Two thoughts to highlight how far we still have to go with developing the voice and messaging offering of telcos.
First, I’m reading a bedtime story to my kids. Maybe I’d like to share that experience with other members of my circle of nearest and dearest. I could easily plonk my mobile in front of me and call them on speakerphone. But I don’t for fear of using up these valuable ‘minute’ things on a Sunday evening. Rationed scarcity, not abundance, driven by termination fees.
Second, instead of ‘Push to talk’, why not ‘Push to listen’. Let’s say that I’m happy to allow selected people to listen in (for up to 30 seconds, perhaps) on what’s going on in my house before calling. Then they can judge whether it’s in the middle of a behavioural meltdown among my offspring (“It’s MINE; no SHE TOOK IT OFF ME!”); or maybe it’s so quiet the younger one just must be asleep. Each such instance of listening in is notified to me, and furthermore the audio is recorded and sent to me so I know exactly what was heard. It’s presence, Jim, but not as we know it.
Posted by Martin Geddes at 08:02 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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Haha, 'push to listen' - interesting concept, it's like an audio presence, like a reverse twitter, or more like a reverse spinvox... maybe I should develop an android client that responds to sms: you could tweet or sms "ptl" to me and get audio back, or a transcript of the audio.
with push-to-talk, though, you first have to accept the 'talk'. But first accepting the 'listen' at push-to-listen kind of defies the concept....
Posted by: at November 19, 2008 11:51 PMYou would pre-approve access to selected people.
Posted by: at November 21, 2008 09:35 AMBrilliant, as always.
Thanks again for the joke too, Martin.
(The diggers looking and finding nothing so they discovered the past tribes had wireless, as oppossed to those diggers who found copper)
Dan
'Push to Listen' ... funny. I can just picture it. The moment we do this people start dropping in just to see what is going on... with absolutely no intention of calling you. I can see my mother doing it a few times a day. Are we feeding her grandchild? ... and then the call: "Why aren't you feeding him?" "Why can't he have one more jelly bean? Just one more."