We’ve come a long way since the rotary phone. Now we have cell phones, and VOIP. Operators are no longer necessary, and neither are secrataries for the use of taking down a message.  You call, you get the beep, you talk, you hang up.  I get the notification that I have an e-mail, I call my voicemail, I listen.  Maybe I take notes about what you said….

and then came Google Voice.

This morning, I awoke to an e-mail (and then I discovered I also had a text) that spelled out what the voiceail that was left on my Google Voice number had said.  It was a wrong number… this lady was saying that she had really really bad news.  The amazing thing is that I didn’t have to listen to it in order to get the message! Google had transcribed it for me!  Everything was written, and I could even see the text light up along with the audio… like in a Karaoke machine.

I called her up– by pushing call, and then Google Voice called my phone, then called her, so she was seeing the number she called this morning on caller ID , not my cell… which I was speaking into.  I told her that she had the wrong number, and she was grateful.

One of my favorite social media visionaries, Peter Shankman, was just writing about Voicemail the other day… and what a waste of time it is. (http://shankman.com/whats-your-vmlt/).  He’s right.  People have a 5 minute conversation with themselves, and often don’t get to the point.  If you didn’t write down that number, date, name, etc.. quickly enough, you’re screwed!  With Twitter, people have to get to the point.. you know right away what they want.

Now with Google Voice, issues like that will be a thing of the past, as you’ll be able to read through that 9 minute e-mail, cut and paste the phone #, date, etc… and not have to listen.  Or, you can forward it to people, print it, etc… the possibilities are endless.

One crazy possibility I just thought of… you can call yourself on your Google Voice, and speak all you want… and you’ll have a transcription e-mailed to you, where you can send it to an editor, or the people who needed to read it.  In fact, I may try to do a blog post that way over the next few days!  Here’s the video that shows you how this stuff works: