voice messaging

1. SMS is great. It works like email: you send and read it at your convenience. No need to be available at both ends of the line. Agree? Yeah. (Oops: for those who don't know, SMS stands for Short Messaging System, was invented first for GSM networks, dunno if the other competing standards have this feature or not: you can send a short (in the beginning a less-than-160-characters long, now concatenated and even MMS (multimedia messaging) message.)

2. Typing SMS however is a pain. Few mobile phones sport a nice handy keyboard, most only have a numeric pad with T9 (word guessing function). Why do people still bother? Because it's more convenient AND cheaper to send a message (compared with calling someone).

Why not combining the two? I mean, in my dream, the ideal phone is like this:

1. I have user configurable buttons for my most frequently called buddies (but a scrollable list will do, too). 2. I choose someone I want to buzz. 3. Say something, a couple of seconds will do, like "Hi buddy, sorry I am late again, stuck in this jam, will make it 7pm though", or "The strawberry pies u left in the fridge were awesome!", etc. 4. Send it to the buddy. S/he will receive it like an SMS: a buzz and a name. 5. Buddy presses MY button (or chooses me from the list, whatever), and hears what I said just now. 6. If s/he wants to reply, just speak, push a button (only ONE!!), and bingo: the reply bounces back to my box.

Isn't that the most convenient way to communicate?

Imagine how many road accidents and lives could be saved if this SIMPLE technology was in place first, instead of text messaging and voice calls! Both are a killer, they need your full attention, a no-go for driving e.g.

Voice messaging is simple, fast and non-obtrusive, requires only a 5-sec attention from the user and doesn't need any INTERaction, hence safer to use while walking, driving, in a meeting, etc.

What do you think?

Zsolt Barczy Hungarian living in Hong Kong