
Brave New Phone Call - olivercameron
https://medium.com/@stevenlevy/brave-new-phone-call-f4064a4e720f
======
jpatokal
That's an awful lot of hype that sounds like it was written by (or for)
someone who has never used Skype, or Hangouts, or <insert messaging app of
choice here>, all of which do store-and-forward messaging for individuals and
groups, and let you call people with a touch of button. Hangouts also shows me
if someone's on mobile or desktop, and whether they're "present" or not, and
while it doesn't tell me _exactly_ where they are, that's arguably more a
feature than a bug. Same goes for apparently recording _everything_ forever
(cue image of legal departments around the world reaching for the NOPE
button).

What am I missing?

~~~
wmf
Do any of them do store-and-forward voice messaging? I don't think Hangouts
does.

~~~
jpatokal
If you call somebody on the plain old telephone network and they're not
around, you'll likely get voice mail. It wouldn't be hard for Talko to offer a
better interface for this, but I have a hard time seeing killer app potential
in this.

~~~
thefreeman
I absolutely abhor listening to voice mails and I know I am not the only one.
That is a really bad example to use.

~~~
jpatokal
Why is it a bad example? I hate voice mail as well, but it _is_ "store-and-
forward voice messaging".

~~~
e12e
Agreed. I hate voice mail -- and while the clunky old interface (dial-tone
buttons or what-not) doesn't _help_ \-- the thing I don't like is the concept
of store-and-forward voice messaging in general.

Now that I think about it -- I did _one_ type of store-and-forward voice+
messaging that I _did_ enjoy somewhat. When a friend of mine went to Japan as
an exchange student two? years ahead of me in ... 1995? We exchanged _cassette
tapes_ via snail-mail. Each usually was kind of a mix-tape of voice
diary/message and some music or other stuff and was accompanied by a letter,
maybe with news clippings, pictures etc (I think, it's been a while). It's
really the only exchange of voice messages I can remember enjoying.

Perhaps the clue is in the fact that the media has to be part of, or inform
the message. Modern (phone) voicemail is usually not (in my experience)
actually _made_ as store and forward, but more of a fall-back because
synchronous communication wasn't possible. Generally if someone wants to
forward me an asynchronous message -- I _much_ prefer text. Either sms or
email (or a letter) -- to voicemail. That said, if someone mailed me a cd (or
audiofile on a thumbdrive) I'd probably listen to it, and have a rather
different experience. Not sure if someone emailed me an audio-file. I'm a bit
of a die-hard plain-text email person. I'll stretch to image-attachments,
though. But I _still_ feel we got oversold on the idea of multimedia, and it
remains a bit of a "fad". I do realize I might be an outlier, though :-)

So maybe an app like this can help inform the media choice, and by virtue of
that make store-and-forward voice messaging not-suck. As long as people use
them as "voice logs" (like videologs) or something, and not as a means to
transmit _information_. Which is just awful, IMNHO.

And I'll probably still prefer my plain-text -- but thinking about it, I could
see it being a useful form of communication after all.

Apologies for rambling, but I think there might be traces of an interesting
thought in there.

------
heynk
I've been using Talko for a little over 6 months, and I'm related to a
founder. Discretion advised

It lives up to the hype. It's innovative in terms of an app that perfectly
integrates synchronous and asynchronous communication at that same time.
What's much more impressive is that it's one of the few pieces of software
where I can confidently say It Just Works. The level of quality in every
interaction and experience is carefully thought out and executed. It is modern
enough that my girlfriend and I communicate with it exclusively. It's simple
enough to facilitate discussion with >6 members of my extended family at the
same time on a daily basis. That includes people ages 10 through >70.

I do communicate more with my family now than ever before. The key is the
group aspect and being asynchronous. It's not pushy like a phone call where
you're forced to make conversation with a single person. With Talko, we're
always talking about a particular subject, usually with lots of pictures. I
can be super engaged if I want to, or I can sit back and just watch it happen.
What's awesome is that we all are experiencing it, even the people who miss
it.

Talko's UX is helpful for guiding people to make the right decision about
whether to talk about something in a 'new call', or to continue talking in an
existing thread. This solves the issue of split conversations in the same
thread, and if you want to talk about something for a long time (like your
sports team every week), it's easy to bring up old conversations and continue
them. Logged conversations aren't novel but are still great for nostalgia.

I've been happy to see them improve a lot in just the time I've been beta
testing. They completely revamped some critical user flows which made a huge
difference in usability. I know there are more awesome things ahead.

Give it a shot, and if you don't like it feel free to refute me! I am giving
my honest opinion and haven't been asked to speak my mind from the Talko team
in any way.

Edit: Forgot to mention that the voice quality is ridiculously crisp both in
playback and realtime. It's much more clear than a call.

