[Originally written Mon, Mar 8 2010]
I know- all of us phone users out there who can both talk and listen at the same time are secretly jealous of PTT, Push-to-Talk, service, like Nextel uses here in the US.
I mean, who wouldn't be- the need to hold a button down when speaking, the voice clarity of childrens' toys, the loud annoying "chirp" right before or after you talk alerting everyone around you that you have the height of World War II-era technology built into your handset- this is the stuff communications dreams are made of! If your life to this point has been incomplete because you've been missing Push-to-Talk, do I have good news for you!
Ok, I'm (mostly) kidding- PTT does have a few advantages over normal telephony- the ability to "conference" with multiple callers simultaneously, and the ease of connecting to oft-dialed individuals or groups make it a good service if you have the need. Holding down a talk button to talk does bring me back to my "BJ and the Bear" toy walkie talkies of the 1970s. Ten-4, good buddies!
A company ostensibly called "Officeverse" (their phone number is an unlisted landline in California, and their company name has no Yellow or White pages listing) is offering a service called "Loudtalks" (http://loudtalks.com/) which adds PTT capability to Windows PCs and Windows phones. Based on the web site, it's still in beta, but the service does work (I just talked to my daughter- her on the laptop and I on my mobile) even on a phone as anemic as my HTC Wizard, suffering from the dual handicap of a slow (200MHz) processor, and a slow data (T-Mobile 2G EDGE) connection.
Although they apparently intend to sell this service to corporations, a free "Lite" version, allowing calls to groups of up to ten people exists, and any one can create a user name and get online- think of it as a voice IM service, or a nostalgic look back to the 70s!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment