I’m not a compulsive adopter of new gadgets and technology. My life is complicated enough without obsessing about the Google Nexus One. And, frankly, I just don’t have the time to  integrate every new toy or hot new social network oversharing platform into my already overtaxed work/life schedule. I’ve got Robert Scoble to do it for me and pass along the important bits. Between you and me, that arrangement works just fine.

One fairly new service that I have embraced wholeheartedly, however, is Google’s new voice over IP (VoIP) offering, Google Voice.  There are a couple reasons for this.

First of all, I’ve come to despise my regular phone provider and doubt the necessity of land lines. We signed up for one when we moved to our current house in 2005. Back then the notion of Internet based phones seemed down right dicey, while the promise of always-on copper service was attractive. Since then, though, we’ve ditched the copper for a VoIP based offering delivered on Verizon’s FiOS. If the power goes out, we’ve got a few hours of service from our battery powered unit, but then that’ll go dead, too. So much for always on. In the meantime, Verizon stuck us with an easy to remember number that’s close cousin to both a local Top 40 radio station and the number elderly people call to hear the weather forecast. The result: our landline is a spam choked conduit for a dozen or more wrong numbers a day, including lots with befuddled seniors who hang up in your ear, and teenagers saying things like “It was Black Eyed Peas…did I win the tickets!!?!” This, on top of the usual barrage of solicitations from mortgage refinance vultures and “appliance warranty” scam calls. As I see it, we’re basically paying for people to bug us. At some point I’ll overcome my fear and inertia and just ditch the land line altogether, but I’m not there yet.

Then there’s Google Voice, which is still in beta and technically closed to the public. But — as with Gmail — invitations are becoming easier to come by. It’s a step in the direction of a portable, universal phone number, with some truly nifty features. After receiving an invite, you sign up for the service and get yourself a phone number. The one I chose has a Boston (617) area code, and the exchange common in my home town when I was growing up. Very cool. With that number in hand, you can then link all your other numbers to your Google Voice number and set up policies around when calls should go where. So, for example, you could just have folks who dial your Google Voice number  always get forwarded to your mobile. Or you could say “during work hours, ring my work phone, but on weekends, ring me at home,” or just have Google call every number you might answer and see which gets picked up.  Best of all: Google Voice captures your voicemail and stores it online for easy playback AND it does realtime, automated transcriptions of voice mail messages, which are stored or can be forwarded as SMS text messages to your mobile phone. As one of a growing number of people who can’t bear to actually listen to voice mail messages, this feature is Very Cool.

Alas, the auto transcription  feature has generated a bit of flack for Google for..well…not really working all that great. I’ll be honest: the transcription capabilities of this V1 service aren’t strong. As more than one reviewer has pointed out, Google Voice often has a darned hard time making heads or tails of what your callers are trying to say, especially when there’s a noisy connection, slang or fast spoken english or background noise to throw off the transcription.

But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I’ve generally been able to catch the gist of what my callers are trying to tell me. In the meantime, I’ve been treated to a steady stream of amusing foul-ups and even some chin-scratching “found poetry,” courtesy of Google Voice’s auto transcription engine. In some cases, the mix-ups seem to hint at deeper truths.  Google Voice heard the name of our local car dealership, Cityside Subaru, as Cityside Switcheroo. Accidental? Maybe…and maybe not!

I've seen the best algorithms of my generation...

In other cases, Google Voice does an exemplary job transcribing, only to sprinkle little bits of absurdity along the way. A perfectly captured voice mail from a running buddy ends with a one word sentence that reads, simply: Cement. Another innocuous voice mail message ends with the three word alliteration Hi Heather Hooks. I don’t know what the caller was trying to say…but I like it!

With other messages, meaning is utterly lost, leaving only a kind of loose prose poem that makes you want to grab the bongo drums, a bottle of cheap Spanish wine and that dog-eared copy of Howl and start reciting aloud.

My favorite, so far, is this transcription of a voice mail message from my wife. (I’ve added some line breaks where I think they make sense.)

Yeah suck. Bye drinking. Her it. This is Paul. This is Martha.
I’m running a little bit and I’ve got the yes I don’t know. Yahoo.

But hey, I’m guessing you’re bringing it like a letter in the bye bye colossal of alright.

So I was cleaning up on my I think that yeah okay bye but I didn’t know if I don’t know.

Again – i know we’re talking about algorithmic guessing here, but you’ve gotta tip your hat to anything – man or machine – who cooks up something as evocative as  ”You’re bringing it like a letter in the bye bye colossal of alright.”

At some point, Google will iron out the deficiencies in its transcription, the found poetry will disappear and I’ll be left with the quotidian task of actually responding to the voice mail messages that Google Voice captures. For now, though, I’m enjoying the chaos and looking for more Google Voice poems. If you’ve got some good ones send them along to paul(at)everyotherthursday(dot)com, or Tweet them to me: paulfroberts!

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