Comments on: Configuring Google Voice as a Jott / reQall Replacement

By: carl

carl — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 05:50:10 +0000

One additional note... The advertised phone number for reQall in the U.S. is 888-9-REQALL (888-973-7255). There used to be a separate "Power User" phone number for reQall that separated out some of the more advanced features (which are now part of the standard service). That number still works... I'm not sure if it's a truly separate line, or just one of several numbers in a line hunting group that you get when you call 888-9-REQALL. Anyway, there is a small possibility that it will work if the main number goes down. That number is 888-789-9283. -Carl

By: carl

carl — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 05:33:50 +0000

I agree - I initially set up Google Voice because I wanted to get around the 30 second time limit imposed by reQall. I find myself using reQall 99% of the time, however, since it's just easier and 30 seconds is usually enough. Keep in mind that full Outlook integration with reQall requires a paid/pro account, so not quite a fair comparison to Google Voice. The other service that offered excellent Outlook integration was Jott, but unfortunately that service is now gone. Some others you might want to consider are Dial2Do, PhoneTag, or Voice on the Go. The only one of these I have tried is Dial2Do which worked fine, but reQall (and Jott) felt more polished. Another option if you want to create Outlook appointments and tasks with any of the other services is to use an Outlook rule to trigger a VBA macro when messages come in from the voice-to-text email address. You can have the macro trigger on certain phrases such as "new task" or "new appointment" to create the appropriate Outlook object or do nothing and pass the message on to the Inbox. There are several examples out there on how to do this - some assembly required, batteries not included. If you are not comfortable with VBA, however, you could waste a lot of time tweaking this to get it to work the way you want. -Carl

By: Greg Witek

Greg Witek — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:54:41 +0000

Uh oh. ReQall is down for the past 30 hours. I rely on it HEAVILY and I am shut down cold!

Also, FYI, this post about Google Voice is cool but does take into account the amazing capability of ReQall to automatically create Outlook Appointments and Tasks.

If anyone knows of a direct ReQall competitor with the same Outlook capability, please post up fast!

By: carl

carl — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 21:17:13 +0000

Hi Deb - Jott was pretty good and it allowed you to spell out peoples' names. Unfortunately they got rid of the free version, and now it is shut down altogether. Both reQall and Google Voice do an okay job, but I would not trust any of these services to send an email directly. I would always recommend sending the message to yourself for edits before sending it on to someone else. One nice feature of reQall is that you receive the audio as an attachment, so if the transcription is garbled you don't need to log in to get to the original audio. I have been using reQall for several years now and am quite happy with it. -Carl

By: Deb

Deb — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 13:22:57 +0000

Can you say how Jott, Reqall and Gvoice compare in terms of accuracy for voice transcriptions? I think the limit is 30 seconds for the first 2 but am wondering how much better they are in getting words right that Google Voice. I just tried windows 7 speech recognition and it did not do well but it may also be my microphone.

Deb

By: carl

carl — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 22:40:40 +0000

Scott - See the instructions above under the heading "SETTING UP YOUR CUSTOM GREETING". These instructions were written in 2009, so a few things may have changed. If you are not able to figure it out using the instructions above, try this link. -Carl

By: Scott Bates

Scott Bates — Wed, 11 May 2011 19:22:58 +0000

How do I change my Greeting message…?

By: Before GTD, Men Still Carried Pocket Notebooks « Jeff Gentry

Before GTD, Men Still Carried Pocket Notebooks « Jeff Gentry — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 18:21:28 +0000

[...] capture the idea no matter where you are. I’ve used the mini notebook less recently after I set up Google Voice to take my messages, transcribe them, and put them in my email [...]

By: Educate your Dumb Phone | LERNR

Educate your Dumb Phone | LERNR — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 05:37:53 +0000

[...] The process of setting this up is a bit more detailed, and because I don’t use this method anymore, I’m not going to type it out, but rather link to another tutorial that explains it. [...]

By: carl

carl — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 19:59:40 +0000

Great tip, thanks Johnny!

By: neeli

neeli — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 14:40:34 +0000

Google Voice Service Takes Aim At Telephone Companies: It converts voice mails to text, and even better…nice article

By: Johnny

Johnny — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 13:14:53 +0000

For those of you wishing to leave yourself a message without having to wait for 4 rings you can check “Ring My:” under settings but then unselect all your Phones. This will then reduce the number of rings to 1 ring, perfect timing to hit * if you want to access GV Menu, but also not to long a wait. I can’t take credit I got the idea from:
http://www.drewvogel.com/2010/04/05/google-voice-transcription/

By: carl

carl — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 03:02:12 +0000

Brian - Good suggestion, that's probably the best way to get SMS reminders for your appointments. There are even ways to synchronize other calendars like Outlook to G'Cal. The SMS reminders I mentioned in the post were more for simple to-do's or ticklers. I was looking for a way to trigger them by voice message since I'm still using an old fashioned rotary cell phone with no mobile web. So far reQall seems to be the easiest way to set up those reminders.

By: Brian Kung

Brian Kung — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 01:13:07 +0000

As for SMS reminders, that’s something you can do pretty easily in Google Calendar. I don’t know if you intentionally left that out to limit the scope of the article to Google Voice, but Google Calendar regularly shuffles me about in my life =P

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 02:39:23 +0000

I look forward to your future articles

By: carl

carl — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 01:41:11 +0000

Victorino – Nice suggestion!

By: Victorino

Victorino — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 20:57:20 +0000

On top of your precious instructions to configure Google Voice to act like a no-brainer mental notepad I have also added a few filters to my gmail account so that it would sort my notes into folders based on some keyword contents.

Thanks for the tutorial!

By: carl

carl — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 20:30:15 +0000

Ben – Unfortunately there is no way (yet) to configure the number of rings before going into voicemail. Hopefully that feature gets added soon.

-Carl

By: Ben Tsai

Ben Tsai — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:37:17 +0000

This is awesome. I didn’t think this would work, but logically is should, and it does!

Do you know a way of reducing the number of rings before sending to voicemail? Right now, I have to wait for about 4 rings until I get to voicemail.

Thanks.

By: carl

carl — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 04:55:30 +0000

Kevin, Aaron – Thanks for your comments, glad to hear that this worked for you.

-Carl

By: Aaron

Aaron — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 02:46:44 +0000

You rock. This works perfect to replace other similar services.

By: Dave Albright » Blog Archive » Manage This! » Configuring Google Voice as a Jott / reQall Replacement

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 21:04:33 +0000

[...] Manage This! » Blog Archive » Configuring Google Voice as a Jott / reQall Replacement. Tweet This Post (0) Comments [...]

By: Kevin

Kevin — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 05:20:58 +0000

BRILLIANT!!! I needed a simple solution and you found it. Works like a champ. Many many thanks…Time to Digg this now.

By: carl

carl — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 01:34:56 +0000

Thanks Jeffrey, glad to hear it was useful!

By: Jeffrey J Davis

Jeffrey J Davis — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 12:18:19 +0000

Excellent. I’ve been a paid Jott subscriber since it came out and have been noodling to try to figure out how to do this under Google voice. You punched all the right buttons for me. Thanks much!!