17 ms·

Brave New Phone Call

210 points by olivercameron 12y ago

lazylizard 12y ago
you know. i like asynchronous. and i like not having to explain why i didn't pick up the call/message back immediately. gosh. the wonder that is email..
- VLM 12y ago
  "If you’re under 30, the very idea of getting a cold-call from someone besides a close friend or family member seems intrusive, if not borderline odious." If you're not in my contact list, I do not answer the phone unless previous arrangements have been made. I might listen to the voicemail in a couple minutes, assuming you leave a message. Really old people (white/blue hair) will not leave messages which makes for an interesting protocol breakdown. I also don't do the ankle bracelet / house arrest thing, so people leave me a message on my phone and their brains explode that it took me 12 hours to notice and respond back. The very concept that I can own and pay for a smartphone but not look at it for half a day is literally unthinkable to them. Thats the new world.
  - pavel_lishin 12y ago
    I'm the opposite; I pick up unknown numbers because, hey, who knows what it'll be. (Having once called several people from jail, who all didn't pick up because they didn't recognize the number, enforces my tendency to do this.) Then again, I very rarely get unknown phone calls. I also rarely listen to voicemail. Anyone who leaves me a voicemail is nearly guaranteed to be someone who doesn't know me, and doesn't know that they can contact me in one of a dozen different ways that I'm more likely to notice before I even see the voicemail icon.
jpatokal 12y ago
That's an awful lot of hype that sounds like it was written by (or for) someone who has never used Skype, or Hangouts, or <insert messaging app of choice here>, all of which do store-and-forward messaging for individuals and groups, and let you call people with a touch of button. Hangouts also shows me if someone's on mobile or desktop, and whether they're "present" or not, and while it doesn't tell me exactly where they are, that's arguably more a feature than a bug. Same goes for apparently recording everything forever (cue image of legal departments around the world reaching for the NOPE button). What am I missing?
- wmf 12y ago
  Do any of them do store-and-forward voice messaging? I don't think Hangouts does.
  - jbrandon52 12y ago
    Do you mean like voice mail and iOS / whatsapp / Facebook voice messaging?
  - jpatokal 12y ago
    If you call somebody on the plain old telephone network and they're not around, you'll likely get voice mail. It wouldn't be hard for Talko to offer a better interface for this, but I have a hard time seeing killer app potential in this.
    - thefreeman 12y ago
      I absolutely abhor listening to voice mails and I know I am not the only one. That is a really bad example to use.
      - jpatokal 12y ago
        Why is it a bad example? I hate voice mail as well, but it is "store-and-forward voice messaging".
        e12e 12y ago
        Agreed. I hate voice mail -- and while the clunky old interface (dial-tone buttons or what-not) doesn't help -- the thing I don't like is the concept of store-and-forward voice messaging in general. Now that I think about it -- I did one type of store-and-forward voice+ messaging that I did enjoy somewhat. When a friend of mine went to Japan as an exchange student two? years ahead of me in ... 1995? We exchanged cassette tapes via snail-mail. Each usually was kind of a mix-tape of voice diary/message and some music or other stuff and was accompanied by a letter, maybe with news clippings, pictures etc (I think, it's been a while). It's really the only exchange of voice messages I can remember enjoying. Perhaps the clue is in the fact that the media has to be part of, or inform the message. Modern (phone) voicemail is usually not (in my experience) actually made as store and forward, but more of a fall-back because synchronous communication wasn't possible. Generally if someone wants to forward me an asynchronous message -- I much prefer text. Either sms or email (or a letter) -- to voicemail. That said, if someone mailed me a cd (or audiofile on a thumbdrive) I'd probably listen to it, and have a rather different experience. Not sure if someone emailed me an audio-file. I'm a bit of a die-hard plain-text email person. I'll stretch to image-attachments, though. But I still feel we got oversold on the idea of multimedia, and it remains a bit of a "fad". I do realize I might be an outlier, though :-) So maybe an app like this can help inform the media choice, and by virtue of that make store-and-forward voice messaging not-suck. As long as people use them as "voice logs" (like videologs) or something, and not as a means to transmit information. Which is just awful, IMNHO. And I'll probably still prefer my plain-text -- but thinking about it, I could see it being a useful form of communication after all. Apologies for rambling, but I think there might be traces of an interesting thought in there.
jitl 12y ago
Talko wants to be Google Wave for voice.
- gregcohn 12y ago
  I think it might succeed.
  - e12e 12y ago
    Looking forward to browsing the code, with an eye to self-host, after it crashes and burns and the ashes are cast upon the winds to be spread to all corners of the world under the APL...
- julianpye 12y ago
  That was my first thought exactly.
IvyMike 12y ago
> Using the sensors on a recipient’s phone, icons tell you whether that person is on the move (walking or driving), how the person is connected to the network, and even what time zone she’s in. Seems like an awful lot of privacy to give up.
- nmjohn 12y ago
  Yep, I can see it now. "I see you're at home so I know you're not out doing something, why aren't you responding to me???" - From a parent, significant other, boss, etc. Society in general doesn't really "accept" the notion of I'm busy doing my own thing, or I simply have no interest in talking to you right now. If I couldn't disable that, the app would be a non-starter for me.
  - Swizec 12y ago
    Funny you say that. It took me years to make my mum understand the concept of working from home. Whereas people my age seem to grasp instantly that if I'm home, I'm at my busiest.
    - pavel_lishin 12y ago
      I'd wager that in our various parents' generations (no idea how old you are) one of the biggest factors that determined whether you could chat with someone on the phone was whether someone was there to see you do it. If you're at work, your boss can catch you 'using company time to handle personal tasks'; at home, nobody is there to watch you like a hawk.
      - Swizec 12y ago
        > at home, nobody is there to watch you like a hawk. Which is really the main point of working from home. The freedom to work without the needless pressure and thus getting more done.
- GuiA 12y ago
  If it were to communicate with everyone sure, but for my significant other and 3-5 closest friends, not at all.
nostromo 12y ago
This seems anachronistic. Does anyone prefer voice messages to a text or email?
- themodelplumber 12y ago
  Depends on the case, but yeah, those extra emotional cues are very important to me now. My business consultant, a retired SV engineer & entrepreneur, has been incessantly reminding me, "make that one a phone call, not an email," for four years now. And he's absolutely right. Many situations jut work better when people can hear your voice and v/v. I feel I can communicate far more effectively over the phone in many cases than I can via email. Any time you could do with some extra empathy, e.g. during negotiations, introductions, heavy procrastination, tense moments--you pick up the phone and the extra boost is like getting free money compared to email.
  - Johnythree 12y ago
    I feel exactly the opposite. All my life I've felt clumsy with spoken words. I much prefer to write. Writing gives me time to think and to edit and to find the odd word that eludes me. I do realise that not everybody feels this way. Many of my friends hate writing and will basically ignore important emails as if they had never existed. I guess our brains are wired differently.
