
Three ideas about text messages - samber
http://antirez.com/news/105
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gtf21
For me, there are two major barriers to voice-to-text dictation:

1) when I'm writing a message (probably due to laziness), I don't always have
the full thing formed in my head. If I were dictating to a person, abortive
words and phrases would just be ignored, but when dictating to a machine I
have to manually go back to erase / correct mistakes. This can be a lot of
work for a long message.

2) I don't always feel comfortable speaking my messages in public; it feels a
little exposing. The nice thing about text-based communication is privacy.

~~~
chias
2 is the bigger issue for me, but from a courtesy angle: I was raised to view
talking on your cell phone around other people as impolite.

For those unmoved by propriety: picture the last time you were on a bus (or
other public space) and saw a bunch of people texting or otherwise using their
devices silently. Imagine this picture where everyone is shouting into their
phones in order to overcome the background noise of everyone else shouting
into their phones.

~~~
gtf21
Apropos of etiquette, I'd say it's context-dependent. Even walking in the
street I am slightly uncomfortable dictating my messages (maybe it's just a
privacy thing, or maybe it's because it makes my speech stilted enough that I
become self-conscious).

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khedoros
I'm a private person, and I frequently text things that would be difficult to
vocalize. I'm not likely to use speech recognition often, regardless of how
good it gets. I also go back and re-edit my messages before sending, fairly
often. That would be a pain with voice.

I often use Signal for messaging (same encryption that Whatsapp is now using).
It defeats the point of encryption if I'm just sending the audio off to Google
to transcribe, anyhow.

As for Whatsapp: I don't have any clear reason to install that instead of
Viber, Line, or a half-dozen other messaging apps. Instead, I use Signal for
some paranoid friends and SMS/MMS for everyone else. I've tried other apps,
but I don't really see the point of using them regularly.

~~~
ngrilly
> I often use Signal for messaging (same encryption that Whatsapp is now
> using). It defeats the point of encryption if I'm just sending the audio off
> to Google to transcribe, anyhow.

Really good point.

> As for Whatsapp: I don't have any clear reason to install that instead of
> Viber, Line, or a half-dozen other messaging apps. Instead, I use Signal for
> some paranoid friends and SMS/MMS for everyone else. I've tried other apps,
> but I don't really see the point of using them regularly.

I used to think the same about WhatsApp, and just use SMS/MMS and sometimes
Signal. But WhatsApp is a really big improvement over SMS/MMS (the group
messaging is very useful, you got typing notifications, encrypted calls, etc.)
and it's more ubiquitous than Signal.

~~~
uola
While I like Signal, it's essentially dead in the water as a mainstream
platform [0]. They were too late, the network effects are too great and they
didn't execute the user part very well. The technology can do a lot of good
for users of whatapp, but if they would have had a different perspective they
could have exceeded that by becoming a protocol for encrypted communication. I
think the would even have done a lot more good even just appealing to
companies and make it a solution for company communication. Not as romantic
though.

[0] I think Hemlis were right when they came to this conclusion. [1] While
it's useful if you need encrypted communication it's a mess for normal users.
Not only is there a lot of confusion what it does and how it works, there's a
lot of problems with notifications, messages and upgrades. And usage is
extremely uncommon outside tech circles.

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devnonymous
I personally am unconvinced that the barrier to voice messaging is the
interface. I think it is deeper than that. It is psychological. People are not
(yet) comfortable speaking into inanimate objects that do not respond back
instantly. I imagine that most people still feel silly speaking 'into' or 'at'
an object and waiting. People don't type with their voice for the same reason
they ask 'can you hear me' in a video conference or say 'hello' and wait for a
response at an automatic gates, door bells that need people at the other end
to respond or open, at drive in counters... etc.

