"You’ve Got Mail!" is the familiar AOL alert that presumably inspired the name GotVoice, a service that puts voicemails into a friendlier email-inbox format.
The Seattle-based company has introduced two new innovations in the past month to give it a leading position in a pack of services now available that convert voicemails to text, including those of SpinVox, SimulScribe, Callwave and Jott.
“There’s been a lot of things you can’t do with voicemail – you can’t forward or prioritise it, for example,” Curt Blake, chief executive, told me.
His company was formed in 2003 by former Microsoft, RealNetworks and AT&T employees. The first version of its service made its début in March, allowing users to receive, play, manage and store all of their cell phone and home phone voice mail in their inbox or through a web page.
In the second quarter, the ability to consolidate all voice mail, including that received through an office switchboard, was added and an interface for smart phones was introduced.
In September, it introduced voice mails being transcribed to text and sent as a text message to a phone or as an email to an inbox. It also added avatars, from President Bush to a selection of animals, which lip-sync to voice mails as users play them.
GotVoice allows two numbers to be consolidated on its service for free and has a $9.95 a month premium package for three or more. It expects to “white-label” its product for carriers and cable companies that offer phone services.
Users may particularly enjoy the feature that allows them to record and send a voice mail themselves with added background noises, making it sound as if they are in the middle of a jungle trek, standing in a club or sunbathing on the beach.
