It was from a friend who basically said “Sorry I missed your call. My parents were in town. I’ll try to call you tomorrow. Jane.” (Name changed to protect the cute.) Only it wasn’t her. It was the voice of Mrs. Stephen Hawking. Strange synthesized voice. Obviously this girl is using some cool new technology that I’d never heard of.
Then last night I got a similar message from “her.” Then today she sent an email saying that she tried texting me, but she got some response saying that her text was sent to a land line, so she wasn’t sure I got the message.
Weird. I had no idea that you could text a land line and get voice synthesis. Is this a new thing?
I think it has been available for years. I know that whenever I sent people text messages from my Treo a few years back, I would occasionally select their home number instead of their cell number. I would get a text message a minute later saying it was a land line, but offering to send it anyway for 50 cents or something like that if I replied to the text message.
I never tried it out to see, but I knew that it would have to be some computer voice reading the message.
Don’t they have services out there that will read you your email on the phone?
They had this in the UK for a while, but using the voice of Dr. Who (in his Tom Baker incarnation). It was brilliant. Especially hearing him say “fuck off you stupid motherfucking cunt”. Which, of course, everyone got him to.
