Monday, 28 August 2006

Pinger Mobile Voice Message Service Launched

Joe Sipher and Greg Woock, former executives at the personal digital assistant company Handspring have launched a new Internet voice-mail service. Pinger, the new voice messaging system for mobile phones from Pinger, Inc., is now up and running. Pinger lets you send voice messages to anyone instantly with no ringing.

Joe and Greg explain the inner workings; Pinger gives you a local number that you store in your regular old phone under 'speed dial'. When you want to use the service, you press 'p', or the '7' key on the phone, and it dials up a call using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology.

Once the call is made, Pinger gives you an audio prompt on your phone, at which point you say the name of the person you want to leave a message with. The service uses voice recognition technology from Mountain View-based Tellme to look up information on the person you're calling.

Next, Pinger asks you to speak your message into the phone. Pinger then sends the audio message to the person's e-mail account, where it can be listened to at their computer, and to the person's phone.

Because it uses Internet phone calling, you can also use the service from your computer, via the Web, which is free from Pinger. But Pinger will start charging once a person exceeds ten messages a month from their phone.

Once a person leaves a message with someone, the recipient gets a message asking whether they want to sign up with Pinger, too. A person can choose 'expert' mode and manage such details as whether they want a tone prompt instead of spoken directions each time a call is made, or whether messages are sent via text or e-mail, or both.