Archive for Voicemail
by Imran Ali
January 29, 2008 at 11:31 am · Filed under MMS, Mobile messaging 2.0, Photomessaging, Twitter, Voice, Voicemail
Pinger’s been around a little while now, but just rolled out across the UK in recent days. The service enables users to send up to a five-minute voicemail for the price of a local call to other mobile numbers in around twenty countries.
Such a voicemail, or ‘pinger’ is created using IVR voice prompts for usernames, number entry and the message itself; the notion of a completely voice operated mobile messaging service is an appealing one and coupled with the immediacy and asynchronism of a ‘Twitter for voice’, Pinger is theoretically very appealing. It’s probably best explained by the brief How It Works video on the Pinger site.
Between Seesmic, Twitter and now Pinger - video, text and voice now collectively provide the collective capability for micro-blogging and status messaging in most of the formats that people would wnat to use (photos are missing of course and I don’t believe Seesmic is really mobile yet).
I’m not convinced that this type of asynchronous voice messaging is something that text-mad Brits will embrace or indeed whether the ethnographics of Twitter can apply to other media.
I do however find the use of voice UIs as appealing and a strong precedent. Unfortunately, the user experience of Pinger is appalling - three attempts to recognise the five letters of my name failed followed by the IVR’s inability to correctly identify the DTMF tones of the number I was trying to send to!
As such I was unable to test a service which shows promise and highlights what may come to be some emerging trends in user behaviour.
by Imran Ali
December 26, 2007 at 12:53 pm · Filed under Communication, Email, Facebook, Gmail, Mobile messaging 2.0, Voicemail
Recently, here at Mobile Messaging 2.0, there’s been much discussion as to the definition of a ‘mobile message’.
There’s been some great commentary and debate with a focus on context, usage, the means of transmission, however there’s a parallel question which I believe to be of some importance - our messages exist in various places, how can we ensure that those messages have mobility?
More specifically, as messaging usage fragments across many services and devices, how do we make sure that those messages - the emotional and professional fragments of our lives - can move with us when we switch services or devices.
Voice messages, text messages, email, photomessages, Twitters, RSS posts and Facebook messages aren’t simply dry digital constructs, but the ‘emotional bits‘ that comprise a large part of our individual and collective memories, yet our tools for archiving and mobilising them are crudely shortsighted.
- The last voice message from a recently deceased relative is a precious memory, yet voicemail is treated ephemerally often disappearing after just a few days, with no way to archive.
- People often keep precious text messages from loved for long periods of time on their handsets, yet when they switch phones, there are no consistent mechanisms to port messages from one phone to another.
- I’ve been a Hotmail user since 1999 - after 8 years I’d love to switch to Gmail, but Microsoft offer me no mechanism to export eight years of deeply personal content to another service. Damn, I’d even pay them for such a feature.
Google’s recent adoption of IMAP for Gmail is one of the first clear moves by a major messaging provider to support such needs. In a recent interview, Gmail Product Manager, Keith Coleman, stated that:
Millions of people start using Gmail each month, and many of them tell us how hard it can be to switch email accounts, particularly when switching from a service that doesn’t offer POP, IMAP or forwarding. We didn’t want Gmail users to have to go through that if they ever wanted to move away.
Thought Google’s intentions are noble, IMAP doesn’t go far enough in providing the level of openness that is neccessary; Google’s own support documents illustrate that Gmail’s innovative message labelling doesn’t map directly onto the antiquated IMAP folder structure…also, it’s only good for email!
What’s needed is an open data format supported by all messaging applications such that mailboxes can be imported, exported or synced - preserving the message metadata and content, whether text, video or audio.
For service providers concerned about user retention, adding such capabilities may even add further value. I don’t mind keeping my voicemail with O2, as long as I can archive it to Gmail, or leaving photomessages on my mobile handset as long as my Flickr account can pull them into a longer term archive.
Perhaps a combination of embedded microformats, IMAP and mbox could provide the technological framework of a new Open Message Box standard for mobilising our messages.
by Imran Ali
December 10, 2007 at 6:24 pm · Filed under Communication, Messaging, Mobile messaging 2.0, Voice, Voicemail
Last week I was invited to test QTech’s newly launched UK edition of their reQall service, just ahead of today’s launch.
QTech’s Chief Product Officer and co-founder Sunil Vemuri, is a graduate of MIT’s prestigious Media Lab, specialising in the research and development of technologies to augment and enhance memory; what Sunil describes as ‘memory prosthesis’ and ‘personal memory aids’. Now at reQall, Sunil’s still very much focussed on ‘helping people remember better’.
As a veteran of France Telecom R&D’s Boston labs and Apple’s technology group, Sunil’s pedigree is impressive (I had the pleasure of working with him on a handful of digital music projects at Orange. However, with a board populated by user-centered design guru Don Norman, thinker’s thinker Edward de Bono and futurologist Peter Cochrane the company will really have to try hard to blow it!
