Michael Voong HCI Researcher @ Birmingham University

Unobtrusive Voice Mail

Pinger is a service for leaving voice mail messages without being obtrusive. It’s like “SMS for voice”. The idea is that you just say the name of the person you want to leave a message for, and record your message. The other person gets a text message with a phone number that they call, and they can listen to your message straight away.

So far, this is similar to normal voice mail except for the fact that you don’t have to select your contact using the buttons on your mobile phone - you use your voice - and that you don’t trigger an S Club 7 ringtone on your friend’s phone. The real advantages come when you want to conveniently message many people at one time. We can’t beat the ubiquity of mobile phones and voice for getting the message across a long distant, and this makes it that much easier.

I’m quite impressed how they’ve engineered such a simple solution that can be used on any mobile phone. If only they bring it to the UK so I can try it out myself…

Why I blogged this:

I’m interested, and have been reading a lot about, the use of mobile technologies to help people keep in constant communication - to be hyperaware of each other - and this is one example that uses phones for what they’ve been traditionally used for.

I think Orange have offered this facility for years, though I’m not 100% sure whether (or how) it works across networks. Does it have a “reply to group” functionality? That would be cool. Basically most of the advantages of push-to-talk but without having to upgrade your handset or install software.