Help Us Test Google’s Hearing

I gave the voice-mail transcription feature in Google Voice a spin this week. How well does it work? Read on, and then help us give it a few more spins.Google Voice Google Voice, an elaborate tool for managing phone calls and such, is finally opening up to new users. Voice-mail transcription is one of its most intriguing features. When someone leaves you a message in your Google Voice mailbox, Google’s systems attempt to work out what it says and then send you an e-mail transcript. There are other services that do this, but Google Voice has the advantage of being free.My colleague Brian Stelter agreed to help test the feature the other day. His message started out like this:It’s Brian Stelter, and the air conditioning’s on in the background, so maybe that makes it harder to hear, and I’m going to use big words like duchess and fashionable and moustache and unlicensed and Buenos Aires.The transcript I got a few moments later read:it’s brian doctor in the air condition is on the background my database in order to here the number use baker were it’s like a duchess and fashionable and about stocks and unlicensed and when i was there…The result was wrong enough to be kind of entertaining. So I decided it might be a fun Friday exercise to see what other nonsensical poetry the service might be coaxed into producing. This is where you come in. Pick up the phone and call my Google Voice number, [removed -- I got enough calls, thanks]. Your call will go straight to voice mail. Leave me a message. I’ll monitor the results and then post a selection of what comes in on Gadgetwise. Creativity is encouraged. Please be aware that I might post the actual audio of your message, so don’t call if you’re not comfortable with that.