Fortunately, they didn’t…the service itself is a ‘digital memory’ tool that enables users to…
- Call a free number, record a voice message - a reminder, note, to-do item, idea, thought or diary entry.
- Have the message transcribed into text and archived online.
- Notifications and digests of archived messages can be sent to the user by email, RSS or SMS.
What’s astonishing is the simplicity and accuracy of the user experience. At no time did I need to repeat myself, my transcribed message appeared shortly after my call (I wonder if this is a human process?) and without typos. I couldn’t quite figure out how to record different types of messages - whether I needed to voice-prompt reQall to differentiate between tasks and meetings or if the transcribe process figured it out.
I’ve long argued that voice interfaces are the most overlooked UI paradigm in mobility - it seems that QTech and the reQall guys not only understood this deeply, but were able to execute a simple, elegant user experience.
Now I wonder what magic reQall’s voice engine and Stikkit’s command-line for life could weave…
by Imran Ali
August 1, 2007 at 2:07 pm · Filed under Mobile Email, Mobile messaging 2.0, SMS, Voicemail
Standardised messaging formats such as MMS and SMS do a great job in delivering messages between devices from various manufacturers, carriers, applications and operating systems.
However, each time I upgrade my mobile handset - there are few consistent mechanisms for me to migrate the messages held within my phone. Sure, I can fire VCards and VCals between phones, but why no format for transferring my messages?
Texts, photomessages and voicemails are the bearers of the emotional bits that matter to us and yet we risk losing them each time we change handsets.
Perhaps we need a VInbox format, that can help us to move our messages - intact and whole . Technologies such as RSS and IMAP can provide some such capability, but I want to be able to move that precious last voicemail from a dying relative to my Gmail account for safekeeping; I want the intimate, playful texts from a girlfriend to stay with me whenever I upgrade phones.
Emotional bits matter, they’re important, valuable - and billable. The Web 2.0 industry gets this, but why don’t carriers and handset manufacturers? Answer - carriers want to make the network valuable and the handset a commodity…handset guys want the opposite.
Users will be left to construct their own solutions - and when they do, the incumbents will wonder why they didn’t think of it first…
by Imran Ali
July 30, 2007 at 2:35 pm · Filed under Devices, Mobile messaging 2.0, Platforms, SMS, User Interface, Voicemail
I’m loving the notion of peephole messaging, covered today in Gizmodo.
The peephole camera records video and audio of visitors to your home storing messages for later retrieval…now wouldn’t it be wonderful to have those messages forwarded, perhaps via MMS, to your mobile handset with the option to unlock the door for friendly visitors or trusted workers?
During my time at France Telecom, such ‘telemetry services’ - the ablility to invoke remote control of your home - were the R&D division’s ultimate fantasy - the kind of billable events telcos have wet dreams about! Unfortunately, it seems consumers simply didn’t have the need to remotely operate their curtains or be billed each time they did so…
However, I believe that M2M telemetry services have a role to play in the future of mobile messaging, particularly as users increasingly invoke web services such as Doppr and Twitter lingo through mobile command lines.
I wonder if we’ll see Twitter commands such as ‘d timer 45 pay parking meter’ evolve into general purpose nano-formatted command messages for any service or appliance. Perhaps one I’ll be able to message my door with the command ‘d frontdoor unlock in 45 minutes’…
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by Imran Ali
July 30, 2007 at 8:42 am · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, Usage + Usability, Voicemail
Phonevite’s recently launched invitation and announcement service (screencast here) is kinda like a ‘voice Twitter’, enabling users to record voice messages which are then forwarded to a number of recipients who can then RSVP the sender. Phonevite’s not too dissimilar to YackPack, but the ability to RSVP with basic ‘Yes/No’ voice prompts makes for a neat user experience.
This feature got me thinking about voice UIs in general; it’s fair to say that text and voice are the natural UIs for telephony and yet, despite the proliferation of mobile commands lines, we see little development of voice interfaces.
I’m interested in hearing readers thoughts on voice interfaces - are we missing important UI ideas, is voice technology too difficult to develop for or is the user experience simply not suitable for general purpose applications?
I wonder if call center frustrations could be addressed by handsets could download IVR scripts from call centers and enable users to interact locally with a voice application…?
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by Debi Jones
June 7, 2007 at 12:01 am · Filed under Events + Conferences, Global Mobile Messaging 2007, MEM07, Mobile messaging 2.0, Podcasts, Voicemail
Philip Marnick is the CTO at SpinVox. SpinVox is a voice-to-text service which provides options for delivery of your voicemail to text message or email, delivery of blog posts via voice to Moveable Type or Typepad blogs, delivery of personal memos to your email inbox and delivery of broadcast text messages to group you define captured as via voice.
Phillip speaks about his company, thoughts on the future of mobile messaging and his view on the defining characteristic of mobie messaging.
For more indepth coverage of SpinVox, see Oliver’s take on the company and it’s products. Don’t forget to share with Oliver your creative use for SpinVox to receive a free account.
Global Mobile Messaging 2007 - Podcast Interview - Philip Marnick [00:11:50m]:
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