Comments on: Review: SimulScribe

By: James Siminoff

James Siminoff — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:19:08 +0000

Michael,

I do monitor the blog like any good CEO should (I think). I have love for Spinvox but I had to point out that in the same post Andrew was saying that Spinvox works anywhere he also correctly stated that it only works on Telstra Business in Australia. I just could not resist:)

Jamie

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:54:38 +0000

PhoneTag’s CEO is clearly monitoring this blog and has no love for SpinVox. Regardless, Australia wins by having two competitive companies both offering visual voicemail on the continent and that’s how innovation spreads.

By: James Siminoff

James Siminoff — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:25:07 +0000

Hey Andrew,

Does “any phone and on any network” mean just on Telstra Business in Australia? For the record PhoneTag is truly available on all networks in Australia not just Telstra Business. Additionally for those in Australia that have Blackberries we are the only solution which will email you the content of your messages instead of breaking it up into multiple SMS’s.

Jamie

James Siminoff, Founder and CEO
PhoneTag

By: Andrew

Andrew — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 07:19:12 +0000

Hi Aussie. I work for SpinVox here in Australia. SpinVox voice to text is available worldwide on any phone and on any network and is also available now in Australia, through Telstra Business – check out http://www.telstra.com.au/business/products/mobiles/services/managemycalls/voice2text.htm

By: Aussie

Aussie — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 04:45:40 +0000

Its great PhoneTag has rolled out to Australia !!Been waiting for this for a long time. Voice mail to Text terrific.

By: Jon

Jon — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:44:16 +0000

Thing is.. Callwave is free. So i’m sticking with it.

By: SimulScribe changes name to PhoneTag, adds contacts feature | BlackBerry Cool

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:53:20 +0000

[...] SimulScribe have changed their name to PhoneTag and added a new feature to their software, which we reviewed a few months ago. The new feature lets you upload your contact list to their website for use in [...]

By: SpinVox offers BlackBerry plugin | BlackBerry Cool

SpinVox offers BlackBerry plugin | BlackBerry Cool — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:10:37 +0000

[...] SpinVox is now offering a plugin for their transcription technology on BlackBerry. The service was rolled out through Rogers and other carriers last year, but was unavailable independently until now. You can pick up plans between £3.00 and £9.99 monthly, depending on how many conversions you need, which will work for voicemail, blog posts, personal memos, social networks and more. If you’re interested, you can check out the week-long trial over here. I wonder how it shapes up against SimulSays…? [...]

By: David G

David G — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:45:56 +0000

Information Week recently ran a comparison on all the voicemail-to-text services. SimulScribe came out on top with an A grade for transcription quality.

See below.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202403399&pgno=6

By: JB Malik

JB Malik — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 19:57:53 +0000

I’ve used Callwave for over 2 years now, without a hint of trouble. You can read my review here: http://small-business-phone.com/?p=6

Recommended Highly!

-JB Malik
http://small-business-phone.com/?p=6

By: caleb

caleb — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 14:07:41 +0000

I have been using simulscribe for over a year now and swear by it. I highly recommend your setup is to have simulscribe send an email to your gmail account. Then setup a filter in bis to make it a level 1 notification so your bb will buzz when a new vm comes in. This allows you to make all your vm messages searchable via gmail! And since it just comes in via the regualr bb mail I can listen to the vm by just opening the attachment.
Can’t live without it.

By: Knocka

Knocka — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 12:10:28 +0000

I have been using Simulscribe for about 6 months. I don’t even bother with Simulsays. One thing not mentioned is that you can also forward your office voice mail (and home) to Simulscribe at no extra charge. That will consolidate all your voicemails in on place. I find that the transcriptions, while not perfect, are good enough that I get the gist of what the caller is trying to tell me. It also allows an easy way to archive important messages, because they are transcribed. It is also great when you are somewhere you cannot use a phone, such as a meeting. You can still read the message.

By: Bill Andrews

Bill Andrews — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 03:18:00 +0000

I like it but don’t like the fact of only 40 messages per month for $9.95. Eventhough I like SimulScribe better, I went back to CallWave; can’t beat the price.

By: Review: SimulScribe - BlackBerryForums.com : Your Number One BlackBerry Community

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 00:32:37 +0000

[...] incoming messages to text and e-mails the result to you. Read on to see if it?s up to the task. Review: SimulScribe | BlackBerry Cool BlackBerry Cool – the voice of the BlackBerry [...]

By: BlackBerry Cool Simon

BlackBerry Cool Simon — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 00:06:49 +0000

That’s true about the SimulSays icon Todd – I was thinking more about the smaller icons along the top that you get for e-mail and Facebook notifications.

By: JohnnyM

JohnnyM — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 23:57:58 +0000

I’ve tried Simulsays on my TMobile Pearl for the past 3 months and have had varying degrees of success. The idea behind the product is awesome, however, the application needs to be reinstalled about every two weeks because it loses the connection to the service and it won’t reconnect without a reinstall. So it’s not the most reliable piece of software loaded on the Pearl. I worked with their tech support to try to resolve this on-going issue, but didn’t get it resolved – come to think of it they kind of blew me off after a couple of email exchanges regarding the issue. I finally had to unistall it for good and go back to regular Tmobile voice mail. I’ll wait until a reliable version is released.

By: todd

todd — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 23:23:16 +0000

I was also going to mention the tagline removal option. I did that after about 2 weeks (I actually didn’t know it existed until a couple callers mentioned that “someone was listening to my message”). Though I still do not have it playing, I have noticed that the transcription accuracy has gone down without the reminder to enunciate.

Also, you mentioned no home screen notification. At least on the version I’m using, the icon for the simulscribe program has a red asterick on it whenever a message is waiting. As long as the program’s icon is within the icons usually visible on the home screen you can see this visual notification.

By: rony

rony — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 22:14:22 +0000

Hey guys I haven’t used simulscribe but have been using callwave which does the same thing. Transcription is not the best but everything else it does is super fast

By: BlackBerry Cool Simon

BlackBerry Cool Simon — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 21:55:07 +0000

Oh hey, so that’s what the “Play Tagline” box means. Thanks, Scott!

By: scott

scott — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 21:36:18 +0000

i love simulscribe, one note on the review – you can turn off the voicemail message about “your message will be transcribed…” by going to the simulscribe website, logging into your account and deselecting the option there. With that deselected I can’t speak highly enough about this product.

By: Ty

Ty — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 21:31:32 +0000

I’ve been using it for almost a year now. My ONLY complaint is the delivery time of the SMS. 97% of the time, I can read & understand what was sent & never go back to listen to the message.

By: RichyB

RichyB — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 21:29:31 +0000

I used SimluSays / SimulScribe for about 5 months but deleted it resently. When it worked it was great. I had very few problems with the transcription. Only a few messages callers left in other languages were an issue for SimluScribe. However, I woudl never get the transcriptions unless I requested a “redo”. Their support center could not find anything and were enver able to resolve this. They were friendly but still unable. I also had never problems with the software losing connection to the server. In the screen shot you see the big green dot, indicating connection with the server. After an hour or so mine would change to yellow then red indicating no connection. Multiple restarts of SimluSays resulted in nothing only a full hard reset of the device would get me back to green. After a week or so like this I gave up and went back to regular Vmail. Bottom line – very cool when it works, but I’ll wait for version 2 or 3 of the production version to be sure the bugs are worked out…