Send sound SMSs

Wall Street Journal writes (reg. reqd):

A Singapore technology company, Bubble Motion, has teamed up with Swedish telecommunications giant *Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson *to market a messaging service that eliminates the need to tap out a text message and replaces it with voice. It is a potentially hot product for wireless-service providers in developing countries and could make inroads in places where people haven't quite gotten the hang of tapping out text messages with their thumbs on a cellphone keypad.

Just in case you didn't know about this... You can do this with MMS right now. Whip out your phone, go to the "record" application (on Nokia 3220 this is at Menu->Media->Voice Recorder), and record your message. When you're finished, choose "Send last recorded", choose a telephone number or an email address, and send it away! The recipient should receive it as if it were just a regular message. What Ericsson seems to have done is to lift it up in the UI at such a level that sending voice messages is as trivial as sending text messages, which is probably a very smart thing to do.

Using MMS a bit more complicated than sending an SMS, though; and in different phones it is likely to work in slightly different ways, and you need to have your MMS settings set up... But other than that, it's not very difficult - the difficult part for me is finding something to say ;-).

(Thanks to Andrew O. for the link. Standard disclaimer about me working for Nokia, and not representing company views, goes here.)



Comments

And MMS is a bit more expensive for those of us who pay our own phone bills ;)

But it's a very good technique. Why spend ages tapping some directions when you can just speak them?

--Hugo, 30-Sep-2005

Janne tule mukaan Forum Oxford keskusteluryhmaan..

Hi Janne and readers of Butt Ugly (cool name)..

We've just launched the Forum Oxford discussion pages at www.ForumOxford.com and everybody is warmly welcomed. The site is focusing on the current and future of mobile telecoms. As it is sponsored by Oxford University it is, and will always be free. We already have several published authors and lots of globally respected bloggers, journalists, analysts, experts on mobile, and in only 4 weeks we've had over 300 members join. The discussions are very active and on timely topics. Everybody is invited to join. If you find it interesting, tell your colleagues and friends.

Separately, Janne (and any Butt Ugly readers) as Nokia has a very active interest in the digital communities that now are embracing mobile phones, eg videogaming, blogging (Nokia Lifeblog) music, TV, etc etc etc, then you will probably also be interested in my blogsite www.communities-dominate.blogs.com which is obviously set around my latest book also dealing in those topics. More about communities and mobile phones, as well as my books, at that blogsite.

PS greetings to all at Nokia, I am of course also an ex-Nokia guy, left the company in 2001 as my first book was being published and I decided to become an independent 3G expert..

Tomi Ahonen :-)

--212.183.131.161, 02-Oct-2005

Incidentally, I just happen to be reading your book.

Thanks for the invitation, but Forum Oxford seems to need registration, and they're always a hassle. I'd rather participate in open discussion.

--JanneJalkanen, 02-Oct-2005

voice messaging is what trekmail is all about. http://www.trekmail.com/

it was brian mcconnell's idea and company (recently sold).

--charlie, 05-Oct-2005


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