~~~
dirtyaura
How do you hold your phone when talking with Talko? It seems that the photo
stream plays a big role in the experience, so I assume that you keep it in the
front of you instead of on your ear. Do you do this also when not inside or
stationary?

Is the audio quality good when on the move? I've played with a few WebRTC
solutions on a mobile and all of them call quality problems on mobile.

------
scoofy
I would never use this product.

Why?

Because the last thing on earth is for my mom to know i'm available for a
phone call when really i just don't want to talk to her.

Even if you prefer talking through a tiny speaker to texting, i simply cannot
see this product taking off except with the technophobic. There is a reason i
prefer texting, i'll return your message on my own schedule, i'll think more
about my responses, and i'll make damn well sure that the person on the other
end doesn't know i'm ignoring them when i am.

~~~
xauronx
I agree with the comment about your parents knowing you're available to chat.

However, referring to the audio recording and playback capability of an iPhone
as "talking through a tiny speaker" seems in itself pretty technophobic.
Furthermore, your instant rejection of this idea furthers that concept. Typing
on a tiny smooth keyboard isn't exactly the definition of the ultimate
fulfillment of our technological capability. Regarding replying on your own
schedule, I'm fairly certain that's built in functionality, to reply to a
thread as you wish via voice, text, image, etc.

All that being said, I'm not sold on the idea and unsure whether or not I'd
use it.

~~~
pimlottc
> However, referring to the audio recording and playback capability of an
> iPhone as "talking through a tiny speaker" seems in itself pretty
> technophobic.

There's something to that, though; for all the incredible advancements in
mobile phone technology over the past decade, it's shocking how terrible the
actual audio quality of the average mobile voice call really is. Even the most
basic phone on a purely landline call sounds better.

And I think it's something many people have forgotten. It wasn't all that long
ago that long distance companies (remember those?) used to actually compete
over who had the best voice quality. "You can hear a pin drop" \- remember
that? Maybe not; I imagine these days many young people have never even used a
landline.

I do think that poor audio quality is a decent part of why so many of us hate
actually talking on the phone these days. Having to strain to hear, asking
people to repeat themselves, accidentally talking over one another, all these
things make for a much more awkward experience. And you just don't get that
same feeling of connection or illusion of sharing the same space when you lose
the subtle nuances of someone's voice.

------
IvyMike
> Using the sensors on a recipient’s phone, icons tell you whether that person
> is on the move (walking or driving), how the person is connected to the
> network, and even what time zone she’s in.

Seems like an awful lot of privacy to give up.

~~~
nmjohn
Yep, I can see it now.

"I see you're at home so I know you're not out doing something, why aren't you
responding to me???" \- From a parent, significant other, boss, etc. Society
in general doesn't really "accept" the notion of I'm busy doing my own thing,
or I simply have no interest in talking to you right now.

If I couldn't disable that, the app would be a non-starter for me.

~~~
Swizec
Funny you say that. It took me _years_ to make my mum understand the concept
of working from home. Whereas people my age seem to grasp instantly that if
I'm home, I'm at my busiest.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I'd wager that in our various parents' generations (no idea how old you are)
one of the biggest factors that determined whether you could chat with someone
on the phone was whether _someone was there to see you do it_. If you're at
work, your boss can catch you 'using company time to handle personal tasks';
at home, nobody is there to watch you like a hawk.

~~~
Swizec
> at home, nobody is there to watch you like a hawk.

Which is really the main point of working from home. The freedom to work
without the needless pressure and thus getting more done.

------
sixQuarks
Too much hype. I've never seen anything like this live up to the hype. All the
great (popular) products that we use came about in an organic, almost
underground manner. There were no "launches" or big announcements. People just
started using them and sharing them in a natural way. Tell me one product that
launched with this much hype and lived up to it.

