Joel Spolsky's Architecture Astronaut rants do, perhaps unfairly in this case, immediately spring to my mind. Especially as Joel calls out Ray Ozzie by-name ... http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/05/01.html
Communications applications have to be extremely hard to pull off successfully, and God bless Ozzie for trying again.
I'm tempted to spout off on how one would do this thing "right", but I think that would make me the astronaut pot calling the architect kettle black.
But then again, this appears in the article you linked:
“Nobody cared then and nobody cares now, because synchronizing files is just not a killer application. I'm sorry. It seems like it should be. But it's not.”
I've no problem being called an astronaut, even if I'm not working on this problem. Sync sucks. With all these services like Dropbox, OneDrive and so on I still have to manage sync myself. I still don't trust the security (this is huge). I still can't resume a song or movie on my phone where I left off on my PC. My bookmarks don't sync between Firefox and IE.
If I had the resources this is something I'd try to fix. It's 2014 for crying out loud. Live Mesh got me excited at the time, but it just never went as far as it needed to.
Talkomatic was the world's first multi-user chat application. It was hosted on the PLATO system where Ray Ozzie once worked. There is a online version created by the original authors at:
Awesome, a smartphone app that allows me to communicate with people via voice. This might be exactly the killer app that mobile phones have been waiting for.
WhatsApp and Line are multi-billion dollar companies that replaced a simple thing phones could already do. Laughing and making sarcastic jokes at something that makes voice mail better and easier with a nice UI by a proven competent individual is probably the wrong response to make, especially when the UI and features look pretty gangbuster. A little bit of polish and better ease of use can make whole lot of people happy and also lots of money.
I had the same thought when I first saw Uber. "I have the number for XYZ taxi/limo service programmed into my phone. What's so special here?". To the vast majority of people, a better interface for doing something they already do is itself a killer app. Ask a teenager how often they email their friends. They'll laugh at you. Why? Because Snapchat and Instagram are better interfaces for communicating the things they want than traditional email.
Talko is arguably a better interface than most professionals use for many aspects of communications, so they have at least a reasonable chance of success.
Voice isn't the clearest or the fastest way to communicate.
I'd suggest the opposite - that's it's slow, unclear and probably the worst form of digital communication. There's no good log, it's not silent, you can't link to other information (or copy it) and it requires one person to stop talking before another can start.
This all aside, iOS 8 now let's you send voice messages in the default messages app - seems like this company has no market?
Voice is much more clear because it conveys nuance, such as sarcasm, which text cannot. I bet speaking is much faster than typing for most people, although reading is faster than listening. Voice (sound) is analog, not digital!
Converting voice to text solves a lot of these problems, but this app doesn't do that.
I came to say this, but also wanted to add that searching a voice communication is quite problematic compared to a written conversation. For evidence of how unclear it is, just look at the amount of times journalists use brackets to clean up quotations because people tend to speak in broken fragments.
I found this landing page extremely diluted from a information point of view.
From the first block:
Amazing things can happen when we talk with each other.
Thoughts are shared, ideas formed and problems solved. Talko is the best way to use your voice to get things done.
The first sentence doesn't bring me any information, it's just a bland statement. The second is an expansion of the first. The third says this Talko thing is a way to do things with your voice.
I felt like loo¥sing my time reading nonsense, when I could be learning about a new app and see demos of cool features.
I remember thinking it was pretty revolutionary when I got a demo back in early 2013 (had an interview there, but got a too-good-to-refuse offer elsewhere).
Granted, that was before FaceTime audio and the audio features of iMessage, but at the time I was basically ready to bury everything on my iPhone's dock and replace it with this as soon as it launched.
It has a ton of really slick touches that I think make it a really compelling app, well beyond the sum of it's core features.
I'm not too thrilled with the idea of a phone that automatically records and archives my voice conversations. When I call someone, I prefer to not have the stress of being careful of every word I say, lest someone try to make something of every inane comment I make, and I make a lot of them.
