I want to set up service that automatically takes voicemail,
transcribes it, and emails it to me.  I know how to take voicemail and
turn it into an audio file, but I can't find any way of cost
effectively turning the audio file into text.

There used to be a company called unrecord.com that did this, but they
went bankrupt.  Maybe you can find the people who did that and ask
them.  I'm not sure if any of the electronic dictation services offer
this service.

For this answer to be acceptable, these three factors must be
satisfied:
1. The service must be inexpensive, around $0.50 to $1 per minute of
voicemail transcribed
2. The service has to be callable from my web server ithout manual
intervention
3. The service has to be timely - ideally a few minutes delay, but up
to 6 hours delay is possible

lukenosek...

The following site provides audio-to-text transcription:
http://www.trxglobal.com/

"If you have been looking around for quality transcription
 service, your search is probably over. We do a wide array
 of document transcription, from short doctor reports to
 continuing case histories, to quarterly reports of business
 corporations, insurance investigations and recorded
 statements, and to witness depositions for court litigation.
 Whatever your transcription needs are, we are confident we
 can custom-tailor our services to suit your particular
 requirements."

According to their FAQs, in DOC format, here:
http://www.trxglobal.com/FAQs.doc
or viewable in your browser, here:
http://216.239.53.100/search?q=cache:Fk4fRo84xFgC:www.trxglobal.com/FAQs.doc+%22audio+to+text%22+service&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

"Any job that fits the audio-to-text definition may
 actually be accepted.  The single most critical
 requirement is that the audio quality should be
 good enough for effective transcription.  Our
 predominant experience has been in the legal,
 medical, insurance and educational psychology
 fields.  The jobs vary depending on the clients..."

Prices are quoted as follows:
"Current industry practice is pricing per
 character-line, defined in terms of the number
 of characters (type), usually from 60 to 63
 characters per line.  Another line-pricing
 approach is per gross line, which is defined
 as any physical text line regardless of the
 number of characters (type).  Price per line
 (gross or character-line) may range anywhere
 from US$ 0.08 to US$ 0.16."

A minute of voicemail should be 2-3 lines of type,
so this puts the prices at the low end of your
desired pricing. You may be charged at the higher
rate quoted above, due to the smaller volume and
rapid turn-around time you desire.

As for exchanging the files, they note the following:

"Our preferred exchange mode is by way of File Transfer
 Protocol (FTP) sites.  A client is usually given
 restricted access to a special FTP site for downloading
 files.  By running a simple FTP software, a client can
 access that special FTP site,  given that a User ID and
 Password have been provided."

This would seem to indicate that you can access the 
completed text files via FTP, and you may be able to
upload your audio files in this way, as well. I'm not
positive what you mean by "callable from my web server",
but it would seem feasible to utilize some form of
program sheduling software to automate an FTP program
to transfer files as you desire. However, you could
also use the phone lines, if charges to this Phillipine-
based service are not prohibitive. Perhaps they have a
toll-free number you can use. 
They seem to indicate flexibility in how the exchanges
will take place, as follows:

"A 15-to-30-day lead time is ordinarily required to set
 up a Quality Client Service Program that will be suited
 to the current capabilities of the client.  That time
 will be spent exchanging information on how the client
 wants to send audio files, what report templates have
 to be done, how the client wants to receive reports,
 and how the client wants to be billed for the service.
 That time will also be spent studying the audio quality,
 the linguistic and speech patterns of the dictating
 authors, and also the transcription conventions that
 need to be established - among them shortened forms of
 certain phrases, words and terms, abbreviations, etc.
 and conducting trial dictation and transcription runs."

"Without relaxing our quality safeguards, that lead time
 can be cut down to one (1) week if the client's work
 demands are immediate, assuming  that we are provided
 the minimum information necessary to set up our Quality
 Client Service Program."

Their processing time is not spelled out, but what they
do say sounds better than the 12-24 hour turnaround time
cited by another transcription service, which I rejected
because of your specifications:

"Fast Turn-Around Time on As-Needed or Priority Basis"


Searches done, via Google:

"audio to text" service
://www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=%22audio+to+text%22+service

If you would like further information in regard to
this question, please feel free to post a request
for clarification BEFORE rating this answer.

sublime1-ga

---

Request for Answer Clarification by lukenosek-ga on 11 Nov 2002 17:53 PST

This looks great for starting a business to transcribe voicemail, but
I'm not ready to do that yet.  Overal the service seems much more
heavyweight than unrecord.com:

- 15-30 days long set up time - this implies that they want to deal
with hnuge customers with $1000's of billing every month

- requirement for payment with international wire transfer (i'm not
going to fill out international wire transfer forms just to run my
voicemail service) - the wire transfer itself will cost me $20, by
lowing the costs out of line.  credit card or regular billing would be
better

- A minor issue is FTP as a protocol for sending files.  It'd prefer
HTTP or email, these are easier to call from a web server than the FTP
protocol

As a counterexample, i just found idicatate.com, which sounds like it
would work but for the phone interface (i'd need an email or HTTP
interface).

Did you run into an other services on your search? Something in
between idictate.com and trxglobal.com?

---

Clarification of Answer by sublime1-ga on 11 Nov 2002 19:20 PST

lukenosek...

I placed the following sentence at the end of the 
answer, with an emphasis on 'before', for the 
simple reason that, having already rated the 
answer poorly, you have effectively removed any
incentive for a researcher to pursue an improvement
to the answer, given that the rating cannot be changed:

"If you would like further information in regard to 
this question, please feel free to post a request 
for clarification BEFORE rating this answer."

If you can suggest a more effective means of communicating
this to first-time question-askers, I will be grateful.

If you would like, I can have my answer removed by
the editors, and perhaps another researcher will
trust you to engage in the clarification process
before finally rating the answer.

And, no, I didn't run across other services in my search,
but that doesn't necessarily mean that there's a service
I didn't locate, thinking I had found what you wanted.

Close to what I want.  Seems like in practice would be too expensive
and difficult to interface.