Voicemail Turns into SMS Text, A New Feature in Skype
It is not enough for the development team at Skype that the new Skype 4.0 for Windows is now better than ever; the Luxembourg based company has been working closely with SpinVox in order to come up with a new service that allows users to turn voice messages into text. These text messages would then be forwarded to a mobile phone via SMS.
The new voice-to-text feature provides support for the following languages: English, French, Spanish and German. Sounds like a pretty cool feature – it’s a pity then that Skype does not provide it free of cost. Let’s say that you want to send a voice-to-text SMS message; you will have to pay the standard SMS fee and an additional charge for the conversion. If the conversion fails, you will still be charged (an attempt counts as a successful voice-to-text conversion). Also, if the software fails to recognize a word, it will be replaced with a question mark.
Skype Limited explains: “Each message converted to text with SpinVox will cost 2.1¢, plus a maximum of 3 SMSs sent at standard rates (depending upon the length of the voicemail message). If the message cannot be converted (for instance, if there is a lot of background noise when the message is spoken) you’ll receive an alert (charged at Skype’s standard SMS rate) plus the 2.1¢ charge as mentioned above. All payments will be made through Skype Credit.”
There is one other drawback: if someone rants on and on, SpinVox will only convert as many words as can fit in 3 SMS messages. You will be notified that there is more info you should be ware of. All you have to do is fire up Skype, log in and listen to the full recording of the message.
Director of Product Strategy with Skype, Mike Bartlett comments: “As people continue to spend more time on the move and on their mobile devices, people want to take their Skype conversations with them. SpinVox is a great option for our users to save time on checking their Skype voice mail and receive messages immediately sent to their mobile phone.”
The new voice-to-text feature provides support for the following languages: English, French, Spanish and German. Sounds like a pretty cool feature – it’s a pity then that Skype does not provide it free of cost. Let’s say that you want to send a voice-to-text SMS message; you will have to pay the standard SMS fee and an additional charge for the conversion. If the conversion fails, you will still be charged (an attempt counts as a successful voice-to-text conversion). Also, if the software fails to recognize a word, it will be replaced with a question mark.
Skype Limited explains: “Each message converted to text with SpinVox will cost 2.1¢, plus a maximum of 3 SMSs sent at standard rates (depending upon the length of the voicemail message). If the message cannot be converted (for instance, if there is a lot of background noise when the message is spoken) you’ll receive an alert (charged at Skype’s standard SMS rate) plus the 2.1¢ charge as mentioned above. All payments will be made through Skype Credit.”
There is one other drawback: if someone rants on and on, SpinVox will only convert as many words as can fit in 3 SMS messages. You will be notified that there is more info you should be ware of. All you have to do is fire up Skype, log in and listen to the full recording of the message.
Director of Product Strategy with Skype, Mike Bartlett comments: “As people continue to spend more time on the move and on their mobile devices, people want to take their Skype conversations with them. SpinVox is a great option for our users to save time on checking their Skype voice mail and receive messages immediately sent to their mobile phone.”