    - themodelplumber 12y ago
      Perhaps you're too hard on yourself with regard to spoken words. Keep in mind that these are technologies. The phone is a form of technology that you can use to communicate. It will have pros/cons compared to email. And using it effectively is a skill that can be learned. I often hire subcontractors and I cannot tell you how much I wish they would just call me when they fall behind, rather than emailing or texting about everything. It turns a bad situation into an even worse situation, where on at least one side of the conversation, there is an extra question mark or exclamation point behind every piece of punctuation. In contrast, some of the most effective people I know will call whenever there is any kind of a speed bump, because they recognize the potential advantages of a voice conversation. It's there for anybody to use, and it doesn't really care if we use it or not, but the phone has its advantages.
dontmindifido 12y ago
I think this could work well for people who are 'time rich' where talking is by far the better way to convey more information. For the rest of us drones though we have less choice about when / how long / how loud we can talk so texting or messaging is an attractive alternative.
tempestn 12y ago
WeChat does a subset of this and is extremely popular in China. Basically it's like text messages, except voice. This looks a lot more polished though, and obviously includes many more features. I can definitely see it being handy. It's often easier to speak a message than type it, and if you care about the presentation of your message, voice to text will often take longer than straight text. (Plus can't communicate everything voice does.) But I still rarely use WeChat since voice clips aren't my default mode of communication, and there's friction in using a completely separate app/service just for that. Including it in an all-encompassing messaging platform though, sounds great.
- jpatokal 12y ago
  Chinese does have the additional complication of using a writing system that's not geared very well for fast entry on a mobile phone though.
  - shard 12y ago
    Entry seems pretty fast to me. The pinyin system means that you can enter a few letters using the English alphabet and it will show you the most likely character. For common words, one or two letters per character is enough. I am not a native Chinese typist, but even by guessing at the proper spelling, the predictive entry system is good enough for me to type at a non-too-terrible speed.
    - jpatokal 12y ago
      There are basically two styles of Chinese input: easy and slow via pinyin, or hard but fast via radicals. Both have their drawbacks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_input_methods_for_computers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_input_methods_for_comp...
      - kevcampb 12y ago
        I find it very surprising you have said pinyin is slow. It has the downside that you need to look at what you're typing, but it's certainly not slow. With modern IMEs it's more akin to something like Swype in it's usage. I am appalled when in other regions in China where they do not use pinyin, watching people spending over a minute trying to tell their friend that they just got on the train.
gregcohn 12y ago
I can't helping thinking "right problem, wrong solution". I would take the bet that there's more ongoing demand for voice calls than many in the tech community realize -- but I don't think this demand is primarily among close-knit teams. Our team used Hipchat for a while, which was notable because it had a button for 1-click voice or video calls... a button no one ever clicked.
heynk 12y ago
I've been using Talko for a little over 6 months, and I'm related to a founder. Discretion advised It lives up to the hype. It's innovative in terms of an app that perfectly integrates synchronous and asynchronous communication at that same time. What's much more impressive is that it's one of the few pieces of software where I can confidently say It Just Works. The level of quality in every interaction and experience is carefully thought out and executed. It is modern enough that my girlfriend and I communicate with it exclusively. It's simple enough to facilitate discussion with >6 members of my extended family at the same time on a daily basis. That includes people ages 10 through >70. I do communicate more with my family now than ever before. The key is the group aspect and being asynchronous. It's not pushy like a phone call where you're forced to make conversation with a single person. With Talko, we're always talking about a particular subject, usually with lots of pictures. I can be super engaged if I want to, or I can sit back and just watch it happen. What's awesome is that we all are experiencing it, even the people who miss it. Talko's UX is helpful for guiding people to make the right decision about whether to talk about something in a 'new call', or to continue talking in an existing thread. This solves the issue of split conversations in the same thread, and if you want to talk about something for a long time (like your sports team every week), it's easy to bring up old conversations and continue them. Logged conversations aren't novel but are still great for nostalgia. I've been happy to see them improve a lot in just the time I've been beta testing. They completely revamped some critical user flows which made a huge difference in usability. I know there are more awesome things ahead. Give it a shot, and if you don't like it feel free to refute me! I am giving my honest opinion and haven't been asked to speak my mind from the Talko team in any way. Edit: Forgot to mention that the voice quality is ridiculously crisp both in playback and realtime. It's much more clear than a call.
- JacobAldridge 12y ago
  Thanks for that insight Hank. I'm curious - prior to using Talko, what was your relationship with voice calls? I connect with the note in this article about some people finding them intrusive compared to text / email. I'm intrigued by what Talko offers - wondering if you were similarly anti-voice beforehand, and that changed, or if you were ambivalent?
- 12y ago
scoofy 12y ago
I would never use this product. Why? Because the last thing on earth is for my mom to know i'm available for a phone call when really i just don't want to talk to her. Even if you prefer talking through a tiny speaker to texting, i simply cannot see this product taking off except with the technophobic. There is a reason i prefer texting, i'll return your message on my own schedule, i'll think more about my responses, and i'll make damn well sure that the person on the other end doesn't know i'm ignoring them when i am.
- xauronx 12y ago
  I agree with the comment about your parents knowing you're available to chat. However, referring to the audio recording and playback capability of an iPhone as "talking through a tiny speaker" seems in itself pretty technophobic. Furthermore, your instant rejection of this idea furthers that concept. Typing on a tiny smooth keyboard isn't exactly the definition of the ultimate fulfillment of our technological capability. Regarding replying on your own schedule, I'm fairly certain that's built in functionality, to reply to a thread as you wish via voice, text, image, etc. All that being said, I'm not sold on the idea and unsure whether or not I'd use it.
  - scoofy 12y ago
    Right, that's fair enough. I'm not the type of person to carry high quality headphones with me wherever i go (it's the listening to the speaker that i was referring to). I don't think most people do. I would argue that is why many people do not enjoy taking phone calls, that and the fact that it warms the phone against your head and kills battery. That aside, i don't see why any reasonable person with any kind of social life whatsoever would give up this much info for the sake of receiving slightly better timed calls.
  - pimlottc 12y ago
