Voice memos on the web Feb10 '08

I am really impressed with the plethora of voice memo services appearing all over the web.

The web has always been about text and images. Throwing audio into the mix is a refreshing, alternative way to publish or absorb content. And with millions of cell phone owners, it makes perfect sense to build your application with audio in mind.

Gone is the voice recorder

I, for one, have ditched my old voice memo recorder in favor of services such as Utterz or Pinger. My voice memos are no longer confined to a single device, which can be lost or stolen rather easily. Instead, I simply make a phone call, record my voice memo, and hang up. The voice memo is then saved as an audio MP3 file on the web, which I can listen to or download at any time.

Storing voice memos online have many benefits:

• Safe from destruction.
• Secure from anyone wanting to listen to my voice memos.
• Not limited to space constraints.
• Does not require an extra device to be carried around.

Social voice memo networks

It's no surprise that web startups like Utterz have turned voice memos into a social network, with the ability to share your voice memos with the world. (Quite often a voice memo is not so much a private message, but a sudden thought or idea. Sharing it with others is a fun way to create interaction with like-minded people from anywhere in the world.)

The Utterz system stores and maintains your voice memos on a server somewhere, but interactivity does not even require being near a desktop or web browser. Using the natural capability to make a phone call, your cell phone acts as your gateway into the voice memo system. Think of it as listening to standard voicemail, except your voice messages are from people all over the world, sharing common interests and opinions.

Sometimes it's private

Although it's fun to share voice memos with a global audience, sometimes you want to keep your voice memos private. Either it's a deep thought about something personal, or perhaps just a to-do item that you need to record somewhere, without having to jot it down on a napkin.

Utterz allows for private voice memos as well. After you leave a message, you simply hit the number 5, and the message stays internal to your ears only.

Some like the idea of "emailing themselves," which is a phrase passed around so much, it's becoming regular terminology.

This concept is ridiculously counter-intuitive, yet it goes to show that unless you provide a way to achieve simple tasks, people will come up with their own ways. I have yet to see a service that solves the "email myself" redundancy. Sure, there are services that cover bits and pieces of this. Remember The Milk, for example, is built to be a task organizer, but you're limited to textual input. What if I wanted to use a voice memo, or a photo, as a source of input for a task? No can do.

Regardless, since no service has solved this age old issue, we'll resort to using the same tactics for audio, by using Pinger to send ourselves a voice memo. When prompted, "who would you like to message?", simply say your own name. Since Pinger is a peer-to-peer service, no audio is publicly accessible on the web.

Drop.io is also a nice way to save private voice memos into your unique "drop" web page (password protected, of course).

Drawbacks to voice memos

As much as I am loving the "boom" of voice memo services on the web, I can't help but consider the drawbacks.

The first thing that comes to me is the lack of search. Until computers are smart enough to decipher words from a human's natural speaking pace, voice memos on the web will only be accessible for human consumption. Search engines that can crawl millions of documents per second for a text match, can determine nothing from an audio recording.

Audio also can't be seen. It's limited to one sensory input, and that is the ears. Text, on the other hand, can be seen and absorbed through the eyes, but can also be converted to audio and absorbed through the ears (for example, when someone reads aloud a story).

Regardless, these drawbacks hardly acknowledge the presence that can be felt through audio. Just because computers can't understand it (well), that doesn't mean we shouldn't use it.

Categories: Audio Recording , Phone , Pinger , Services , Utterz , Voice

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