~~~
najra
iPhone? :P

~~~
smcl
I think GP meant "product" in a What'sApp\Facebook\Instagram sense of the
word. These all (as far as I recall) sort of spread without big "this is gonna
change everything" hype\announcements (up to a certain point, I've no idea
what that point was - something between ten and a hundred million users?),
they just started getting used by people because they were fun and engaging.

------
emsy
> Of course, those stored conversations might be available to government
> subpoenas, national security letters and perhaps even NSA voodoo. But the
> bet is that customers will understand that having a record of conversations
> is an invaluable thing.

Why not encrypt them? Convenience seems like an excuse. If your monetization
is focused on business users, offer them security. I think it will be really
hard to succeed as an post-Snowden US company without offering encryption.

------
mceoin
"he sketched what his app would be like to users. Not long after, he filed for
some patents."

I really wish we would leave this culture of patenting behind.

~~~
msh
at least the patent system should require a working implementation before
something can be patented.

~~~
davidu
No, it shouldn't. People should be able to invent something without having to
build it.

The filing can come, and then they can spend a decade trying to build it
without worrying about a big company spending 100x and building it in 1/10th
of the time.

~~~
georgemcbay
If they didn't file a patent and didn't have an invention to show and BigCo
still beat them to having a working patentable invention that just means the
"invention" was an obvious idea whose time had come, which is really the
biggest problem with modern patents, IMO.

The self-centered egotistical notion that these ideas are something unique to
one inventor as opposed to the reality where the vast majority (though
certainly not _all_ ) of ideas are just obvious consequences of timing and
everything that came before is really, really goofy and it is crazy that we
award the first person who happens to legally file such ideas a nearly 2
decade monopoly on them.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. Read the writings of Thomas Jefferson who
very clearly had a much higher bar in mind for awards of patentability than
the rubber-stamping we do today:

[http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-06-02-03...](http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-06-02-0322)

[http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-07-02-00...](http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-07-02-0072)

Just a couple of examples, but pretty much whenever Jefferson writes about
patentable ideas he always stresses how high the bar must be on both real
novelty of the invention _and_ high social value of the invention.

If he had any notion of what patents would turn into today I'm absolutely
positive he would have violently opposed the inclusion of them to the
Constitution.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Patent doesn't have to mean monopoly; it can just mean licensing rights.

~~~
georgemcbay
Exclusive licensing rights are by definition a monopoly.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Right but it doesn't mean that nobody can make products using your patent; it
means you benefit from it when they do. Which is not so much a societal
problem.

~~~
msh
Or as Kodak did, use your patent to prevent anyone from using the technology.
Which is a problem for society.

------
srg0
iPhone-only social app = public beta, in terms of maturity.

Unless it supports all three mobile platforms or has published a full-featured
API (or protocol specs) from day 1, any proprietary communication app is a
non-starter for me (Hangouts included).

How one is supposed to promote it over WhatsApp, Telegram, LINE, and the
likes? Hey, this new cool app does almost the same thing, but it's not
available to the majority of your contacts!

In the real world, popular apps may be walled gardens, but they are cross-
platform. Whatsapp supports 7 mobile platforms, Skype supports 6 platforms (5
mobile), LINE supports 9 platforms (6 mobile), Viber supports 8 platforms (6
mobile), WeChat supports 12 platforms (9 mobile variants), Telegram supports 7
platforms (3 mobile), Kik supports 3 mobile platforms, even Google Hangouts
supports 2 mobile platforms. How an iPhone-only app can be considered
seriously?

~~~
goldmar
I disagree. For startups it's usually more important to focus their resources
than to support everything. [http://blog.semilshah.com/2014/08/25/ios-first-
android-much-...](http://blog.semilshah.com/2014/08/25/ios-first-android-much-
much-later/)

~~~
somesay
What a joke, I hate those biased generalized articles.

> 1\. Early-stage startup teams cannot afford to handle the hardware
> fragmentation that plagues Android.

You have a full stack of iOS devices, too, maybe even more expensive. It's a
point if you develop quite near hardware features or want to do pixel-perfect
designs without auto-layout, but that's difficult for iOS, too, these days. A
messenger app is really not that device specific.

> 2\. Study after study demonstrates iOS users are not only growing in key
> geographies, but are more valuable customers.

If it's about hype and money, you might be right, but if you just need users
with a much more social diversity, Android is likely on your side.

> 3\. iPhone 5c and future low cost models will likely steal share from
> Android relative to yesterday. Dunno. You say "likely", too, so why is that
> even considered as a top 3 argument?

