Maybe GV transcription would improve if they let us submit vmails with corrected transcriptions?

So, I use Google Voice as a call-direction and answering service. When calls go to voicemail, they get transcribed. Once transcribed, I get an email with the transcription and a link to the  recording of the call. Today, I got an email with the following transcription.

Hey Tom, It's Lauren. Mike. Share want to be there, call me. Sometimes Florida. I completely forgot. So I wasn't sure what that was about anyway, gimme a call back when you get a chance. X X XX X:XX XX. Thanks. Bye. 

Now, if the above doesn't make a lot of sense, it's because it's only slightly close to the audio content of the message. Basically, it's close enough that I can sorta understand how it might be transcribed that way (I can only assume GV's transcription software doesn't have good lexical/contextual engines).

When you get the transcription, there's usually two little buttons at the end asking you to rate whether it was useful or not. If you select the "not" option, they ask if you're willing to submit it to help them improve their service. Oddly, there's not the option for you to submit your own transcription. So, if you do submit it, it's completely a matter of faith that it will be constructively used - that, if someone else actually does listen to it, they'll hear it the same way you did.

Ugh: not a perfect process.

Kinect: One Man's (First) Experience

A long-time friend of mine gave me a Kinect controller for my Xbox as a late Christmas/early birthday present. I didn't get a chance to start playing with it the first day. I guess I have to turn my geek-card in, since I didn't drop my "life" to start messing with it. Then again, having a "life" probably made me forfeit my geek-card long ago.

At any rate, it didn't languish too long - only about thirty-six hours. I couldn't get to it yesterday, when I got home from work, because I was beat and we were going out for the evening, later. I only got chance enough to take it out of its shipping box and place the whole Kinect package/box in my television case before I staggered upstairs for a several-hour nap. After the nap, we got ready to go out, then were gone until around 03:00. I had a Flyers game in Philly that I needed to head out of town for, first thing in the morning, so, I went up to our iceox bedroom and sacked out. After my alarm went off, I staggered downstairs and looked at the still sealed carton. It glared at me as I readied myself for the day's travel and mocked me as I headed out the door. It was still looming in its box when I returned.

Finally, around 22:00, after playing with the pups upon returning home, I set about getting the device set up. I gotta admit, it's a bit nifty. Being able to control my system with my voice and waves of my hands gives kind of a Jedi feeling.That said, it's still very much a new product. It shows signs of being rather cool, but still lacks a lot.

It comes with a video chat functionality. Unfortunately, since it doesn't (yet?) link to services like Skype, you can only video chat with other Kinect owners. There aren't a lot of them right now - at least, not in my circle of friends. So, this isn't likely to be a useful feature any time soon.

While the device is pretty good at figuring out that there's more than one person in the room, it seems to be confused by pets. In fairness, pets are confused by interactions with the Kinect. My cats seem convinced that my waving about is an invitation to them to come be petted. Cats suddenly appearing in what the Kinect sees as control points (my hands) causes the Kinect to sort of lose track of things.

The Kinect also offers voice-control of Xbox functions. Unfortunately, that control isn't well-integrated into the Xbox modules I like to use. Probably doesn't help that the initial Kinect code release doesn't seem to support much more than the most rudimentary of commands. Right now, it's kind of like the dumbest pet you've ever owned or encountered, only dumber. If it were a pet, you'd have to put a hockey helmet on it.Hopefully, as the product matures and code updates come out, it will receive a larger repertoire of spoken commands. For now, the appeal of the voice commands wears off quickly.

At any rate, I ran it through its setup paces and even played some of the games that the device came with. The games are reminiscent of the Wii Fit stuff, without the worry that you'll destroy a controller-board. The Kinect wants a fair amount of motion-space. My living room is barely big enough. I had to move our ottoman out of the way to complete the setup (otherwise, it would eclipse the Kinect's view of my lower legs, causing the Kinect to render my body-position as kneeling in mid-air). While our living room isn't huge, it isn't as small or furniture-restricted as that of many of my friends. So, bear your gaming area's geometry in mind when considering the purchase.

After playing with it a bit, it started to creep me out, a bit. The Kinect has glowing red and green LEDs on the front. When it's active, it puts a little thumbnail of what it "sees" in a little window on your screen. Combine the cold, dead look of the LEDs and the realization that you're being watched, heard and recognized, and you get kind of a 1984/2001 feeling. I gotta think that, as/if these things proliferate, advertisers and hackers alike will want to make use of the Kinects' capabilities. Yeah, you get a nifty gaming interface, but, you realize that you're starting to sell yet another part of your life to "the machine". While the Wii only has a motion sensor bar, the Kinect has eyes and ears and, for the sake of entertainment, you're potentially making yourself observable, each and every time you turn it on.