    > However, referring to the audio recording and playback capability of an iPhone as "talking through a tiny speaker" seems in itself pretty technophobic. There's something to that, though; for all the incredible advancements in mobile phone technology over the past decade, it's shocking how terrible the actual audio quality of the average mobile voice call really is. Even the most basic phone on a purely landline call sounds better. And I think it's something many people have forgotten. It wasn't all that long ago that long distance companies (remember those?) used to actually compete over who had the best voice quality. "You can hear a pin drop" - remember that? Maybe not; I imagine these days many young people have never even used a landline. I do think that poor audio quality is a decent part of why so many of us hate actually talking on the phone these days. Having to strain to hear, asking people to repeat themselves, accidentally talking over one another, all these things make for a much more awkward experience. And you just don't get that same feeling of connection or illusion of sharing the same space when you lose the subtle nuances of someone's voice.
iamleppert 12y ago
What problem is this solving again? Proprietary app, Proprietary system. I'll stick with the universal phone call, SMS, and e-mail as my way of communicating with people. Why are people always hell bent on changing the way we communicate? I tried the app and it does not offer enough to keep me using it.
guybrushT 12y ago
The post reads like PR. But what I found interesting is just how deeply synchronous and asynchronous communication are intertwined. This may be obvious to many of you, but for me I have always wondered why so many communication channels coexist (without any friction whatsoever) and what specific human purpose they all serve - e.g. when/why I send email, voice call & SMS? (not including the many proprietary ones). Why a pure messaging app (like Whatsapp) wants to do voice, and why a pure voice app (like Viber) started doing messaging. Perhaps, both are needed within the same app to make it all work - but then why don't they do email? Why not have an app that calls, messages and mails? :) Well smartphones are probably that app - they are a great communication tool just because they enable SMS, email and voice call together (all in the same seamless package). Would love to get some thoughts about where you think this app sits in the communication app spectrum - what need it fulfills (I can't see using it, because it does nothing for me). But generally speaking, I'd love to discuss communication apps! :)
mceoin 12y ago
"he sketched what his app would be like to users. Not long after, he filed for some patents." I really wish we would leave this culture of patenting behind.
- msh 12y ago
  at least the patent system should require a working implementation before something can be patented.
  - davidu 12y ago
    No, it shouldn't. People should be able to invent something without having to build it. The filing can come, and then they can spend a decade trying to build it without worrying about a big company spending 100x and building it in 1/10th of the time.
    - georgemcbay 12y ago
      If they didn't file a patent and didn't have an invention to show and BigCo still beat them to having a working patentable invention that just means the "invention" was an obvious idea whose time had come, which is really the biggest problem with modern patents, IMO. The self-centered egotistical notion that these ideas are something unique to one inventor as opposed to the reality where the vast majority (though certainly not all) of ideas are just obvious consequences of timing and everything that came before is really, really goofy and it is crazy that we award the first person who happens to legally file such ideas a nearly 2 decade monopoly on them. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Read the writings of Thomas Jefferson who very clearly had a much higher bar in mind for awards of patentability than the rubber-stamping we do today: http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-06-02-0322 http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-06-02-03... http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-07-02-0072 http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-07-02-00... Just a couple of examples, but pretty much whenever Jefferson writes about patentable ideas he always stresses how high the bar must be on both real novelty of the invention and high social value of the invention. If he had any notion of what patents would turn into today I'm absolutely positive he would have violently opposed the inclusion of them to the Constitution.
gioele 12y ago
The telephone system is based on protocols, not "apps". Where is the protocol description of Talko?
- addandsubtract 12y ago
  Apps are the protocols of the 21st century.
  - tatterdemalion 12y ago
    Apps are significantly worse than protocols.
    - addandsubtract 12y ago
      I never compared the two. And I'm not disagreeing either, but realistically, what's the last protocol that's gained mass developer/user usage? Facebook? Twitter? Skype? Whatsapp? Most of these services aren't even accessible without an app. The only recent protocol that comes to mind is bitcoin, but acceptance is still lacking.
      - gioele 12y ago
        > what's the last protocol that's gained mass developer/user usage? XMPP and SIP. And BTW, Whatsapp is non-federated XMPP. The Twitter protocol is HTTP, its API is documented and clones exist; like Whatsapp it is non-federated.
        knowaveragejoe 12y ago
        The distinction you describe is one I'm sure the mass market fully appreciates.
      - tatterdemalion 12y ago
        Yes, it's a problem with the industry. We have all of these proprietary, unfederated apps instead of open, federated protocols because the only business model anyone can come up with is to wall people into services they have full control over and then siphon up all the data they could get to hand over to the ad networks. We need to come up with a better way of financing the implementation of these services so that people can have better services.
sixQuarks 12y ago
Too much hype. I've never seen anything like this live up to the hype. All the great (popular) products that we use came about in an organic, almost underground manner. There were no "launches" or big announcements. People just started using them and sharing them in a natural way. Tell me one product that launched with this much hype and lived up to it.
- najra 12y ago
  iPhone? :P
  - smcl 12y ago
    I think GP meant "product" in a What'sApp\Facebook\Instagram sense of the word. These all (as far as I recall) sort of spread without big "this is gonna change everything" hype\announcements (up to a certain point, I've no idea what that point was - something between ten and a hundred million users?), they just started getting used by people because they were fun and engaging.
  - sounds 12y ago
    Good call. The iPhone might be the exception that proves the rule. The original iPod was OS X only, didn't have as much space as a nomad, etc. But people used it organically and pretty soon it took over. The iPhone would probably have been Samsung's instead of Apple's without the whole iPod/iTunes/Movies business.
- bentcorner 12y ago
  Wolfram Alpha had a fair amount of hype around it. I don't know if they've delivered on their promises but they seem to be continuously improving it.
  - sixQuarks 12y ago
    While impressive, WA never got as big as they thought they would, in my opinion.
- 12y ago
emsy 12y ago
> Of course, those stored conversations might be available to government subpoenas, national security letters and perhaps even NSA voodoo. But the bet is that customers will understand that having a record of conversations is an invaluable thing. Why not encrypt them? Convenience seems like an excuse. If your monetization is focused on business users, offer them security. I think it will be really hard to succeed as an post-Snowden US company without offering encryption.
ac29 12y ago