Nevertheless, the most important point here is: It's a messenger. For teams.
You don't want split between iOS and Android devices and Talko itself sees
this as negative point:

> (The corporate beta testers I spoke with sighed wistfully when reporting
> that a couple of team members could not participate because they didn’t use
> iPhones.) “We can’t build a business on this until we have all of the
> above,” says Ozzie, who wanted to make sure his engineers aced the iPhone
> first; [...]

iMessage's strength is its SMS fallback (still, who wants to send expensive
text messages these days), but Facebook, WhatsApp etc. are generally much more
used.

------
tempestn
WeChat does a subset of this and is extremely popular in China. Basically it's
like text messages, except voice. This looks a lot more polished though, and
obviously includes many more features. I can definitely see it being handy.
It's often easier to speak a message than type it, and if you care about the
presentation of your message, voice to text will often take longer than
straight text. (Plus can't communicate everything voice does.) But I still
rarely use WeChat since voice clips aren't my _default_ mode of communication,
and there's friction in using a completely separate app/service just for that.
Including it in an all-encompassing messaging platform though, sounds great.

~~~
jpatokal
Chinese does have the additional complication of using a writing system that's
not geared very well for fast entry on a mobile phone though.

~~~
shard
Entry seems pretty fast to me. The pinyin system means that you can enter a
few letters using the English alphabet and it will show you the most likely
character. For common words, one or two letters per character is enough. I am
not a native Chinese typist, but even by guessing at the proper spelling, the
predictive entry system is good enough for me to type at a non-too-terrible
speed.

~~~
jpatokal
There are basically two styles of Chinese input: easy and slow via pinyin, or
hard but fast via radicals. Both have their drawbacks.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_input_methods_for_comp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_input_methods_for_computers)

~~~
kevcampb
I find it very surprising you have said pinyin is slow. It has the downside
that you need to look at what you're typing, but it's certainly not slow. With
modern IMEs it's more akin to something like Swype in it's usage.

I am appalled when in other regions in China where they do not use pinyin,
watching people spending over a minute trying to tell their friend that they
just got on the train.

------
jitl
Talko wants to be Google Wave for voice.

~~~
gregcohn
I think it might succeed.

~~~
e12e
Looking forward to browsing the code, with an eye to self-host, after it
crashes and burns and the ashes are cast upon the winds to be spread to all
corners of the world under the APL...

------
guybrushT
The post reads like PR. But what I found interesting is just how deeply
synchronous and asynchronous communication are intertwined. This may be
obvious to many of you, but for me I have always wondered why so many
communication channels coexist (without any friction whatsoever) and what
specific human purpose they all serve - e.g. when/why I send email, voice call
& SMS? (not including the many proprietary ones).

Why a pure messaging app (like Whatsapp) wants to do voice, and why a pure
voice app (like Viber) started doing messaging. Perhaps, both are needed
within the same app to make it all work - but then why don't they do email?
Why not have an app that calls, messages and mails? :)

Well smartphones are probably that app - they are a great communication tool
just because they enable SMS, email and voice call together (all in the same
seamless package).

Would love to get some thoughts about where you think this app sits in the
communication app spectrum - what need it fulfills (I can't see using it,
because it does nothing for me). But generally speaking, I'd love to discuss
communication apps! :)

------
iamleppert
What problem is this solving again? Proprietary app, Proprietary system. I'll
stick with the universal phone call, SMS, and e-mail as my way of
communicating with people.

Why are people always hell bent on changing the way we communicate? I tried
the app and it does not offer enough to keep me using it.

------
gioele
The telephone system is based on protocols, not "apps". Where is the protocol
description of Talko?

~~~
addandsubtract
Apps are the protocols of the 21st century.

~~~
tatterdemalion
Apps are significantly worse than protocols.

~~~
addandsubtract
I never compared the two. And I'm not disagreeing either, but realistically,
what's the last protocol that's gained mass developer/user usage? Facebook?
Twitter? Skype? Whatsapp? Most of these services aren't even accessible
without an app. The only recent protocol that comes to mind is bitcoin, but
acceptance is still lacking.

~~~
gioele
> what's the last protocol that's gained mass developer/user usage?

XMPP and SIP.

