Audio E-Mail - Why Not?

[DaveGee]

I've been wondering something as of late and would love to hear what others think... E-Mail when it was initially implemented oh so many years ago was purely text/ascii based. The times and technology pretty much demanded it.

Fast forward a hand full of decades and TONS of things have changed.

Computers - several orders of magnitude faster/better

Network Speed - pretty much the same advances (maybe not broadband everywhere but EVERYONE reading this is head and shoulders faster than 300 baud or even worse - dare I say many reading this never had the luxurious pleasure of using a Hayes 300 baud and initially thinking WOW now were moving - since after all before that you were poking along at 110 baud!!) - Dating myself a bit too much eh?

Okay getting back on topic....

Are "we" now or will "we" (and when I say 'we' I mean the net in a critical massl) ever be ready to move away from text based communications for email? I'm not too sure how I feel about the idea myself - in some ways I like it in others I don't.

Pros include:

- Speaking is ALWAYS faster than typing

- Hearing tone and inflection in the voice of the message sender usually helps in keeping things clear. Was the person joking when they wrote that and just forgot to include a :) symbol or were they serious? etc etc etc.

- Collecting your email via dialup or "email to voicemail forwarding" would be a snap - I admit it could be done now but I'm not ready to hear the 'Victoria' voice drone on email message after email message.

- The idea of having my computer just start playing my email when I login would be nice - letting me continue to work on whatever I'm REALLY interested in working on. After the end of first message was played you'd be able to speak commands such as:

"Reply" - speak your reply the speak a key phrase such as "end message send"
"Repay" - replay current message
"Next" - would save the message and play the next one
"Delete" - would delete the message (move to trash)
"Forward" - would allow you to forward to "Joe at work" where that was a 'voice tag' you assigned in your address book.

Oh and if the email had an attachment added to it - the system would tell you verbally - "xyz.pdf is attached to this messge" where you could then speak "open attachments" and presto it's opening on your screen.

etc etc etc You get the idea...

Debatable Issue:

- Deaf people would be put at a distinct disadvantage - While some might not care I would. E-Mail must have been a godsend for the deaf. On the other side of the coin blind people would benefit where now they are at a distinct disadvantage ... Hmm this could be a no-win no-loose issue... I dunno...

Cons include:

- Bigger email messages voice even with todays compression tends to take quite a but more space then pain old ASCII text. With todays computers and network connections does it really matter? Speaking for me, I don't think so but the issue below would bug me.

- Spamers could/would have a field day! Clearly this couldn't / wouldn't be adopted till much stronger anti-spam methods are put into effect both at the server AND legislative levels.

So... what say you AppleNova Forum members?

I'd love to hear what others think...

Dave

[Ebby]

My web site is crippled by the thousands of 4K spams I get every week. Audio would have it begging for mercy!

Awesome idea though. I am waiting for Skype to come out for Mac and maybe that will have a answering machine service or something. I can't wait. :p

[Merovingian]

This audio email might happen but I doubt it'll become mainstream.

Many of us listen to songs in iTunes with a bit-rate of around 128 Kb/s, and speech probably doesn't need this sort of quality, (16 Kb/s, say), meaning smaller file sizes, etc... So, all you need to do is make an audio file with Sound Studio and compress it, and send it to someone. m. :\

[DaveGee]

This audio email might happen but I doubt it'll become mainstream.

Many of us listen to songs in iTunes with a bit-rate of around 128 Kb/s, and speech probably doesn't need this sort of quality, (16 Kb/s, say), meaning smaller file sizes, etc... So, all you need to do is make an audio file with Sound Studio and compress it, and send it to someone. m. :\

I realize that it would never become mainstream unless/until it gets recognized as a standard (mime might already cover it) and the folks who write email clients and the OS fully embraces the concept and makes it simple. (similar to what I outlined above)

Simply put, the only way for audio email to take off would be for OS X to implement it and then have Microsoft copy the idea. :D

What I wanted to know is - even it it WAS built into the OS would people use it?

In the end I could in-vision it to eventually morph into something close to a zero interface email.

