Does Google email you your messages? How accurate are they at taking the spoken word to text? That is my biggest issue… that and my messages are getting cut off before I get the phone number. Does it go to your email (gmail) or to a text on your phone? (Do you use the Google Phone? or who is your service with) Do you have a blackberry or IPhone?

So I thought I’d take the advice I often give to others and write a blog post as the answer to her questions. I asked Amy to call into my Google Voice number and leave a message. I use an iPhone, so I’m with AT&T, but the Google Voice service doesn’t care. It’s entirely independent of my network. I have my notifications sent to send to me via SMS and email. It will send to any email you wish. You can see the images below. But Google Voice also stores every message online for you.

Here is Amy’s message. (Yes, you get an embed code for each message.)

This is the exact transcription:

hey jeff this is amy programer from cincinnati ohio thanks so much for suggesting that i’d give you a call to see how well google translates voice to text i’ve been having some trouble with my spending box the i guess it’s AT&T or cincinnati bell wireless and wanted to see how well it translated hi find that motormen messages or getting cut off prior to my client or customer is actually leaving their telephone number at the end of the message which is the whole point of getting it translated so that all i have to do is look in my email and just click on the number and call them back without having to almost rack my car reading the number down and then dialing it back so let’s see how long this allows me to talk and it it puts my number again my number is (513) 377-3637 i’m currently using a blackBerry and hopefully this will work very well i’m curious to see if it goes to your google mail your email or jess at text message because my current service because it’s a text message thanks so much again this is amy programer with facebook and i hope you’re having a great day and sunny california see you later bye bye

Here is how it came to me on my iPhone via SMS:

And here is how it looked in email:

I think you can judge for yourself how well Google did at converting the human voice to text. I’ve been very pleased with the improvements they’ve made to the old GrandCentral.com service. And this is one of the features I’ve enjoyed the most.

Amy, what do you think?

When Google purchased GrandCentral in July, 2007, I replaced my regular phone number with my GrandCentral number. Today, that decision was validated by Google’s launch of Google Voice. The new feature list is impressive. You can read them there for yourself.

A Few Hiccups.

Like a kid on Christmas morning, I couldn’t wait to try one of the new features, conference calling. So, I sent out a twitter message to see how many people I could get on one call – using the same number I’ve had for the last two years. The first test was solid, except for my own error in hitting a couple of wrong keys. At one point I had five others on the line with me. The only failure, attempts to record the conference call all failed.

Undaunted I attempted another call later in the day, this time in a more controlled test. I reached out to three friends using Facebook chat, Stacy Lang, Ines Hegedus-Garcia and Nicole Nicolay. Stacy, on a Verizon cell phone, had no issue getting through, but both Ines and Nicole could not get through on their AT&T cell phones. When they both switched to land lines we were able to have our four way conference call without issue, but still unable to record. I was also unable to record any one-on-one conversations today.

The Great Promise

I sent a text message a few moments ago to someone who called me during dinner. I didn’t listen to their message. I just read the transcription and sent a text message to let them know I’d call them in the morning – without ever leaving Google Voice. I copied and pasted a portion of the transcription in to my Google Calendar to remind me in the AM to make the phone call. Life is good.

The transcription is not perfect, but it’s good enough to get a sense of what is being said. Here is a sample that came as a result of my pushing the wrong buttons on the first conference call. This is the exact transcription: “hey jeff ken montvale saw your we don’t we’re about testing this out thought i’d give it a shot and got this recording talk to you later bye.” And here is the actual message:

The new interface is a vast improvement over the old GrandCentral interface. It’s easier to navigate, cleaner, more feature packed. Google Voice lets me create multiple widget configurations too. GrandCentral didn’t. If you click on this one, for example, you will only get my voicemail.

I think I’m in love again.

I’m usung Air Mouse, the clear winner in my quick search for an option that would allow me to work using my right index finger. It beat out Snatch. And it’s wasn’t even a close competition.

Snatch

While the Snatch touchpad is larger and allows for multi-touch control, it has several problems. First, the multi-touch is finicky. It performs only ome of the time, which forces you to switch to the scrolling control screen to scroll inside windows. Second, the mouse position control is not accurate. a lot of time is spent getting the mouse to the correct position on the screen. And third, the keyboard is hidden away on yet another screen. Snatch simply requires too much effort. The two main control screens are shown below.

..

Air Mouse

In stark contrast, Air Mouse places most of the controls you need on one screen (see below). Two buttons, a scroll wheel, track pad and keyboard are all on screen at the same time. It is all I needed to type this post, and upload photos.

The cursor control is extremely accurate and responsive. And it acts as you would expect it to. Taps and double taps on the track pad respond just like the Powerbook trackpad. And the secondary control screen gives me access to my programmed mouse options.

After one evening of use, i’m now comfortably conrolling every aspect of this process with my right arm pinned against my chest, leaning back comfortably and without moving my shoulder at all. Air Mouse allows me to work. I would have been severely limited without it!