It sounds like the app opts people in to having calls recorded by default, which isnt legal in my state. It will be interesting to see if any legal challenges are brought -- I sure wouldn't use it.
nazgulnarsil 12y ago
Whoever cracks having the verbal equivalent of hypertext will change the world. This is a step in the right direction.
- e12e 12y ago
  Maybe in the sense that SGML foreshadowed the open web -- but not really. AFAIK SGML was mcuh more open that this. Granted, open isn't enough: wikis were a great idea, and while wikipedia might be one of this age's wonders of the world -- both stand on top of HTML and HTTP. This is about as exiting as an office suite. Any old office suite. Not that people don't use office suites, it's just that it's broken tech, that locks people in caves. Bigger caves, yes, but still caves. I wonder what had happened if they'd just made all of Lotus Notes Free software, rather than bundle it around in various zombie reincarnations?
InclinedPlane 12y ago
It sounds like a useful set of new features. I just wish every new batch of features wasn't heralded as the "amazing new way you will communicate in the future!" I also wish that people could look at these innovations and see ways they could be modified, improved, made to complement other ways of doing things, etc. Instead it seems like the pitch-culture of tech forces people to pretend as though one particular set of features shall be the entire future universe entire and perfect, as though you would never need more (or less), or to use it in a different way than designed.
tempodox 12y ago
TL;DR: Sales pitch. Yawn. At least, Lotus was something new in its time.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
crazychrome 12y ago
It's not going to work, no matter how much Ray Ozzie is widely admired (his remarks on Google Wave is really insightful). Here is the deal breaker: here is no easy way to edit sound so far on phone, nor computer. It means no editorship, implies less or no control. Users demand control over their own contents. It's the ultimate user psychology.
Zigurd 12y ago
Unified communications has a limited appeal, and I don't see anything in here that addresses the reasons for that limited appeal.
srg0 12y ago
iPhone-only social app = public beta, in terms of maturity. Unless it supports all three mobile platforms or has published a full-featured API (or protocol specs) from day 1, any proprietary communication app is a non-starter for me (Hangouts included). How one is supposed to promote it over WhatsApp, Telegram, LINE, and the likes? Hey, this new cool app does almost the same thing, but it's not available to the majority of your contacts! In the real world, popular apps may be walled gardens, but they are cross-platform. Whatsapp supports 7 mobile platforms, Skype supports 6 platforms (5 mobile), LINE supports 9 platforms (6 mobile), Viber supports 8 platforms (6 mobile), WeChat supports 12 platforms (9 mobile variants), Telegram supports 7 platforms (3 mobile), Kik supports 3 mobile platforms, even Google Hangouts supports 2 mobile platforms. How an iPhone-only app can be considered seriously?
- elsurudo 12y ago
  Did you read the article? They are already working on supporting other platforms. It IS a "public beta", like you said.
  - igravious 12y ago
    I, as an Android user, don't like feeling like a second-class citizen. Make it cross-platform from the get go I say.
- goldmar 12y ago
  I disagree. For startups it's usually more important to focus their resources than to support everything. http://blog.semilshah.com/2014/08/25/ios-first-android-much-much-later/ http://blog.semilshah.com/2014/08/25/ios-first-android-much-...
  - srg0 12y ago
    For startups it's more important to deliver what they promise. For a startup which boasts to replace telephony, it is about being available to everyone with a phone. iPhone first strategy may have worked for Instagram (an app for phones with a better camera). But times change, smartphones are getting cheaper, iOS is loosing market share, messengers is a crowded business.
drew_r 12y ago
Stopped reading at 'The software visionary who created Lotus Notes'
drew_r 12y ago
Stopped reading due to incapacitating fit of laughter @ 'The software visionary who created Lotus Notes'
- notlisted 12y ago
  And why would that be, if I might ask? Sure, it turned into a rather buggy/bulky/annoying proposition, but for a product that had a great run and many firsts from 1989-1999, it was truly remarkable and powerful, and Ozzie was definitely a visionary. Ignoring its influence and importance is a sign of youth perhaps (making some assumptions here).
TheRealDunkirk 12y ago
Sounds like the basic elements of his former Groove groupware, which worked really well, before it was bought by Microsoft, and disappeared down the memory hole. I always wondered if that was the cost of Ozzie's hire, or if they just thought it would cannibalize their existing server-based products. Fifteen years of missed opportunity.
harshaw 12y ago
"On a whiteboard, Ozzie has jotted down a long checklist of emotions easily conveyed by voice, but difficult to decipher in quickly thumbed-out bursts of text: concern, pain, urgency, empathy, clarity, seriousness, confidence, anxiety, trust, strength, accountability, anger, fear, stress, confusion, doubt…" Isn't this why we don't use voice? Voice is so rich and emotionally expensive. note: I haven't tried the product but I guess I am always a bit skeptical of voice products.
ttrbls 12y ago
iOS only? LAME START
ttrbls 12y ago
iOS only?? LAME START
thowar2 12y ago
The product looks cool, and even had me a bit excited. But then I saw "iPhone Only". I agree that startups should stick to one platform when they are starting out, except when your product relies on the network effect to be useful. Couple that with a big PR launch and its a failure from the start. The product is irrelevant to a large portion of the world and handicapped to anyone with friends on Android.
peterwwillis 12y ago
They've brought IRC to the phone. Back in the day we'd hang on party confs and chat online at the same time, and you'd idle for weeks at a time, never disconnecting, always logging the convo. So you could get someone's attention via voice, talk about the voice call on chat, send links and pictures, or private messages, etc, and go back to everything except the voice stuff. We don't need 'voice' or one particular thing, we need all of these things in a continuum of historical communication of all mediums. A very thin personalized Facebook feed of every communication, essentially. Just show everything everybody has said, done or shared in chronological order and make it easy to read. That's all anybody needs.
aidenn0 12y ago
The reason people stop using voice is that it doesn't work anymore. My experience is that if both parties are on a mobile phone, then there is about a 50% chance that there will be significant periods of time in which one party is completely unintelligible, or the call will drop.
j_s 12y ago
What is the product and who is the customer here? It is the users of the app that are for sale? If so, is there anything that would allow me to host my own version of this for my family?
Throwaway1224 12y ago
im so tired of that web layout with massive font that you have to scroll like a mofo to see any content. so tired.
steven 12y ago
I wrote the article. One comment about the iPhone only issue. Of course I probed this with Ray -- a communications app is really handicapped if you can't share it with all the people you want to contact. His answer was that Talko wasn't going to take a shortcut of writing one version and porting it to different systems--they wanted to get one totally right and then then work native on the others. That's why, he says, that Talko right now is totally free in beta form -- kind of a tryout period -- and that no monetization will occur until Android and Web versions work fully. He thinks that Android folks will appreciate a fast native version in a few months (my estimate) rather than a balky one now and forever.

