any research on voicemail transcription services, you’ve undoubtedly seen that some of these services are quite costly.  Others only transcribe a portion of your message and then charge you more to get the rest.

More important to me than cost, though, is accuracy.  When you get a voicemail as a text or email and read it, shouldn’t it say the same thing as the original voice message?  Shouldn’t it at least resemble the original message?  This is where Ribbit Mobile excels.  Ribbit Mobile offers users two options for transcription: a fully automated voice-to-text transcription service, or human-assisted transcriptions for greater accuracy.  If certain words can’t be confidently identified, the transcription service will suggest what it thinks the correct word or phrase is, then set it apart in parentheses.

But I’m not the only fan of Ribbit Mobile transcription.  This comment recently appeared on Twitter:

“Ribbit Mobile converted my distant, un-humanly recognizable voicemail into text w/85% accuracy. I’m impressed!”

If you have to spend more time trying to decipher the transcription than it would take to dial in and listen to the voicemail, then what good is the service?  While Ribbit Mobile isn’t perfect every time, one user describes it as “scary good.”

If the accuracy of your messages matters to you, and if you want to save the time and hassle of dialing into voicemail, then the quality of Ribbit Mobile transcriptions can make all the difference.