We've seen different voice-to-text transcription services before, like Jott and the for-a-price SimulScribe, but the interesting part about CallWave's new feature is that CallWave's voicemail transcription boasts that transcriptions are not verbatim. Instead, the feature (called Vtxt) trims out the fat to give you the gist of the message. The text is then sent as a text message or an email so you can get to the point quickly without dealing with the extraneous details (unless of course you need to, in which case you can still access the original voicemail).
During it's beta period, the Vtxt transcription feature is free; there's no indication of what the pricing will be after the beta ends. Ever since Apple started touting the innovations of the iPhone's visual voicemail, we've been seeing all kinds of innovation in the voicemail sphere, much to the satisfaction of people who aren't interested in dropping $500+ on their cell phone. Between CallWave and GrandCentral (rumored to have been purchased by Google), you've got a lot of options for enhancing your voicemail.
If you've been using one of these services, let us know how it's worked out for you in the comments.
CallWave [via Webware]
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