October 03, 2006
Talk, but don't ring
Walking across the river this afternoon in central London. Thinking of home, missing the wife and kids. Have been on the road too much in the last month or two, and too much travel in prospect too.
So I want to call Dr Mrs G to pass on my heart’s desires etc. Problem is, the younger daughter tends to sleep at various slightly random times. Too often I’ve called just as the little madam was falling asleep on mama’s shoulder, and ruined the whole afternoon for my wife who then has a grumpy, sleepy baby who will whine all afternoon.
So what I want to be able to do is make the phone flash gently, or solicit an outbound call. No ringing!
You can’t do this on the PSTN. Sure, you could have handsets that have custom rings per caller based on the caller ID. But I want control per call over the ring at the other end, and it doesn’t support that feature.
It’s really hard to see the route from “here” to “there” in enabling these niche markets to be addressed. Telcos don’t do niche, telco standards bodies don’t understand the needs of households with young children. On the other hand, the Internet players don’t seem to be any better. I don’t have many hopes of a Skype device replacing my DECT phone and offering the reliability and features I need. As an application, Skype is great. As a technical and business platform that enables others to attack the niches, there’s a long way to go. Voice 2.0 — where the system adapts to the user, and not the other way round — is going to be a long journey.
Posted by Martin Geddes at 01:04 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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One can place a "PhoneGnome-" device and use DTMF based interaction to invoke per call control logic. Also PG- can control the DECT phones. I don't think one needs to depend on he telcos at all and the solution truly appropriate for niche applications. I gather that this approach is somehow not satisfactory. Can you share your reasonings.
Posted by: at October 3, 2006 06:45 PMCould Push To Talk deliver this? I've never used it, but I guess (hope) it's asynchronous - sort of like leaving a voicemail for someone, but without the formality of dialling their number and listening to their message, then expecting them to dial up and listen to it.
Posted by: at October 4, 2006 06:20 PMAswath -- easy, there aren't any more power sockets left in the strip to run such a device :)
Also, if the device answers, I can't use the network voicemail any more. So you have to go 100% PhoneGnome, which may not be everyone's cup of tea, particularly if they don't have broadband.
The user experience also sucks however you cut it.
Posted by: at October 4, 2006 11:00 PMNow, I'm going to sound like a Sidekick salesman after my comment on the last post too, but having a phone that has properly integrated AIM (my wife and I both have Sidekicks) give you a parallel communication channel. You can set the Sidekick to flash lights, vibrate or play sound for different events.
By having AIM presence info there, you can send an IM saying 'is the baby down?' which won't ring, and then call if it's OK. Again, bringing the internet-like experience to the phone is a win, as you have said with Skype phones before.
Does you're phone service provide some sort of service like an additional number with its own ring? Bellsouth called it ringmaster. basically everyone in the family could have their own number. But you could also change the rings. some were short. But it could've been an option.
Posted by: at October 7, 2006 05:14 PMSounds like you need something like this:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aura/docdir/sensay_iswc.pdf
Posted by: at October 9, 2006 05:35 PM