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CloudTalk: Voice instant messaging that works

The most audacious start-up pitches are those that propose changing people's communications habits. No matter how clever a company's technology or gorgeous an app's interface, getting users to adopt new modalities of communication is perhaps the hardest job in tech.

It's a social challenge as much as a technological one, which means that if you get it right, your technology spreads from person to person--virally, as the overused term calls it. Lately, social start-ups have been adopting strange, mutated viral models: Path is a social app that launched with a bizarrely limited way to join networks. Color opens you up to pop-up social networks based on physical proximity. Both clever but far outside most users' comfort zones.

A new app, CloudTalk (previously Pana.ma) is a person-to-person voice and video messaging app. On paper it looks like an unpleasant mashup of voice and SMS, but it's not. CloudTalk is a very smart system for sending asynchronous voice (or video or text) messages to your contacts, and I believe its interaction model is appropriate for the way people communication today--especially kids.

As CloudTalk founder David Hayden (formerly of Magellan and Critical Path) says, as we discuss the younger generation's growing reliance on text messaging, "It's not that kids don't like to talk. It that they don't like phone calls." CloudTalk is designed around recording voice messages. You can also send photos, videos, or text, but the interface favors voice. Conversations appear in a list window much like a iPhone's display of an SMS thread or an instant message chat.

I was skeptical that this app would add anything worthwhile to the standard quiver of smartphone communication tools we all have, but to my surprise it works well, and it's worth using. I've never seen an application that does such short work of sending voice messages or that makes it so straightforward to mix modalities in a message thread. If you want to reply to a voice message with text or video, it's easy. Or vice versa. The only thing you can't do yet is call or FaceTime a person for a real-time discussion from within an asynchronous thread.

It's easy to add people to your CloudTalk address book by scanning through your smartphone's address book to find people who are also CloudTalk users. You can also search the online directory for users you know, much as you can with Skype.… Read more

New PdaNet 3 masks tethering from carriers

The latest version of connection-tethering app PdaNet masks its tether from your phone service provider, just as major carriers move to block tethered connections that bypass their services and hide unapproved tethering apps from the Android marketplace when viewed over certain carriers' networks. Released on April 30, the major feature update in PdaNet 3.0 (download for Windows x86 | x64 | Mac | Android) is the tethering mask. Additionally, publisher June Fabrics Technologies noted unspecific performance and connection quality improvements.

In addition to supporting wired USB tethering, PdaNet 3.0 also includes support for Bluetooth DUN tethers, and offers an SMS agent … Read more

Zoove--it would take a real doofus to screw it up

Normally I don't cover companies run by friends or colleagues. How can you trust me to review a product when I have an emotional interest in its success?

So meeting with Joe Gillespie, CEO of Zoove and former executive vice president (my boss' boss) at my division here at CBS Interactive, put me in a bind. He's sitting on what looks like a very smart business that I believe is already well past the tipping point of success. I cannot not cover it, and I'll be damned if I'll give it to someone else. But if Zoove fails, I will have to re-evaluate any respect I ever had for Joe.

Zoove is a registry of mnemonic and short dialing codes for U.S. cellphones. All codes are preceded with ** ("star star") and they can be any length. Here's a demo: Call **SUZUKI from your mobile. You should get a recorded message from the phone call, as well as an immediate SMS with a hyperlink to a marketing video.

The marketer, in this case Suzuki Motorocycles, gets your phone number, phone type, and rough location, not to mention the opportunity to send you whatever data they want on your mobile--a text, a link to a coupon, or an actual voice call connection (as the StarLaw Network will be doing with **LAW).

The big news today is that Zoove has signed up all four of the major U.S. carriers: All the phones on AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon work with Zoove's single directory of star codes.

Nobody is likely to step on Zoove's action here. Getting baked into the mobile carrier infrastructures took years. Having them all route ** calls through Zoove is a major coup. Theoretically, another company could come along and offer up a competing short code system, like ##, except, sorry, Zoove owns the routes to those numbers, too.

The fact that the company now has these networks locked up--with no competitors aside from archaic and overloaded toll-free number directory and the clunky five-digit SMS shortcodes run by CSCA--means that advertisers can start blasting these codes out with abandon.

And they should. Star codes are easier to use than other types of real-world links. With QR codes, for example, you need an app and you need to point your phone at something--tough when you're driving past a billboard (QR codes have other advantages, though). Using an SMS shortcode is twice as complex as a star code; you have to send a code to a code. Zoove codes can also be any length.

Want one for your business? Pay Joe--a lot. Short and generic codes cost the most. Two-letter codes are $75,000 a year; three-letter codes $50,000, four-letter codes are $25,000. I wanted to get **RAFE but Joe did not offer to make a deal. Shorter codes can be less, down to $7,500 a year, but generic codes are expensive. (**FLOWERS cost 1800Flowers.com a substantial sum.)