It seems like a cheap shot, but it has to be said: I'm having trouble seeing what this provides that iMessage doesn't provide already:
- Text, check.
- Pictures and videos, check.
- Group messaging, check.
- Voice messaging, check.
It sounds like they recreated the iMessage core features, other than the ability to fall back to SMS for text. I wonder about privacy protection. Maybe there are some other bells and whistles on top?
I haven't used Talko, but it sounds like a converged communication app, kind of Wave-ish, combining real-time (talk, chat) asynchronous (like email) and an archive organized by conversation.
My opinion of this application is as follows, and nothing on the page really convinces me that my perception of the application is wrong so I have very little impetus to install it and find out how right or wrong I am.
First impression is it's a nice, professional and polished application but it's an application that makes noise. Which means (on my iPhone):
* When I'm listening to music with my headphones on and some communication comes in from this app, it's going to be via voice and my music will fade out.
* When I open the app it's going to initialise the sound device even though it doesn't need to make sound just yet and my music will fade out just by opening the app. (Not guaranteed: a lot of apps do this, this one could too.)
* When this app starts playing instead of my music it's going to confuse my car's entertainment system and my music won't start again. (This problem is specific to my car.)
Basically this app is going to be annoying in ways that iMessage and email are not.
This looks like a reinvention of, and blurring of the lines between, voicemail and the phone call.
And actually, I like the idea.
Sometimes I find email and SMS a chore, but would love to leave my partner a 5 second "Hey I'm picking up milk, do you need anything else?" message that was auto-transcribed, and if I were on the tube (unavailable) she could leave a message for me "Yeah, some of those star-shaped veg, you know the ones next to the beans down the end of the second aisle".
She'd never have typed that into an SMS, and I probably would've just winged trying to think if there was anything she needed.
Metropolis transportation and living makes communication broken and fractured. Real-time mobile communication works only when both people are online... so a near real-time thing that overcomes the flaws of mobile coverage in cityscapes and their transport (cycling, underground metro systems, etc) and still retain a personal touch would be great.
The tech and UX side of this app are both quite interesting, but the real story will be in their user acquisition. Getting people, particularly people under 35, to use a new communications app is really hard because they have to persuade people in their networks to use it too, otherwise it offers no value. Skype did it by being really easy video conferencing, WhatsApp did it by being a free alternative to SMS, Snapchat did it by automatically deleting sexts. On the face of it, Talko offers nothing that people don't already have, so it'll be interesting to see how and where they push it.
Haven't yet played with this, but every time there is talk of a new messenger, no one ever mentions WeChat, I guess it's just not that popular out of mainland China, but it blows whatsapp out of the water. If even for the very simple fact that I don't have to hit "Send" I just hit "Enter/Done" on the keyboard, more phone-based messaging apps should do this imo
I don't have an iPhone so I can't install it but it could be a case of bad communication. At least the product page doesn't explain what problem it is trying to solve or what the difference is between this an hangout or whatsapp. So it just looks like just another app. And maybe it is
There may be many apps, solving different parts of this problem, but putting all these different parts under one roof can sometimes make a difference. That's what they are doing.
Lotus Notes was revolutionary and visionary when it came out, in 1989.
That it failed to really adapt to a changing technological landscape and failed to meet user expectations is more an indictment of the management at Lotus/IBM than an indictment of the initial creator.
[+] [-] EdSharkey|11 years ago|reply
Communications applications have to be extremely hard to pull off successfully, and God bless Ozzie for trying again.
I'm tempted to spout off on how one would do this thing "right", but I think that would make me the astronaut pot calling the architect kettle black.
[+] [-] noblethrasher|11 years ago|reply
“Nobody cared then and nobody cares now, because synchronizing files is just not a killer application. I'm sorry. It seems like it should be. But it's not.”
[+] [-] Spearchucker|11 years ago|reply
If I had the resources this is something I'd try to fix. It's 2014 for crying out loud. Live Mesh got me excited at the time, but it just never went as far as it needed to.
