Walkie Talkie Skype?
Just yesterday Phill Wolff and I were having coffee (no WiFi and thus no Skype interruptions) and discussing how we could access walkie / talkie / Skype. Well it seems there are some hints here. Skype to GPRS enabled phones may not be that difficult. Hmmm....
Russell Beattie NotebookThis morning I saw that Jeremy Allaire had pointed out this new piece of software for our Nokia 3650s called Buzz2Talk which allows your phone to Push To Talk over an internet connection. In other words, VoIP from your mobile phone. Obviously I wanted to try it to see if it worked...
Something else to experiment with sometime.
Comments
Come on, I tried Buzz2talk and FreeChat, but the user experience is not quite good.
Actually this kind of walkie-talkie is "Talk(Recording) - Wait (Sending...) - Long long wait (Peer listening, talking, recording, sending back...) - Listen". I dought it's really useful in real life.
However I believe Skype could be a nice WalkieTalkie, it can establish a 'conversation' based on the presence of peer: If peer is online it don't ring just get connected and let people talk!
I have implement this feature in my next version IP phone software (Not released yet) and wifi IM AirCQ( www.AirCQ.com).
GPRS have a poor connection at least at nowdays. It can't let a voip software have good voice quality.
Wifi and CDMA 1x can bring a good enough wireless network for a instant walkie-talkie application.
Posted by: Robert | September 30, 2003 08:53 PM
Come on, I tried Buzz2talk and FreeChat, but the user experience is not quite good.
Actually this kind of walkie-talkie is "Talk(Recording) - Wait (Sending...) - Long long wait (Peer listening, talking, recording, sending back...) - Listen". I dought it's really useful in real life.
However I believe Skype could be a nice WalkieTalkie, it can establish a 'conversation' based on the presence of peer: If peer is online it don't ring just get connected and let people talk!
I have implement this feature in my next version IP phone software (Not released yet) and wifi IM AirCQ( www.AirCQ.com).
GPRS have a poor connection at least at nowdays. It can't let a voip software have good voice quality.
Wifi and CDMA 1x can bring a good enough wireless network for a instant walkie-talkie application.
Posted by: Robert | September 30, 2003 08:54 PM
The "walkie/talkie" metaphor is interesting. I know we chatted briefly about Skype being sorta like the onlinbe cyberspace version of intercoms - remember when they were in houses...that never really became an ubiquitous feature of peoples' lives, did it ?
What will it take for people to change their habits, to start thinking of interconnected computers as the replacement for the phone ?
That seems to be happening via the cellphone, as it merges with "computers" via the process of surfing the web - I wonder...if the phone metaphor is too deeply embedded in our collective psyche to let services like Skype supplant it ?
What will it take - is it lower price, or just critical mass, or a generational change in habits?
Thanks, BYW, for your leadership on this issue. I'm trying to free up enogh time to upgrade to XP, so that I can install Skype, so that I can play with you and others via this new medium.
Posted by: Jon | October 1, 2003 07:30 PM