Voice Notes or Text Messages? | Hacker News Reader

Voice Notes or Text Messages?

2 pointss-kiel9 comments

Hi, people!

Since we're finishing another week, I'm feeling like starting a little debate here; when you're talking to someone, what do you prefer? Voice notes or texts?

Personally, I hate voice notes... I always receive them when I'm really busy or can't hear them.

So, what do you think?

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Every platform ought to transcribe the voice notes. Even a bad transcription can be adequate when you can fall back to listen to the audio. Allo did this and it was great. I wrote a [bot] to do it for Matrix using GCP transcription.

[bot]: https://maya.land/monologues/2021/08/05/matrix-bot-transcrib...

People communicate differently in voice notes than in typed messages, so I like having tech that can accommodate both.

I started getting voice notes a couple of years ago and disliked them at first. It felt presumptuous of the person that I'd stop and listen to their 4 minute monologue. Scanning a text message is much more convenient. But I ended up really enjoying them because you can actually have an conversation without being on a call. This made me much more accessible and looking at phone far more interesting. It was like having a podcast with a variety of folks from my network.

That's an interesting perspective! It's like having personal podcasts with friends. It's interesting how technology can change our perspectives and make communication more engaging. However, sometimes I can't hear them because I'm in a meeting or just in a noisy public space

Yah, I'll usually wait until I have a couple of messages, then go for a walk and listen and respond. I have a group message where we all respond via audio messages and it's fun. We've never been able to get that crew on a facetime or zoom at the same time. This allows everyone to participate on their terms.

I imagine the future will blend the two so you don't have to choose. Voice dictation is already pretty good. Whatsapp already is doing transcriptions on it's audio messages. IOS17 has visual voicemail and I think transcriptions in audio messages as well. There is also http://www.airwave.us which is a push to talk app that immediately transcribes in different languages.

You can use TranscribeMe! https://www.transcribeme.app/en

Highly recommended for those who can't hear them or just don't like them xD

Hey! Thank you so much

Depends really, me and my friends we use both but I haven't received a voice message longer than 1 minute.

But most often I prefer actual calls.

Lucky you! Long voice messages are pretty annoying

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