[+] [-] artbikes|11 years ago|reply
http://talko.cc/
[+] [-] g_h|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] georgemcbay|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hawkice|11 years ago|reply
The future is gonna be AWESOME.
[+] [-] swartkrans|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] downandout|11 years ago|reply
Talko is arguably a better interface than most professionals use for many aspects of communications, so they have at least a reasonable chance of success.
[+] [-] tdicola|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] woah|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gonehome|11 years ago|reply
I'd suggest the opposite - that's it's slow, unclear and probably the worst form of digital communication. There's no good log, it's not silent, you can't link to other information (or copy it) and it requires one person to stop talking before another can start.
This all aside, iOS 8 now let's you send voice messages in the default messages app - seems like this company has no market?
[+] [-] tantalor|11 years ago|reply
Converting voice to text solves a lot of these problems, but this app doesn't do that.
[+] [-] justinpaulson|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hrvbr|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hrktb|11 years ago|reply
From the first block:
Amazing things can happen when we talk with each other. Thoughts are shared, ideas formed and problems solved. Talko is the best way to use your voice to get things done.
The first sentence doesn't bring me any information, it's just a bland statement. The second is an expansion of the first. The third says this Talko thing is a way to do things with your voice.
I felt like loo¥sing my time reading nonsense, when I could be learning about a new app and see demos of cool features.
[+] [-] frankus|11 years ago|reply
Granted, that was before FaceTime audio and the audio features of iMessage, but at the time I was basically ready to bury everything on my iPhone's dock and replace it with this as soon as it launched.
It has a ton of really slick touches that I think make it a really compelling app, well beyond the sum of it's core features.
[+] [-] WalterBright|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] natch|11 years ago|reply
- Text, check.
- Pictures and videos, check.
- Group messaging, check.
- Voice messaging, check.
It sounds like they recreated the iMessage core features, other than the ability to fall back to SMS for text. I wonder about privacy protection. Maybe there are some other bells and whistles on top?
[+] [-] tantalor|11 years ago|reply
iMessage doesn't have that.
[+] [-] turingbook|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neolefty|11 years ago|reply
Plus convenient and easy?
Is that right?
[+] [-] taspeotis|11 years ago|reply
First impression is it's a nice, professional and polished application but it's an application that makes noise. Which means (on my iPhone):
* When I'm listening to music with my headphones on and some communication comes in from this app, it's going to be via voice and my music will fade out.
* When I open the app it's going to initialise the sound device even though it doesn't need to make sound just yet and my music will fade out just by opening the app. (Not guaranteed: a lot of apps do this, this one could too.)
* When this app starts playing instead of my music it's going to confuse my car's entertainment system and my music won't start again. (This problem is specific to my car.)
Basically this app is going to be annoying in ways that iMessage and email are not.
[+] [-] buro9|11 years ago|reply
And actually, I like the idea.
Sometimes I find email and SMS a chore, but would love to leave my partner a 5 second "Hey I'm picking up milk, do you need anything else?" message that was auto-transcribed, and if I were on the tube (unavailable) she could leave a message for me "Yeah, some of those star-shaped veg, you know the ones next to the beans down the end of the second aisle".
She'd never have typed that into an SMS, and I probably would've just winged trying to think if there was anything she needed.
Metropolis transportation and living makes communication broken and fractured. Real-time mobile communication works only when both people are online... so a near real-time thing that overcomes the flaws of mobile coverage in cityscapes and their transport (cycling, underground metro systems, etc) and still retain a personal touch would be great.
[+] [-] roskilli|11 years ago|reply
I really think he hit the nail on the head with his memo when leaving MSFT...
[+] [-] onion2k|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] lvturner|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stefanve|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Harshit15|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] programmer_dude|11 years ago|reply
Stopped reading after this.
[+] [-] Renaud|11 years ago|reply
That it failed to really adapt to a changing technological landscape and failed to meet user expectations is more an indictment of the management at Lotus/IBM than an indictment of the initial creator.