Text messages licking stamps in Scandinavia

Scandinavian post offices are using mobile phones to lick the problem of buying stamps. Denmark and Sweden are introducing a system of paying the postman via text.

Danish service Post Danmark and Swedish postal service Posten AB are adopting the high-tech system to make it easier to post letters, packages, and cards.

The system will work by sending you a code to write on your letter. Danes simply stick the letter, card, or parcel--up to 4.4 pounds--in an envelope, as normal, then text-message the word "porto" to the number 1900. Then they receive a unique code to write where the stamp previously would have gone and pop their goods in a mailbox as usual.

Read more of "Text messages replacing stamps for Scandinavian posties" at Crave UK.… Read more

Robot babies

Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded:

The U.S. State Department plans to announce new policies on Internet freedom

HTC unveils its first tablet, along with five new phones

Facebook launches an SMS version of its site for non-smartphones

Skype launches the Skype Mobile Partner Program for low-bandwidth Skype use in markets without reliable 3G

The FAA may consider repealing the ban on cell phone use during air travel

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers considers awarding the rights for the .gay domain

Japanese researchers are working on robot babies

AT&T sweetens the iPhone pot with extra minutes

AT&T isn't just getting aggressive with ads to tout the iPhone on its network versus Verizon's, it's giving away minutes as well.

Many current AT&T iPhone users have received text messages from their carrier today thanking them for being loyal customers, and while the text doesn't say so, we're sure it's also a thanks for not switching during Verizon's underwhelming iPhone launch this week.

The text comes with instructions to reply with "yes" to receive 1,000 extra rollover minutes. AT&T tells us these will be applied to each iPhone on the account.

The texts are coming from the number 11113020, and when a user replies with the "yes," another text is received saying that the minutes will be applied in the coming weeks.

With our testing, we found that iPhone users can simply text "yes" to the SMS number and get the deal, though we can't say yet if it applies to all iPhone customers or just those with contracts expiring soon.

So, iPhone-using Crave readers, why not give it a try and tell us back here if it worked for you? Really, it couldn't hurt.… Read more

Dumb phones can be attacked too

Much of the discussion of security threats to mobile phones revolves around smartphones, but researchers have found that less advanced "feature phones," still used by the majority of people around the world, also are vulnerable to attack.

Feature phones have Web browsing, MP3 players, and other programs standard voice-only phones lack, but they have less computing power and feature integration than smartphones.

Because security research on feature phones has been eclipsed by research on popular smartphones like Android and iPhone, mobile researcher Collin Mulliner said he decided to turn his attention to the lower-end phones. After all, so … Read more

CES: VoxOx attempts communication unification, again

LAS VEGAS--VoxOx debuted several years ago as a high-powered multi-protocol chat alternative that incorporated some nifty VoIP features thanks to its parent company, a small telecom outfit called TelCentris.

Today at CES 2011, TelCentris announces a revamped VoxOx with an emphasis on simplicity and messaging unification.

The big improvement to the latest version of the program, available for Windows and Mac, is the unified messaging window. People will be able to interact via instant message, SMS, VoIP phone calls, and social networking all from the same communications stream. This includes voice mail transcriptions similar to Google Voice, although TelCentris … Read more

The 404 715: Where we really grind our gears (podcast)

Jill Schlesinger and Natali Morris join us on today's show as our Thanksgiving week without Justin Yu continues. Justin usually takes care of our daily blog post seen here but instead has opted to take off three days so he can read bedtime stories to his cat, Chairman Meow.

Today Jill and Natali help us make sense of the inherent dangers associated with allowing civilians to text, MMS, or even video stream to 911 rather than dialing in. Of course Wilson and I overlook the prime opportunities this would present hoodlums who will inevitably use the new technology for evil. While funny, we certainly wouldn't support pranking 911 with video of a fake incident. Not to worry though, Natali informs us that not only is there no funding for such a thing, it hasn't even been planned out at all, and it turns out it was just someone's idea that somehow made its way into mainstream news outlets.

Next up is Oprah Winfrey announcing that the iPad is her favorite thing ever. Though we're pretty sure Apple doesn't need the attention, it's hard for us to believe that Oprah even uses an iPad. We figure she'd just scream at it repeatedly and tell it that it's going on a 10-day trip to Europe over and over.

There are a tons of laughs on today's show, so be sure to tune in, plus some vital financial info that everyone shopping this holiday season needs to know! Jill tells us how much we should be spending on gifts this year, so make sure you've got a budget!

Episode 715 Subscribe in iTunes audio | Suscribe to iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more