210 points by olivercameron 12y ago

you know. i like asynchronous. and i like not having to explain why i didn't pick up the call/message back immediately. gosh. the wonder that is email..

VLM 12y ago
"If you’re under 30, the very idea of getting a cold-call from someone besides a close friend or family member seems intrusive, if not borderline odious." If you're not in my contact list, I do not answer the phone unless previous arrangements have been made. I might listen to the voicemail in a couple minutes, assuming you leave a message. Really old people (white/blue hair) will not leave messages which makes for an interesting protocol breakdown. I also don't do the ankle bracelet / house arrest thing, so people leave me a message on my phone and their brains explode that it took me 12 hours to notice and respond back. The very concept that I can own and pay for a smartphone but not look at it for half a day is literally unthinkable to them. Thats the new world.
- pavel_lishin 12y ago
  I'm the opposite; I pick up unknown numbers because, hey, who knows what it'll be. (Having once called several people from jail, who all didn't pick up because they didn't recognize the number, enforces my tendency to do this.) Then again, I very rarely get unknown phone calls. I also rarely listen to voicemail. Anyone who leaves me a voicemail is nearly guaranteed to be someone who doesn't know me, and doesn't know that they can contact me in one of a dozen different ways that I'm more likely to notice before I even see the voicemail icon.

jpatokal 12y ago

That's an awful lot of hype that sounds like it was written by (or for) someone who has never used Skype, or Hangouts, or <insert messaging app of choice here>, all of which do store-and-forward messaging for individuals and groups, and let you call people with a touch of button. Hangouts also shows me if someone's on mobile or desktop, and whether they're "present" or not, and while it doesn't tell me exactly where they are, that's arguably more a feature than a bug. Same goes for apparently recording everything forever (cue image of legal departments around the world reaching for the NOPE button). What am I missing?

wmf 12y ago
Do any of them do store-and-forward voice messaging? I don't think Hangouts does.
- jbrandon52 12y ago
  Do you mean like voice mail and iOS / whatsapp / Facebook voice messaging?
- jpatokal 12y ago
  If you call somebody on the plain old telephone network and they're not around, you'll likely get voice mail. It wouldn't be hard for Talko to offer a better interface for this, but I have a hard time seeing killer app potential in this.
  - thefreeman 12y ago
    I absolutely abhor listening to voice mails and I know I am not the only one. That is a really bad example to use.
    - jpatokal 12y ago
      Why is it a bad example? I hate voice mail as well, but it is "store-and-forward voice messaging".
      - e12e 12y ago
        Agreed. I hate voice mail -- and while the clunky old interface (dial-tone buttons or what-not) doesn't help -- the thing I don't like is the concept of store-and-forward voice messaging in general. Now that I think about it -- I did one type of store-and-forward voice+ messaging that I did enjoy somewhat. When a friend of mine went to Japan as an exchange student two? years ahead of me in ... 1995? We exchanged cassette tapes via snail-mail. Each usually was kind of a mix-tape of voice diary/message and some music or other stuff and was accompanied by a letter, maybe with news clippings, pictures etc (I think, it's been a while). It's really the only exchange of voice messages I can remember enjoying. Perhaps the clue is in the fact that the media has to be part of, or inform the message. Modern (phone) voicemail is usually not (in my experience) actually made as store and forward, but more of a fall-back because synchronous communication wasn't possible. Generally if someone wants to forward me an asynchronous message -- I much prefer text. Either sms or email (or a letter) -- to voicemail. That said, if someone mailed me a cd (or audiofile on a thumbdrive) I'd probably listen to it, and have a rather different experience. Not sure if someone emailed me an audio-file. I'm a bit of a die-hard plain-text email person. I'll stretch to image-attachments, though. But I still feel we got oversold on the idea of multimedia, and it remains a bit of a "fad". I do realize I might be an outlier, though :-) So maybe an app like this can help inform the media choice, and by virtue of that make store-and-forward voice messaging not-suck. As long as people use them as "voice logs" (like videologs) or something, and not as a means to transmit information. Which is just awful, IMNHO. And I'll probably still prefer my plain-text -- but thinking about it, I could see it being a useful form of communication after all. Apologies for rambling, but I think there might be traces of an interesting thought in there.

jitl 12y ago

Talko wants to be Google Wave for voice.

gregcohn 12y ago
I think it might succeed.
- e12e 12y ago
  Looking forward to browsing the code, with an eye to self-host, after it crashes and burns and the ashes are cast upon the winds to be spread to all corners of the world under the APL...
julianpye 12y ago
That was my first thought exactly.

IvyMike 12y ago

> Using the sensors on a recipient’s phone, icons tell you whether that person is on the move (walking or driving), how the person is connected to the network, and even what time zone she’s in. Seems like an awful lot of privacy to give up.

nmjohn 12y ago
Yep, I can see it now. "I see you're at home so I know you're not out doing something, why aren't you responding to me???" - From a parent, significant other, boss, etc. Society in general doesn't really "accept" the notion of I'm busy doing my own thing, or I simply have no interest in talking to you right now. If I couldn't disable that, the app would be a non-starter for me.
- Swizec 12y ago
  Funny you say that. It took me years to make my mum understand the concept of working from home. Whereas people my age seem to grasp instantly that if I'm home, I'm at my busiest.
  - pavel_lishin 12y ago
    I'd wager that in our various parents' generations (no idea how old you are) one of the biggest factors that determined whether you could chat with someone on the phone was whether someone was there to see you do it. If you're at work, your boss can catch you 'using company time to handle personal tasks'; at home, nobody is there to watch you like a hawk.
    - Swizec 12y ago
      > at home, nobody is there to watch you like a hawk. Which is really the main point of working from home. The freedom to work without the needless pressure and thus getting more done.
GuiA 12y ago
If it were to communicate with everyone sure, but for my significant other and 3-5 closest friends, not at all.

nostromo 12y ago

This seems anachronistic. Does anyone prefer voice messages to a text or email?

