Hewwo, and welcome to MovieFone!

I thought of Kramer this morning during a phone conversation I had with the voice recognition software at Fedex:

COMPUTER: Thank you for calling Fedex. How may I help you?

ME: Wha..? Um, hello?

COMPUTER: I can help you with any Fedex service. Just tell me what you want. How may I help you?

ME: Okay, I need to... uh, change the delivery address on a shipment...

COMPUTER: Sorry, I didn't understand that. How may I help you?

ME: Well, I... Look, this isn't....

COMPUTER: Let's try it another way. Schedule a pickup, track a package, international, get rates, order supplies, or to speak with a Fedex representative.

ME: Speak... With... A... Fedex... Rep-re-sen-ta-tive. Dammit.

It was like a conversation between Scotty in Star Trek IV ("Computer? ComPUter?" "Just use the keyboard, buddy") and Kramer as the MovieFone ("You've selected... "Agent Zero"? Why don't you just TELL me the name of the movie you want to see?").

hilarious john....didn't know fedex implemented voice activation yet.

too bad moviefone hasnt done that yet that i know of...i generally just goto hollywood.com since i don't have to wait for moviefone's ads to play

what's funny is with those V.A.'s everytime you say something it has to run a check in the system for what you said and see if it's close to anything.

did it respond when you said the representative line?

Yep. But I guess I don't see the point of having voice recognition and AI like that, since it's much faster and more familiar to simply select a numbered option from a voice menu. This voice stuff might've been handy 20 years ago when some people were freaked out by touchtone selection ("I'm FREAKIN' OUT!"), but today it seems like a step backwards to force people to guess at what they're supposed to say. Or waste a couple minutes trying different combinations of words. :-)

Which reminds me, anyone else ever accidentally get diverted into a Spanish submenu? Hit one wrong key, and then you're screwed because you don't know how to get back? "Aw hell, the only Spanish phrase I know is '�D�nde est�n mis pantalones?'..."