That said, I completely agree with the WhatsApp bit. It is changing the way
people interact...and it is surprising that it hasn't been as popular in the
US.

~~~
ttam
> I think it is deeper than that. It is psychological. People are not (yet)
> comfortable speaking into inanimate objects that do not respond back
> instantly. I imagine that most people still feel silly speaking 'into' or
> 'at' an object and waiting.

by "People" I assume you mean "Westerners". Go to China and be amazed at the
amount of "People" using the voice messaging in WeChat

I wonder if it pre-dates WhatsApp's voice messaging and it might've been a
source of inspiration?

~~~
junto
It is also just habit. My aging father can't use the keyboard very well, but
he has dictated letters as a lawyer for will over 30 years. I used to hear him
sometimes as a child, and it was extremely fluid. It is just practice.

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kalasoo
Honestly, all the ideas explained in this article have been richly used in
China. The excitement and extensive usage of groups with nearly all of your
classmates, colleagues, families, random meetups and occasional affairs. You
probably will find it noisy when you have to manage tens of groups and
hundreds of users in each group. Then, the app is not only for tight
connections but weak connections in business and personal interests. This is
what happened with WeChat 2 years ago.

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anotheryou
Whatsapp is popular outside the US, because many of us pay 10cents per sms.

~~~
gtf21
Unsure - texts have been free in the UK for years and the majority of the
people I know use WhatsApp. I started using it instead of Apple's iMessage
because it's just more reliable and universal.

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tbrock
Apple murders this space.

iMessage does all of the stuff whatsapp does regarding groups, etc AND it has
a killer desktop client (the mac). Not only that but my non iMesssage text
messages are proxied to my mac as well. I can communicate via wifi, on a
plane, and talk to my sister in Belgium or my other sister in Argentina for
free. I can choose to use text, voice, or video, crystal clear, no hassle, no
money, no setup.

However, the killer feature is seamlessly having conversation on my phone,
then continuing on my phone, then continuing on my laptop... etc

~~~
dilap
yeah but it totally falls down if you have any friends w/o iphones!

are there any imessage clients for android? apple should just make an official
one, and make it good. no immediate benefit, but long term it's always
valuable to own the platform, and it's (amazingly) still ripe for the taking
in the u.s.

side note: it's amazing how shitty the native fb messenger and google hangout
apps are for iphone.

~~~
moftz
I don't see Apple ever opening up iMessage for any device other than their
own. iMessage has some neat features but nothing that is totally unique from
things like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, PushBullet, etc. Apple isn't making
any money directly off of iMessage, its a feature of _their_ platform. Opening
it up would just increase Apple's cost for running it and remove one of the
last things that makes an iPhone unique over the other major flagship phones.
It's their killer app in a world where all phones look alike and all run near
identical hardware specs.

~~~
dilap
sure, but this was the same argument about keeping ipods mac only, itunes,
safari, etc. there's some truth in it, but overlooks the much larger
advantages of having more people use your stuff, and, most importantly, of
owning a dominant platform.

owning the de-facto messaging platform would be a _hugely_ great position to
be in. right now messaging is mostly just that, messages, but there's a ton of
stuff that would be quite natural to integrate into and on top of it (look to
china as an example).

also, like you say, messaging apps themselves aren't super-rare; it's not like
oh-my-god secret sauce selling 1000x iphones.

but it does happen to be, arguably, the nicest messenger that's currently out
there. if they opened it up to android, they could become _the_ dominant
messaging platform (maybe).

huge wasted opportunity.

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Touche
My theory on WhatsApp is that the U.S. is that the iPhone is more popular here
than anywhere else and many of the early adopter types that are needed to help
a social network gain momentum use iPhones and have friends who mostly use
iPhones, so iMessage is what is naturally used.

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harigov
I don't understand why phones don't come with a bluetooth ear piece that
neatly fits in. How convenient would it be for something like Siri or Cortana
to notify you through voice and asking for instructions without ever lifting
your phone?

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limsup
iMessage is the standard messaging app in the US... or at least in my life.

~~~
moftz
If its not iMessage on someones screen, I see Facebook Messenger get a lot of
use in college. I don't see people using WhatsApp that much unless they are
texting international or have a dirt cheap/beater phone which makes me think
they don't pay for unlimited texting.

