When I first read the blurb about this, I thought it was a great idea. I use the term “to ping” someone all the time, so I thought the name was great.
What I thought this service did was send a voicemail to someone without making their phone ring. Now that would be great. Instead, you enter their email address into your Pinger account, and from your cell phone (or your browser), you can send a voicemail, which they can then listen to by either logging into the website or by calling a special number from their cell phone.
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. Source: MercuryNews.com
If you use less than 10 messages a month the service is free. They say that if only 3% of users pay for the service, they will make money.
As I said, a service that directly called a voicemail (somehow) and left a message (somehow) without ringing the phone … now that would be cool. Not that this isn’t cool either, but not it’s what I was looking for.
Tags: Technology, Cellular, Voicemail
September 26, 2006 at 6:18 am
FYI. If you are a Pinger member, you get notified of your message not only via email but also via SMS on your cell phone.
In turn, this allows you to reply to voicemails just like email.
You effectively get to leave someone a message without ringing their phone AND you have a record of that message at the Pinger website.