Oh well...

At any rate, if they ever fully realize the gaming potential and mature the gesture and voice interfaces, it should be pretty cool (imagine in-game fights if you're playing NHL 2K games over Xbox Live!). If Microsoft gets smart and partners with Skype (and/or others), it will be a nifty communication device to keep in touch with far-flung friends and family. For now, it's going to be a "yay, I have one" affair, but will probably only be used, briefly, each time there's a new code update (i.e., to see "what can it do, now?"). Guess I'll also have to test it with each new game I get to see what it's useful for. I'm guessing for most legacy games, it will simply remove the need to have my headset when I want to trash-talk during online gaming (and, I'll have to figure out how to mute that in unobvious ways).

 

Pointless Prefaces

Has any statement preceded with "don't get mad" ever not resulted in someone getting mad? It's like most of the "pre-apology" structures used by the passive-aggressive. If you don't want me to get mad at you, then don't say it. If you go ahead and say it, then you don't really care whether I get mad, so why bother with the ruse of the preface?

Bad Habit or Just Laziness

For a little over five years, I worked as a computer consultant. This job required me to travel away from the house on a regular basis (spending anywhere from 100-200 nights a year in hotels). Being married, I got used to staying in regular touch with my wife via instant messenger. Then, when on an extended trip to Europe, I added video chat to the "keeping in touch" toolset.

I'm no longer a road warrior. In fact, I frequently telecommute. Still, a lot of the daily communications happen via IM and sometimes even video-chat. While our house is by no means large (only 1400SqFt.), my work space and my wife's work spaces are in different areas of the house. Using computer-based communication tools is often the most efficacious method for communicating. I can't decide whether video-chatting is better or worse than IMing someone in the same house. Still, either is preferable to screaming.

Video Chat Balkanization

So... Apple has FaceTime for their devices. Skype has long had video chat built in. Google's chat's had video capability for a while, now, as have several of the other "legacy" instant messaging platforms. There's other video chat apps out there, too. As far as I know, none of them interoperates with any others.

Previously, when we had this situation with text-based instant messaging, you had to use a tool like Trillian, Gaim, Adium, etc., if you wanted to talk to all your friends and only have to have one piece of software running on your computer. None of these multi-protocol tools was perfect, but it was better than chewing up all your system resources just running chat applications (or, simply not talking to certain people because they weren't in your network).

Video's previously been kind of a fringe thing. But, it's getting pushed, hard, now. Cell phone makers are starting to tout having two cameras (and advertising it in the context of video chat). Companies like FaceBook are teaming up with companies like Skype to gain video capabilities. Video's a lot heavier a resource consumer than text chats are - even just at idle - and that's even if they're coded well. I remember, when I traveled to Germany, last year, that Skype had a huge memory leak. It would end up crippling my Mac if I left it running for any length of time. Even with my current laptop's 8GB of RAM, I can't imagine running more than one system-eating video application, just so I can talk to everyone who might want to video chat. I can't imagine that a Trillian-like tool will be able to run efficiently, if the underlying technologies it's trying to bridge suck. And, unlike with instant messaging where your "reduced experience" might mean your emoticons don't quite show up correctly on your friend's computer. Big deal. With video, I gotta think that "reduced experience" may equate to "unusable," or, at the very least, "painful".

It seems that Internet-related technology penetration is reaching a threshold where we need to start thinking vendor-neutral at the core of new communication tools. Otherwise, it's going to reach a state where (using an older tech for comparison), you can't talk to someone because you don't have the right kind of phone; won't be able to watch broadcast TV because you don't have the right kind of TV. If we're going to debate things like "network neutrality", we gotta start thinking about making it so that all new communications technologies are "open" (even if doing so requires the gun-point of legislation to ensure).

And, for the record, I don't really want generalized video chat. To me, it has its uses, but not really as an every-day kind of tool. It was great to have when work separated me from my wife for days at a time, but I wouldn't have used it "just to chat" with someone I can see every day. I don't even like video conference calls. I don't want to have to worry about how I or my surroundings look every time the damned "vid" rings. But, if I'm going to be forced down this path, I don't want to have closed communication technologies forcing me to choose who I can talk to.