Talko: The rise of smartphones seems to have somehow "undermined" the key role of mobile phones, as there are many who prefer to use their phones in many other ways than making calls, choosing to communicate by sending messages, emails, and so on.
This aims to change Rei Ozi, former chief technology officer of Microsoft, who together with two of his collaborators have spent the last two years creating the communication app Talko.
«As mentioned in a related article of MIT Technology Review, O Ozi has a theory about why many prefer to send messages rather than talk on the phone: he believes they don’t like hearing the phone’s ring. «They hate being interrupted, without knowing what the priority or the subject of the call» he claims.
According to him, the fact that other communication methods via smartphone, such as text messages, emails and photos can be «saved», searched and forwarded to others, makes the «humble» voice call less attractive, even though sometimes the voice is the best and most efficient method of rapid communication.
Talko focuses on group calls. Discussions can be tagged according to their topic, recorded and stored by default. Because they are retained, it is possible to annotate certain sections with notes so one can listen to important points - and these notes can also be seen by someone who did not participate live in the discussion. It is also possible to use hashtags in discussions which can be searched later by topic, and each team member can add audio messages to a discussion at a later time.
In the first phase Talko is available for iPhone, while in the coming months a version for Android is expected to follow. The app includes the ability to send text messages and photos, allowing the user to write to others while a call is in progress, or to share photos that they have just taken.
Even though the application clearly has a corporate/professional orientation, Ozi believes it could also be aimed at the broad consumer audience, for issues such as travel or expense planning, or simply maintaining a continuous mixed-media communication flow. In the long term, Talko could acquire additional capabilities, such as automatic transcription or tagging names mentioned in a conversation, with the aim of further interaction with them.
Source: secnews.gr