themodelplumber 12y ago
Depends on the case, but yeah, those extra emotional cues are very important to me now. My business consultant, a retired SV engineer & entrepreneur, has been incessantly reminding me, "make that one a phone call, not an email," for four years now. And he's absolutely right. Many situations jut work better when people can hear your voice and v/v. I feel I can communicate far more effectively over the phone in many cases than I can via email. Any time you could do with some extra empathy, e.g. during negotiations, introductions, heavy procrastination, tense moments--you pick up the phone and the extra boost is like getting free money compared to email.
- Johnythree 12y ago
  I feel exactly the opposite. All my life I've felt clumsy with spoken words. I much prefer to write. Writing gives me time to think and to edit and to find the odd word that eludes me. I do realise that not everybody feels this way. Many of my friends hate writing and will basically ignore important emails as if they had never existed. I guess our brains are wired differently.
  - themodelplumber 12y ago
    Perhaps you're too hard on yourself with regard to spoken words. Keep in mind that these are technologies. The phone is a form of technology that you can use to communicate. It will have pros/cons compared to email. And using it effectively is a skill that can be learned. I often hire subcontractors and I cannot tell you how much I wish they would just call me when they fall behind, rather than emailing or texting about everything. It turns a bad situation into an even worse situation, where on at least one side of the conversation, there is an extra question mark or exclamation point behind every piece of punctuation. In contrast, some of the most effective people I know will call whenever there is any kind of a speed bump, because they recognize the potential advantages of a voice conversation. It's there for anybody to use, and it doesn't really care if we use it or not, but the phone has its advantages.

dontmindifido 12y ago

I think this could work well for people who are 'time rich' where talking is by far the better way to convey more information. For the rest of us drones though we have less choice about when / how long / how loud we can talk so texting or messaging is an attractive alternative.

tempestn 12y ago

WeChat does a subset of this and is extremely popular in China. Basically it's like text messages, except voice. This looks a lot more polished though, and obviously includes many more features. I can definitely see it being handy. It's often easier to speak a message than type it, and if you care about the presentation of your message, voice to text will often take longer than straight text. (Plus can't communicate everything voice does.) But I still rarely use WeChat since voice clips aren't my default mode of communication, and there's friction in using a completely separate app/service just for that. Including it in an all-encompassing messaging platform though, sounds great.

jpatokal 12y ago
Chinese does have the additional complication of using a writing system that's not geared very well for fast entry on a mobile phone though.
- shard 12y ago
  Entry seems pretty fast to me. The pinyin system means that you can enter a few letters using the English alphabet and it will show you the most likely character. For common words, one or two letters per character is enough. I am not a native Chinese typist, but even by guessing at the proper spelling, the predictive entry system is good enough for me to type at a non-too-terrible speed.
  - jpatokal 12y ago
    There are basically two styles of Chinese input: easy and slow via pinyin, or hard but fast via radicals. Both have their drawbacks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_input_methods_for_computers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_input_methods_for_comp...
    - kevcampb 12y ago
      I find it very surprising you have said pinyin is slow. It has the downside that you need to look at what you're typing, but it's certainly not slow. With modern IMEs it's more akin to something like Swype in it's usage. I am appalled when in other regions in China where they do not use pinyin, watching people spending over a minute trying to tell their friend that they just got on the train.

gregcohn 12y ago

I can't helping thinking "right problem, wrong solution". I would take the bet that there's more ongoing demand for voice calls than many in the tech community realize -- but I don't think this demand is primarily among close-knit teams. Our team used Hipchat for a while, which was notable because it had a button for 1-click voice or video calls... a button no one ever clicked.

heynk 12y ago

I've been using Talko for a little over 6 months, and I'm related to a founder. Discretion advised It lives up to the hype. It's innovative in terms of an app that perfectly integrates synchronous and asynchronous communication at that same time. What's much more impressive is that it's one of the few pieces of software where I can confidently say It Just Works. The level of quality in every interaction and experience is carefully thought out and executed. It is modern enough that my girlfriend and I communicate with it exclusively. It's simple enough to facilitate discussion with >6 members of my extended family at the same time on a daily basis. That includes people ages 10 through >70. I do communicate more with my family now than ever before. The key is the group aspect and being asynchronous. It's not pushy like a phone call where you're forced to make conversation with a single person. With Talko, we're always talking about a particular subject, usually with lots of pictures. I can be super engaged if I want to, or I can sit back and just watch it happen. What's awesome is that we all are experiencing it, even the people who miss it. Talko's UX is helpful for guiding people to make the right decision about whether to talk about something in a 'new call', or to continue talking in an existing thread. This solves the issue of split conversations in the same thread, and if you want to talk about something for a long time (like your sports team every week), it's easy to bring up old conversations and continue them. Logged conversations aren't novel but are still great for nostalgia. I've been happy to see them improve a lot in just the time I've been beta testing. They completely revamped some critical user flows which made a huge difference in usability. I know there are more awesome things ahead. Give it a shot, and if you don't like it feel free to refute me! I am giving my honest opinion and haven't been asked to speak my mind from the Talko team in any way. Edit: Forgot to mention that the voice quality is ridiculously crisp both in playback and realtime. It's much more clear than a call.

JacobAldridge 12y ago
Thanks for that insight Hank. I'm curious - prior to using Talko, what was your relationship with voice calls? I connect with the note in this article about some people finding them intrusive compared to text / email. I'm intrigued by what Talko offers - wondering if you were similarly anti-voice beforehand, and that changed, or if you were ambivalent?
12y ago

scoofy 12y ago

I would never use this product. Why? Because the last thing on earth is for my mom to know i'm available for a phone call when really i just don't want to talk to her. Even if you prefer talking through a tiny speaker to texting, i simply cannot see this product taking off except with the technophobic. There is a reason i prefer texting, i'll return your message on my own schedule, i'll think more about my responses, and i'll make damn well sure that the person on the other end doesn't know i'm ignoring them when i am.

xauronx 12y ago
I agree with the comment about your parents knowing you're available to chat. However, referring to the audio recording and playback capability of an iPhone as "talking through a tiny speaker" seems in itself pretty technophobic. Furthermore, your instant rejection of this idea furthers that concept. Typing on a tiny smooth keyboard isn't exactly the definition of the ultimate fulfillment of our technological capability. Regarding replying on your own schedule, I'm fairly certain that's built in functionality, to reply to a thread as you wish via voice, text, image, etc. All that being said, I'm not sold on the idea and unsure whether or not I'd use it.
- scoofy 12y ago
  Right, that's fair enough. I'm not the type of person to carry high quality headphones with me wherever i go (it's the listening to the speaker that i was referring to). I don't think most people do. I would argue that is why many people do not enjoy taking phone calls, that and the fact that it warms the phone against your head and kills battery. That aside, i don't see why any reasonable person with any kind of social life whatsoever would give up this much info for the sake of receiving slightly better timed calls.
- pimlottc 12y ago
  > However, referring to the audio recording and playback capability of an iPhone as "talking through a tiny speaker" seems in itself pretty technophobic. There's something to that, though; for all the incredible advancements in mobile phone technology over the past decade, it's shocking how terrible the actual audio quality of the average mobile voice call really is. Even the most basic phone on a purely landline call sounds better. And I think it's something many people have forgotten. It wasn't all that long ago that long distance companies (remember those?) used to actually compete over who had the best voice quality. "You can hear a pin drop" - remember that? Maybe not; I imagine these days many young people have never even used a landline. I do think that poor audio quality is a decent part of why so many of us hate actually talking on the phone these days. Having to strain to hear, asking people to repeat themselves, accidentally talking over one another, all these things make for a much more awkward experience. And you just don't get that same feeling of connection or illusion of sharing the same space when you lose the subtle nuances of someone's voice.

