The history of voice telephony has had little differentiation—
local versus long distance, similar input and output devices
voice in, voice out. We spoke with our mouths and listened
with our ears. A louder handset for the hard of hearing, a tape
recorder for storing the “data,” and eventually the ability to
“share” voice with more than one person was as innovative as
it got (and this hampered by the fact that no one seems to like
being put on speakerphone).
The ability to visually present data changes everything: It
increases the methods of input as well as allowing for various
types of output depending on the receiver’s current situation
and preference.
Cellular phones and PDAs are improving in many ways to
better accommodate the Wireless Internet. While some devices
opt for a qwerty type keyboard, others have operating systems
that allow the use of stylus or pointer devices to navigate and
input data. All have increased display size and resolution, and
many have added color as well.
It’s easy to find examples of situations when voice is not the
most convenient way to communicate detailed information
quickly and discreetly. Imagine you are in an important meeting
where the speaker has gone over the time limit, yet it would
be seen as rude to leave the room. The problem is you are
expected to meet your spouse at a restaurant and it looks like
you will be delayed by about an hour. The information you
need to communicate to your spouse is essentially:
“Hi honey! Look, I’m still at work in a meeting that’s running
late and I’m not sure when this guy is going to shut up
and let us get out of here. Can you please call the restaurant
and move our reservation back an hour? If I can escape this
snore fest and avoid my boss on the way out of the building
I’m sure I can make it by then OK? Love you Buttercup!”
Given the choice to make a wireless phone call or send a text
message to adjust your dinner plans, what would you do? If you
were my co-worker, I sincerely hope you would choose the text
method. I’m sure we can all agree that work environments can
become uncomfortable when co-workers allow personal phone
calls to be overheard and share too much personal information.
Mobility combined with nonvoice data creates a need for
the user to choose the preferred input and output for each
communication situation. Data can be manipulated in more
ways than pure voice and still communicate most if not the
entire intended message. Data such as text, graphics, and video
can be filtered, shortened, condensed, and reformatted to better
fit the output device.
Universal messaging has a history of being defined to
include only what a given vendor’s solution currently includes—
a system that allows the user to combine voicemail and email
might be called “universal messaging” even if it does not truly
allow the sender to leave a voicemail that the receiver can read
over email. Instead the system might send the voicemail as an
audio file to the receivers’ email inbox.
True universal messaging includes the ability to convert
inputs such as voice and text into the output preferred by the
receiver. Content that is visual—photos and video clips—would
not be converted into text but may someday be summarized by an
intelligent software program that could better describe the content.
This is a 20-second color video clip that shows a group of
children blowing out candles at a birthday party—so that the end
user can choose whether to view it, save it for later, or delete it.
Possible conversions include text-to-voice, voice-to-text,
email-to-fax, video-to-still images, and many other combinations,
such as condensing text and then converting it to voice.
Digital also adds the ability to sort, search, match, and store all
types data. 182