Who is Farhan Lalji?

I’ve been using Spinvox for a couple of months and I‘m really enjoying the service.  In short someone leaves you a voice message and it gets converted into an SMS and gets sent to you.  Simple and easy and I really like it.

Coincidently I thought about it twice today.  The first occasion was when a group that I’m a part of sent a link to the BBC’s Newsnight website where there is a short review of the service (around the 35 minute mark if you watch Tuesday’s show) and the second was when the wife left me a voicemail that was converted.

The Newsnight program talked about how humans were being used to convert part of the messages - haven’t seen it yet, just going by word of mouth.  I found that really interesting.  And while I think it’s totally understandable - with different dialects and different regional terms that humans need to be “part of the algorithm”, I found myself scratching my head as I imagined what their costs must be like and how much returns they get (read, their ROI) on a system like that would be interesting to see.  I’m also not totally sure how something like this scales?

The second occasion Spinvox came into my conscious highlighted a bit issue with the service.  One of the biggest drawbacks with the service is you have no idea about the emotional state through converted text.  So when the wife leaves her school results on a voicemail and I get a message I’m not sure if she’s happy about it or upset about it.  And when a 90% could be cause for being upset it pays to know.

Surely if their using humans as part of the algorithm it wouldn’t take much to convey emotion through the SMS.  A smiley face or sad face would totally do it for me.  With the costs on actual converters already being spent, it can’t have too much impact on the bottom line… can it?

Not sure if any technological innovation can truly convey emotion.  Pokes or pings or IMs or even emoticons fall way short of someone’s voice.