celltell.tv - voiceNote for Backpack
CellTell.tv recently created a nice Telephony 2.0 application that shows exactly what I have been talking about with regards to where we need to be going in the telephony world.
Celltell.tv is a phone interface to the popular backpack web service from 37 signals. In case you have not heard of backback it is a very nice web based personal organization program. It manages todo lists, calendars, notes and just about anything else using a very simple web interface and has some great hooks into e-mail and a open developer API for extending it.
What CellTell has done is added way to create voice notes for your pages simply by placing a phone call to a VoiceXML application. When you call in and leave a message the recording is automatically uploaded to the backpack service allowing you to listen to the content when you are back at the computer. They support accessing it via toll free numbers, local numbers both in the US and the UK and skype.
This is just another of the ten’s of thousands of applications that have been created on Voxeo’s Evolution developer program. Anyone want to guess as to if we would have seen this service if people had to write low level C code modules instead of simple XML to make this work? Think of what the world would be like if you had to write an apache module for every web application! mod_rjauburncom anyone? ;-)
2 Responses to “celltell.tv - voiceNote for Backpack”
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April 4th, 2007 at 3:54 am
While I appreciate the celltell.tv concept and the concept of “Telephony 2.0″ as a whole there is one serious drawback to it that doesn’t really exist in the “Web 2.0″ world, COST. A Web 2.0 application can be easily deployed at a relatively cheap cost point. But the cost for phone based applications is high (Skype excluded). CellTell will need to develop a viable business model much quicker than a traditional Web 2.0 application (which in my view should all have viable business models now) or there is just no way that it can survive.
With many companies now having some decent API’s I do see the quick adoption of phone based interfaces as being a lucrative option, but the money has to come in early (and often).
April 4th, 2007 at 6:02 am
Btoc:
Cost is indeed a concern but that is getting lower over time. Solutions like Asterisk or Voxeo’s own Prophecy platform have taken the cost for an entry level premise solution down to a very reasonable level. Pricing for entry level hosting options have also gone down over time as the technology has progressed. Voxeo also offers a free hosted developer can be great for people looking at building their proof of concept services during the demo/development stage.