Remote Indians enhance speech voice recognition software

Does the firm really use speech engines to convert missed mobile phone calls into useful text messages? Or is it true they use a man in India to listen to every phone message, type it up, and send it back to your mobile as a text message?

Daniel Doulton, VP of strategy and marketing, and co-founder of Spinvox, says such rumours are nonsense. "We use highly sophisticated speech recognition engines, to blend into an intelligent conversion system," he says. "OK, there's a human agent who arbitrates over any phrases that aren't recognised by the system...."

Aha!

But there's no man in Bangolore translating voice messages, he insists. So whose speech recognition software does Spinvox use then?

"We can't say, otherwise we'd be surrendering our business advantage," he straightbats us.

Are we convinced?

Well, Spinvox announced today that Crackberry users will be able to receive all their voicemail messages as email, direct on their berry nice device. The company is also integrating its speech-to-text service with some of the world's biggest mobile carriers, such as Vodafone. The service is available to Skype users too.

It has also launched a new service, Spin My Blog, where you create a blog entirely out of your voice messages, posted onto its web site. With Spin My Memo, you can phone a number, dictate a message, and have it emailed back to you as a memo.

Why should we care if, instead of using voice recognition systems, Spinvox is creating jobs for enterprising young English speakers on the Indian sub-continent? µ