Imagine The following:

User sitting at the computer in Excel and speaks 'send email to "doug-work" (the cpu beeps indicating recording started) Doug the end of the quarter numbers look good, I'm sending you the numbers now. (pause in voice - beep) 'end audio' (pause) 'attach active document' (where it would attach the front most excel document you have on the screen) - maybe with a confirmation of the attachment you are about to send and then 'send message' and off it goes.

Or even simpler: User sitting at the computer in Excel with the end-of-quarter spread sheet open: 'send attachment to "doug-work" - (computer detects front most open and active window and grabs the file then beeps allowing you speak) 'Doug the end of the quarter numbers look good, I'm sending you the numbers now.' (user pauses - computer beeps) - 'send message now'.

User speaks - 'review this weeks email' (starts reading off to/from/date/subject with a slight pause where you could send an instruction 'read' or 'delete' or 'reply' or 'forward' etc

User speaks - 'play last five messages from "doug-work" '

User speaks - 'archive email from last (month/year/a specific person/etc) to CD' (cd tray pops out) audio messages are written with A **GOOD** computer voice (sorry for the dig again Victoria) speaking things such as to, from, subject and date and any/all attachments written to an Attachments Folder located on the CD.

I dunno, (as you can tell) I think the idea has some merit. Yea it might be a tad too 'Star Trek' like but hey, I like 'Star Trek'! :lol:

** Edit **

The real hang-up I see with people adopting such a thing is (so far) people haven't taken well to speaking to/at their computers. I was going to say inanimate objects but then I realized people speak into a phone without issue - but somehow (even for me) it does feel pretty funny speaking to my computer screen (I just tried it - and it felt foolish/unnatural) - Why? I donno... maybe because I didn't get any feedback (then again we all leave voice mail messages and get very little feedback doing that). Maybe some kind of visual feedback on the screen (ala quartz) would help people (like me) become more comfortable speaking to the computer? Maybe its simply due to the fact that most of us even before we were speaking in full sentences had 'play phones' that helped us get comfortable speaking into them (as well as seeing Adults use them all the time). I wonder - how did people feel using the phone when they were first invented? I'm willing to bet it felt kinda silly/unnatural at first.

Dave

[Ryan]

That would be torture for me!

I have never gotten speech recognition to work. I have a lisp and I always get the wrong command going.

Its even worse when I have to use one of those systems. When I bought my surround sound system, I had to call Sears(they had a sale). Instead of a "Touch 1, Touch 2" system, they have a voice recognition system to get you into the right department.

:mad:

By the time I got it to work I could have driven the half-hour to Sears.

Besides, why can't we just use the phone if we want audio?

[ast3r3x]

How bad is your lithp ;)

All joking aside, I think this is already doable, but not popular because it would be annoying for most things. As for those talk systems, AppleCare has that, and I really like it.

[dfiler]

Speaking and writing (typing) are two very different forms of communication. Voice is limited to stream of conciousness while writing can convey more deliberate and layed-out thoughts.

There will always be a need for both.

Knowing that most people save their email, I would be reluctant to commit ill-formed thoughts to a permanent record. Voicemail has the distinction of rarely being saved. Quick verbal quips are common because of this.

One thing is for sure, the archiving of communication greatly affects how people act and communicate. For an example of this, point a camcorder at someone and see what happens.

[iBrowse]

I believe the original Mail.app from NeXTSTEP had audio message capabilities in it.

[BarracksSi]

How easily can you edit an audio email and save it as a draft? Or refer to a small piece of information in one (an address, phone number, a T-shirt color, etc.)?

Email takes up enough space already, and I would not like to have it increased by a thousand percent (how much legible voice can you cram into 4 kilobytes, anyway?).

Besides, doesn't everybody already have some flavor of voicemail on their phones?

[autodata]

So I made a mock-up. Remember this would just be a prototype:

http://www.fireantav.com/an/phone.jpg

[Wrao]

Apparently you can do this with the newer Nextel phones. Where you can record a short message to .wav and it emails it to someone as an attachment. Obviously there are snags with free email accounts that have heavy attachment restrictions. But most non-free email accounts should be able to handle it just fine.