RSS
 

DropVoiceMail Meets BubbleTalk

30 Sep 2005

Something my mobile service carrier has been offering for as long as they exist is the nice option to drop a spoken message in someone’s mailbox without actually having to talk to them. A nice way to show you care (enough to call, but not enough to talk to you, that is) – I never really used it, but I know pre-pay users that actually do. It saves them money if the card is almost empty. Amongst youngsters you could implement it like this: you leave a message on your mother’s mailbox, saying you tried to call her a zillion times to let her know you won’t be home for dinner and will be staying at a friend’s house (m/f), and your battery is running low. Your mother, totally unaware of the fact this service exist will get a text message, alerting her from your voicemail. So then you turn off your phone, and you can blame it on the carrier and get away with it. Don’t forget to tell her you love her. :)

Why this trip down memory-lane? It seems this very old feature is becoming hip again, remarketed, so to speak. Perhaps the technical wrapping is different this time, and it seems it’s not yet for America, but Singapore technology company Bubble Motion and Ericsson have joined hands and have started to market a ‘voice SMS’ messaging service that eliminates the need to type in a text message, and simply allows you to do it with your voice. The service is going to cost slightly more than a text message, but it should ‘only’ cost half the cost of a regular cellphone call.

“Users of the voice SMS service usually just want to send a message in the form of voice instead of text. The recipient’s phone doesn’t even ring for a voice SMS; the recipient is alerted with a beep and can retrieve the voice message by pressing the star key. The technology has been dubbed bubble talk and plans call for Ericsson to market the service in Asia and Europe at the outset. The service has already been classified as the next ‘killer app’ in mobile services in the aforementioned markets, but it remains to be seen if it will catch on with the masses.” [ TheWirelessWeblog] – [BubbleMotion]

Related News :

“Available now at personal.skype.com, the Personalise Skype service allows Skype users with the latest version of Skype for Windows 1.4 to download pre-recorded voice clips and sounds to use as a ringtone or to customise any of the default sound events in Skype . There is also a wide variety of pictures and avatars.” [Ringtonia]

A bulletproof cell phone? LG makes the case for it. Funny story, clever marketing.
Read it on [Textually]

ZYB.com – Easy texting and short life. [Martin on Movil] – ZYB is the service that was included in the Maxthon browser, which I’m still using (and still like). One of the good things about ZYB was that when you installed the ZYB desktop client you could just right click any text on the web and get it to your cell. It took just two clicks. Too bad it had to go. Martin thinks the company sort of sold their technology and then closed their books. Read his story.

A completely free web resource that generates morse code MIDI tracks playable on most mobile devices from whatever the user types in, is available here. [Ringtonia]

 
No Comments

Posted by Miel Van Opstal in Mobile & VoIP, Technology, Thoughts

 

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.