And BTW, Whatsapp is non-federated XMPP. The Twitter protocol is HTTP, its API
is documented and clones exist; like Whatsapp it is non-federated.

~~~
knowaveragejoe
The distinction you describe is one I'm sure the mass market fully
appreciates.

------
dontmindifido
I think this could work well for people who are 'time rich' where talking is
by far the better way to convey more information. For the rest of us drones
though we have less choice about when / how long / how loud we can talk so
texting or messaging is an attractive alternative.

------
gregcohn
I can't helping thinking "right problem, wrong solution". I would take the bet
that there's more ongoing demand for voice calls than many in the tech
community realize -- but I don't think this demand is primarily among close-
knit teams.

Our team used Hipchat for a while, which was notable because it had a button
for 1-click voice or video calls... a button no one ever clicked.

------
nostromo
This seems anachronistic. Does anyone prefer voice messages to a text or
email?

~~~
themodelplumber
Depends on the case, but yeah, those extra emotional cues are very important
to me now.

My business consultant, a retired SV engineer & entrepreneur, has been
incessantly reminding me, "make that one a phone call, not an email," for four
years now. And he's absolutely right. Many situations jut work better when
people can hear your voice and v/v. I feel I can communicate far more
effectively over the phone in many cases than I can via email. Any time you
could do with some extra empathy, e.g. during negotiations, introductions,
heavy procrastination, tense moments--you pick up the phone and the extra
boost is like getting free money compared to email.

~~~
Johnythree
I feel exactly the opposite. All my life I've felt clumsy with spoken words. I
much prefer to write.

Writing gives me time to think and to edit and to find the odd word that
eludes me.

I do realise that not everybody feels this way. Many of my friends hate
writing and will basically ignore important emails as if they had never
existed.

I guess our brains are wired differently.

~~~
themodelplumber
Perhaps you're too hard on yourself with regard to spoken words. Keep in mind
that these are technologies. The phone is a form of technology that you can
use to communicate. It will have pros/cons compared to email. And using it
effectively is a skill that can be learned.

I often hire subcontractors and I cannot tell you how much I wish they would
just call me when they fall behind, rather than emailing or texting about
everything. It turns a bad situation into an even worse situation, where on at
least one side of the conversation, there is an extra question mark or
exclamation point behind every piece of punctuation. In contrast, some of the
most effective people I know will call whenever there is any kind of a speed
bump, because they recognize the potential advantages of a voice conversation.
It's there for anybody to use, and it doesn't really care if we use it or not,
but the phone has its advantages.

------
steven
I wrote the article. One comment about the iPhone only issue. Of course I
probed this with Ray -- a communications app is really handicapped if you
can't share it with all the people you want to contact. His answer was that
Talko wasn't going to take a shortcut of writing one version and porting it to
different systems--they wanted to get one totally right and then then work
native on the others. That's why, he says, that Talko right now is totally
free in beta form -- kind of a tryout period -- and that no monetization will
occur until Android and Web versions work fully. He thinks that Android folks
will appreciate a fast native version in a few months (my estimate) rather
than a balky one now and forever.

------
peterwwillis
They've brought IRC to the phone.

Back in the day we'd hang on party confs and chat online at the same time, and
you'd idle for weeks at a time, never disconnecting, always logging the convo.
So you could get someone's attention via voice, talk about the voice call on
chat, send links and pictures, or private messages, etc, and go back to
everything except the voice stuff.

We don't need 'voice' or one particular thing, we need all of these things in
a continuum of historical communication of all mediums. A very thin
personalized Facebook feed of every communication, essentially. Just show
everything everybody has said, done or shared in chronological order and make
it easy to read. That's all anybody needs.

------
InclinedPlane
It sounds like a useful set of new features. I just wish every new batch of
features wasn't heralded as the "amazing new way you will communicate in the
future!" I also wish that people could look at these innovations and see ways
they could be modified, improved, made to complement other ways of doing
things, etc. Instead it seems like the pitch-culture of tech forces people to
pretend as though one particular set of features shall be the entire future
universe entire and perfect, as though you would never need more (or less), or
to use it in a different way than designed.

------
harshaw
"On a whiteboard, Ozzie has jotted down a long checklist of emotions easily
conveyed by voice, but difficult to decipher in quickly thumbed-out bursts of
text: concern, pain, urgency, empathy, clarity, seriousness, confidence,
anxiety, trust, strength, accountability, anger, fear, stress, confusion,
doubt…"

Isn't this why we don't use voice? Voice is _so_ rich and emotionally
expensive. note: I haven't tried the product but I guess I am always a bit
skeptical of voice products.

------
thowar2
The product looks cool, and even had me a bit excited.