iamleppert 12y ago

What problem is this solving again? Proprietary app, Proprietary system. I'll stick with the universal phone call, SMS, and e-mail as my way of communicating with people. Why are people always hell bent on changing the way we communicate? I tried the app and it does not offer enough to keep me using it.

guybrushT 12y ago

The post reads like PR. But what I found interesting is just how deeply synchronous and asynchronous communication are intertwined. This may be obvious to many of you, but for me I have always wondered why so many communication channels coexist (without any friction whatsoever) and what specific human purpose they all serve - e.g. when/why I send email, voice call & SMS? (not including the many proprietary ones). Why a pure messaging app (like Whatsapp) wants to do voice, and why a pure voice app (like Viber) started doing messaging. Perhaps, both are needed within the same app to make it all work - but then why don't they do email? Why not have an app that calls, messages and mails? :) Well smartphones are probably that app - they are a great communication tool just because they enable SMS, email and voice call together (all in the same seamless package). Would love to get some thoughts about where you think this app sits in the communication app spectrum - what need it fulfills (I can't see using it, because it does nothing for me). But generally speaking, I'd love to discuss communication apps! :)

mceoin 12y ago

"he sketched what his app would be like to users. Not long after, he filed for some patents." I really wish we would leave this culture of patenting behind.

msh 12y ago
at least the patent system should require a working implementation before something can be patented.
- davidu 12y ago
  No, it shouldn't. People should be able to invent something without having to build it. The filing can come, and then they can spend a decade trying to build it without worrying about a big company spending 100x and building it in 1/10th of the time.
  - georgemcbay 12y ago
    If they didn't file a patent and didn't have an invention to show and BigCo still beat them to having a working patentable invention that just means the "invention" was an obvious idea whose time had come, which is really the biggest problem with modern patents, IMO. The self-centered egotistical notion that these ideas are something unique to one inventor as opposed to the reality where the vast majority (though certainly not all) of ideas are just obvious consequences of timing and everything that came before is really, really goofy and it is crazy that we award the first person who happens to legally file such ideas a nearly 2 decade monopoly on them. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Read the writings of Thomas Jefferson who very clearly had a much higher bar in mind for awards of patentability than the rubber-stamping we do today: http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-06-02-0322 http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-06-02-03... http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-07-02-0072 http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-07-02-00... Just a couple of examples, but pretty much whenever Jefferson writes about patentable ideas he always stresses how high the bar must be on both real novelty of the invention and high social value of the invention. If he had any notion of what patents would turn into today I'm absolutely positive he would have violently opposed the inclusion of them to the Constitution.

gioele 12y ago

The telephone system is based on protocols, not "apps". Where is the protocol description of Talko?

addandsubtract 12y ago
Apps are the protocols of the 21st century.
- tatterdemalion 12y ago
  Apps are significantly worse than protocols.
  - addandsubtract 12y ago
    I never compared the two. And I'm not disagreeing either, but realistically, what's the last protocol that's gained mass developer/user usage? Facebook? Twitter? Skype? Whatsapp? Most of these services aren't even accessible without an app. The only recent protocol that comes to mind is bitcoin, but acceptance is still lacking.
    - gioele 12y ago
      > what's the last protocol that's gained mass developer/user usage? XMPP and SIP. And BTW, Whatsapp is non-federated XMPP. The Twitter protocol is HTTP, its API is documented and clones exist; like Whatsapp it is non-federated.
      - knowaveragejoe 12y ago
        The distinction you describe is one I'm sure the mass market fully appreciates.
    - tatterdemalion 12y ago
      Yes, it's a problem with the industry. We have all of these proprietary, unfederated apps instead of open, federated protocols because the only business model anyone can come up with is to wall people into services they have full control over and then siphon up all the data they could get to hand over to the ad networks. We need to come up with a better way of financing the implementation of these services so that people can have better services.

sixQuarks 12y ago

Too much hype. I've never seen anything like this live up to the hype. All the great (popular) products that we use came about in an organic, almost underground manner. There were no "launches" or big announcements. People just started using them and sharing them in a natural way. Tell me one product that launched with this much hype and lived up to it.

najra 12y ago
iPhone? :P
- smcl 12y ago
  I think GP meant "product" in a What'sApp\Facebook\Instagram sense of the word. These all (as far as I recall) sort of spread without big "this is gonna change everything" hype\announcements (up to a certain point, I've no idea what that point was - something between ten and a hundred million users?), they just started getting used by people because they were fun and engaging.
- sounds 12y ago
  Good call. The iPhone might be the exception that proves the rule. The original iPod was OS X only, didn't have as much space as a nomad, etc. But people used it organically and pretty soon it took over. The iPhone would probably have been Samsung's instead of Apple's without the whole iPod/iTunes/Movies business.
bentcorner 12y ago
Wolfram Alpha had a fair amount of hype around it. I don't know if they've delivered on their promises but they seem to be continuously improving it.
- sixQuarks 12y ago
  While impressive, WA never got as big as they thought they would, in my opinion.
12y ago

emsy 12y ago

> Of course, those stored conversations might be available to government subpoenas, national security letters and perhaps even NSA voodoo. But the bet is that customers will understand that having a record of conversations is an invaluable thing. Why not encrypt them? Convenience seems like an excuse. If your monetization is focused on business users, offer them security. I think it will be really hard to succeed as an post-Snowden US company without offering encryption.

ac29 12y ago

It sounds like the app opts people in to having calls recorded by default, which isnt legal in my state. It will be interesting to see if any legal challenges are brought -- I sure wouldn't use it.

nazgulnarsil 12y ago

Whoever cracks having the verbal equivalent of hypertext will change the world. This is a step in the right direction.

e12e 12y ago
Maybe in the sense that SGML foreshadowed the open web -- but not really. AFAIK SGML was mcuh more open that this. Granted, open isn't enough: wikis were a great idea, and while wikipedia might be one of this age's wonders of the world -- both stand on top of HTML and HTTP. This is about as exiting as an office suite. Any old office suite. Not that people don't use office suites, it's just that it's broken tech, that locks people in caves. Bigger caves, yes, but still caves. I wonder what had happened if they'd just made all of Lotus Notes Free software, rather than bundle it around in various zombie reincarnations?