Here is the Pano example, made from four photos:

Here is the Panorama example, made from six photos:

Quality Issues

If you click on the photos above, you will be taken to their Flickr pages. Look at the original photo sizes and you’ll see that each photo has some “ghosting” that occurs in small portions of the image. These result from the images not aligning properly. The Pano sample has significantly larger ghosting issues, some of which may be the result of using fewer photos to pan the same range. These panoramic images are done without a tripod, so perfection is going to nearly impossible. For my money, the Panoramic App does a consistently better job of stitching the photos. However, it does require more photos to do the same job. In this sample, Panorama required six photos to Pano’s four. I don’t have a problem with taking a few more photos, personally.

They Key Difference Is The Process

In addition to the number of photos required to achieve the panoramic image, how each application assists you in aligning the images is fundamentally different. Pano uses a transparent portion of the previous shot to help you align subsequent shots. Like this:

I find the transparent image more difficult to align, especially in bright light conditions. It takes me much longer to align images in Pano than it does in Panorama. Panorama uses a different approach.

The hard edge allows me to better align one shot to the next and Panorama also seems to be less sensitive to the accuracy of the alignment. I have no trouble aligning images using Panorama, regardless of the lighting conditions. I don’t even attempt to use Pano in bright sunlight conditions.

Pano vs. Panorama: My Preference?

It’s probably obvious from the comments above that I prefer the Panorama application over the Pano application. But the Panorama application has a tendency to crash more often than Pano. I believe this has to do with how much memory is involved in processing the photos. Restarting the iPhone before using either one should clear out the memory and make each less prone to crashing, but as you add more and more photos to Panorama, you tempt fate. Neither application saves your progress, so a crash requires you to start over from scratch.  Still, the clear winner for me is Panorama from i Fone Guys.

However, there is a message in the Pano for iPhone group on Flickr that indicates they have some updates coming soon that will wow us. I’ll come back and updat if they do.

I hadn’t run in a long, long time. And as I took in large quantities of air, I had a brief moment of clarity. “Hey,” I thought. “Maybe I should test StepTrakLite for the last portion of this death march.” So I did.

The last portion of my run/jog/walk is 100% uphill. It’s the downside of living on one of the highest points around. I didn’t even attempt to run it. I just turned on StepTrakLite and put the iPhone back in my pocket. For most of that last mile, I simply walked at a brisk pace. It was certainly faster than I’d normally walk, but it did not even approach a Jog. When I pulled the iPhone out of my pocket and checked the final stats, this is what I found.

First off, I clearly need to alter the settings, you’ll see that graphic below. It judged my brisk walk as running and I can tell you right now, that just wasn’t the case. But apparently 248 of my steps were so slow that they registered as walking. I don’t know what part of the “run” those steps might have taken place. I wasn’t getting enough oxegen to my brain to remember anything. What the graphic clearly shows, however, is that it took me sixteen and a half minutes to walk that last uphill mile. Yep. That confirms it. I’m officially out of shape. Thanks for that insight, StepTrakLite. I appreciate it.

I watched for part of the way and it did indeed count each step accurately, even though my classification of steps was off. I would agree that it was “vigorous” but I wasn’t running. So, the application allows you to change the sensitivity in the settings.

Clearly, I need to change my classification bias to have it more accurately predict my running. But applications like this one are what I love about the iPhone. StepTrakLite helps make the iPhone something more than a phone. And this is an application I’ll certainly be using on my “runs” in the future.

Maybe soon I’ll be able to remove the quotations from “run,” and when it counts my steps as running, they actually will be. Sounds like a worthy goal to me.

Mobile post sent by ResPres using Utterz. Replies. mp3

The ability to upload multiple photos at one time is very nice, but it’s the “gallery” feature illustrated below that I really like. I’m sure there will be a slew of plugins coming that will take full advantage of this new capability, but for now, this is a welcomed feature.

Here is a gallery of Wordpress 2.5 screenshots.

Also, I have experienced no issues as a result of the Wordpress 2.5 upgrade. The upgrade has been without a hiccup. All of my plugins appear to be working and each of the themes tested so far appear to work fine as well. The most noticeable changes are to the look and feel of the admin panel. The UI changes there are a major improvement over previous versions. So far, I’m loving this upgrade!

I usually like to wait a bit, but I think this will be a good place to test out the new features and see how the plugins and templates hold up. Will let you know when the change is complete.

“I HAVE TAKEN THIS OFF, SINCE IT APPEARS TO BE CAUSING PROBLEMS WITH SOME ON INTERNET EXPLORER 7. IT WORKS FINE WITH FIREFOX. AS FAR AS I’M CONCERNED THIS IS JUST ONE OF MANY REASONS TO STOP USING IE7. I HAVE SENT SUPPORT MESSAGES TO THE GURU’S AT BUBBLE GURU AND I’LL LET YOU KNOW WHAT COMES FROM IT. YOU’LL KNOW IF THEY’VE MADE A CHANGE BECAUSE MY FACE WILL POP UP AGAIN! “

I have put it up here and on ActiveRain again. If you experience any problem with this, please let me know.