
Talko - frankus
http://www.talko.com
======
EdSharkey
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](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.

~~~
noblethrasher
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.”

~~~
tantalor
It's not. Collaborative editing is.

People were using file syncing for asynchronous collaborative editing. File
syncing is not such a big deal now that we have synchronous collaborative
editors.

~~~
marcusf
Dropbox?

~~~
threatofrain
I'd say Google Drive, because the web app is so complete and nice that for
simple purposes, you wouldn't mind not installing the desktop client,
especially since you edit the files on the web anyway. So off-site storage +
collaborative editing = Google Drive. Dropbox, on the other hand, is mostly a
file syncing service; they may have some photo features on their web app, but
that's it outside of file syncing.

~~~
marcusf
Can't disagree with GDrive being awesome. However, I was responding to the
parent's suggestion that the parent's parent's quote was negated by e.g.
GDrive.

With less double negatives: File syncing has actually turned out to be a
pretty big thing, it just took (and this might be a bad list, but off the top
of my head) 1. mobile adoption, 2. higher avg bandwidth and 3. someone getting
it right. GDrive/Evernote/… does not negate that there is a demand for
Dropbox.

------
artbikes
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:

[http://talko.cc/](http://talko.cc/)

~~~
g_h
I was curious about the timeline of chat applications and googled it. EMISARI
pre-dated Talkomatic by a couple years:
[http://www.livinginternet.com/r/ri_emisari.htm](http://www.livinginternet.com/r/ri_emisari.htm)

------
georgemcbay
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.

~~~
hawkice
Killer feature request: a dual-streaming mode where I can talk and hear a
friend talk at the same time.

The future is gonna be AWESOME.

~~~
jsmeaton
Whoa whoa whoa. FULL duplex?!

~~~
hawkice
That's what I'm imagining. I know the engineers figured out a way to get it to
work walky-talky style where you can either speak or listen (but not both)
two-way -- let's call that partial duplex -- but I think the new wave of
innovating social mobile apps could really utilize the flat network design
paradigm in this new way, creating a whole new way to communicate with friends
that also opens doors for enterprise usage. I think this could really make the
world a better place.

~~~
davedx
They should totally build it in Clojure and Erlang!

~~~
hawkice
The idea you'd know we're building it, and how? Absurd! Let's follow the
example of the founder in question -- STEALTH it.

Come on, that's how to have SUPER ADVANCED technology.

------
fossuser
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?

~~~
tantalor
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.

~~~
fossuser
I'd argue that nuance is harder to determine through voice on a phone when you
can't read body language and have a harder time hearing them. It's pretty easy
through text when you know the person or use an emoticon. Videochat is
definitely better than text for that reason though still don't have a log or
ability to search/copy.

By digital I meant communicating with some sort of digital device and not face
to face or through a letter.

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hrktb
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.

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frankus
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.

------
WalterBright
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.

------
natch
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?

~~~
tantalor
> We're working on our Android and web apps.

iMessage doesn't have that.

------
turingbook
Ray Ozzie's launch blog is also great: [https://medium.com/talko-team-talk-
share-do/welcome-to-talko...](https://medium.com/talko-team-talk-share-
do/welcome-to-talko-9e6ed73d7002)?

------
neolefty
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.

Plus convenient and easy?

Is that right?

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taspeotis
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.

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buro9
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.

------
roskilli
I love it "Available for iPhone. More platforms coming."

I really think he hit the nail on the head with his memo when leaving MSFT...

------
onion2k
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.

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lvturner
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

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stefanve
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

------
Harshit15
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.

------
programmer_dude
>The software visionary who created Lotus Notes

Stopped reading after this.

~~~
Renaud
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.

~~~
socrates2014
Didn't the Web overtake Lotus Notes for many purposes? No server to pay for,
open to anyone, etc...