But then I saw "iPhone Only".

I agree that startups should stick to one platform when they are starting out,
except when your product relies on the network effect to be useful.

Couple that with a big PR launch and its a failure from the start.

The product is irrelevant to a large portion of the world and handicapped to
anyone with friends on Android.

------
TheRealDunkirk
Sounds like the basic elements of his former Groove groupware, which worked
really well, before it was bought by Microsoft, and disappeared down the
memory hole. I always wondered if that was the cost of Ozzie's hire, or if
they just thought it would cannibalize their existing server-based products.
Fifteen years of missed opportunity.

------
nazgulnarsil
Whoever cracks having the verbal equivalent of hypertext will change the
world. This is a step in the right direction.

~~~
e12e
Maybe in the sense that SGML foreshadowed the open web -- but not really.
AFAIK SGML was mcuh more open that this.

Granted, open isn't enough: wikis were a _great_ idea, and while wikipedia
might be one of this age's wonders of the world -- both stand on top of HTML
and HTTP.

This is about as exiting as an office suite. Any old office suite. Not that
people don't use office suites, it's just that it's broken tech, that locks
people in caves. Bigger caves, yes, but still caves.

I wonder what had happened if they'd just made all of Lotus Notes Free
software, rather than bundle it around in various zombie reincarnations?

------
aidenn0
The reason people stop using voice is that it doesn't work anymore. My
experience is that if both parties are on a mobile phone, then there is about
a 50% chance that there will be significant periods of time in which one party
is completely unintelligible, or the call will drop.

------
ac29
It sounds like the app opts people in to having calls recorded by default,
which isnt legal in my state. It will be interesting to see if any legal
challenges are brought -- I sure wouldn't use it.

------
j_s
What is the product and who is the customer here? It is the users of the app
that are for sale? If so, is there anything that would allow me to host my own
version of this for my family?

------
lazylizard
you know. i like asynchronous. and i like not having to explain why i didn't
pick up the call/message back immediately. gosh. the wonder that is email..

~~~
VLM
"If you’re under 30, the very idea of getting a cold-call from someone besides
a close friend or family member seems intrusive, if not borderline odious."

If you're not in my contact list, I do not answer the phone unless previous
arrangements have been made. I might listen to the voicemail in a couple
minutes, assuming you leave a message. Really old people (white/blue hair)
will not leave messages which makes for an interesting protocol breakdown.

I also don't do the ankle bracelet / house arrest thing, so people leave me a
message on my phone and their brains explode that it took me 12 hours to
notice and respond back. The very concept that I can own and pay for a
smartphone but not look at it for half a day is literally unthinkable to them.

Thats the new world.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I'm the opposite; I pick up unknown numbers because, hey, who knows what it'll
be. (Having once called several people from jail, who all didn't pick up
because they didn't recognize the number, enforces my tendency to do this.)

Then again, I very rarely get unknown phone calls.

I also rarely listen to voicemail. Anyone who leaves me a voicemail is nearly
guaranteed to be someone who doesn't know _me_ , and doesn't know that they
can contact me in one of a dozen different ways that I'm more likely to notice
before I even see the voicemail icon.

------
Zigurd
Unified communications has a limited appeal, and I don't see anything in here
that addresses the reasons for that limited appeal.

------
crazychrome
It's not going to work, no matter how much Ray Ozzie is widely admired (his
remarks on Google Wave is really insightful).

Here is the deal breaker: here is no easy way to edit sound so far on phone,
nor computer. It means no editorship, implies less or no control. Users demand
control over their own contents. It's the ultimate user psychology.

------
Throwaway1224
im so tired of that web layout with massive font that you have to scroll like
a mofo to see any content.

so tired.

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drew_r
Stopped reading due to incapacitating fit of laughter @ 'The software
visionary who created Lotus Notes'

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notlisted
And why would that be, if I might ask? Sure, it turned into a rather
buggy/bulky/annoying proposition, but for a product that had a great run and
many firsts from 1989-1999, it was truly remarkable and powerful, and Ozzie
was definitely a visionary.

Ignoring its influence and importance is a sign of youth perhaps (making some
assumptions here).

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tempodox
TL;DR: Sales pitch. Yawn. At least, Lotus was something new in its time.

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ttrbls
iOS only?? LAME START

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ttrbls
iOS only? LAME START

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drew_r
Stopped reading at 'The software visionary who created Lotus Notes'

