Welcome to my old blog, which I no longer maintain.
For details of my current professional services and activities see www.martingeddes.com.
October 3, 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.
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