InclinedPlane 12y ago

It sounds like a useful set of new features. I just wish every new batch of features wasn't heralded as the "amazing new way you will communicate in the future!" I also wish that people could look at these innovations and see ways they could be modified, improved, made to complement other ways of doing things, etc. Instead it seems like the pitch-culture of tech forces people to pretend as though one particular set of features shall be the entire future universe entire and perfect, as though you would never need more (or less), or to use it in a different way than designed.

tempodox 12y ago

TL;DR: Sales pitch. Yawn. At least, Lotus was something new in its time.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

crazychrome 12y ago

It's not going to work, no matter how much Ray Ozzie is widely admired (his remarks on Google Wave is really insightful). Here is the deal breaker: here is no easy way to edit sound so far on phone, nor computer. It means no editorship, implies less or no control. Users demand control over their own contents. It's the ultimate user psychology.

Zigurd 12y ago

Unified communications has a limited appeal, and I don't see anything in here that addresses the reasons for that limited appeal.

srg0 12y ago

iPhone-only social app = public beta, in terms of maturity. Unless it supports all three mobile platforms or has published a full-featured API (or protocol specs) from day 1, any proprietary communication app is a non-starter for me (Hangouts included). How one is supposed to promote it over WhatsApp, Telegram, LINE, and the likes? Hey, this new cool app does almost the same thing, but it's not available to the majority of your contacts! In the real world, popular apps may be walled gardens, but they are cross-platform. Whatsapp supports 7 mobile platforms, Skype supports 6 platforms (5 mobile), LINE supports 9 platforms (6 mobile), Viber supports 8 platforms (6 mobile), WeChat supports 12 platforms (9 mobile variants), Telegram supports 7 platforms (3 mobile), Kik supports 3 mobile platforms, even Google Hangouts supports 2 mobile platforms. How an iPhone-only app can be considered seriously?

elsurudo 12y ago
Did you read the article? They are already working on supporting other platforms. It IS a "public beta", like you said.
- igravious 12y ago
  I, as an Android user, don't like feeling like a second-class citizen. Make it cross-platform from the get go I say.
goldmar 12y ago
I disagree. For startups it's usually more important to focus their resources than to support everything. http://blog.semilshah.com/2014/08/25/ios-first-android-much-much-later/ http://blog.semilshah.com/2014/08/25/ios-first-android-much-...
- srg0 12y ago
  For startups it's more important to deliver what they promise. For a startup which boasts to replace telephony, it is about being available to everyone with a phone. iPhone first strategy may have worked for Instagram (an app for phones with a better camera). But times change, smartphones are getting cheaper, iOS is loosing market share, messengers is a crowded business.

drew_r 12y ago

Stopped reading at 'The software visionary who created Lotus Notes'

drew_r 12y ago

Stopped reading due to incapacitating fit of laughter @ 'The software visionary who created Lotus Notes'

notlisted 12y ago
And why would that be, if I might ask? Sure, it turned into a rather buggy/bulky/annoying proposition, but for a product that had a great run and many firsts from 1989-1999, it was truly remarkable and powerful, and Ozzie was definitely a visionary. Ignoring its influence and importance is a sign of youth perhaps (making some assumptions here).

TheRealDunkirk 12y ago

Sounds like the basic elements of his former Groove groupware, which worked really well, before it was bought by Microsoft, and disappeared down the memory hole. I always wondered if that was the cost of Ozzie's hire, or if they just thought it would cannibalize their existing server-based products. Fifteen years of missed opportunity.

harshaw 12y ago

"On a whiteboard, Ozzie has jotted down a long checklist of emotions easily conveyed by voice, but difficult to decipher in quickly thumbed-out bursts of text: concern, pain, urgency, empathy, clarity, seriousness, confidence, anxiety, trust, strength, accountability, anger, fear, stress, confusion, doubt…" Isn't this why we don't use voice? Voice is so rich and emotionally expensive. note: I haven't tried the product but I guess I am always a bit skeptical of voice products.

ttrbls 12y ago

iOS only? LAME START

ttrbls 12y ago

iOS only?? LAME START

thowar2 12y ago

The product looks cool, and even had me a bit excited. But then I saw "iPhone Only". I agree that startups should stick to one platform when they are starting out, except when your product relies on the network effect to be useful. Couple that with a big PR launch and its a failure from the start. The product is irrelevant to a large portion of the world and handicapped to anyone with friends on Android.

peterwwillis 12y ago

They've brought IRC to the phone. Back in the day we'd hang on party confs and chat online at the same time, and you'd idle for weeks at a time, never disconnecting, always logging the convo. So you could get someone's attention via voice, talk about the voice call on chat, send links and pictures, or private messages, etc, and go back to everything except the voice stuff. We don't need 'voice' or one particular thing, we need all of these things in a continuum of historical communication of all mediums. A very thin personalized Facebook feed of every communication, essentially. Just show everything everybody has said, done or shared in chronological order and make it easy to read. That's all anybody needs.

aidenn0 12y ago

The reason people stop using voice is that it doesn't work anymore. My experience is that if both parties are on a mobile phone, then there is about a 50% chance that there will be significant periods of time in which one party is completely unintelligible, or the call will drop.

j_s 12y ago

What is the product and who is the customer here? It is the users of the app that are for sale? If so, is there anything that would allow me to host my own version of this for my family?

Throwaway1224 12y ago

im so tired of that web layout with massive font that you have to scroll like a mofo to see any content. so tired.

steven 12y ago

I wrote the article. One comment about the iPhone only issue. Of course I probed this with Ray -- a communications app is really handicapped if you can't share it with all the people you want to contact. His answer was that Talko wasn't going to take a shortcut of writing one version and porting it to different systems--they wanted to get one totally right and then then work native on the others. That's why, he says, that Talko right now is totally free in beta form -- kind of a tryout period -- and that no monetization will occur until Android and Web versions work fully. He thinks that Android folks will appreciate a fast native version in a few months (my estimate) rather than a balky one now and forever.