Reinventing the Walkie Talkie

Back in the day, this kind of thing was what people used to talk to each oth­er over dis­tances, using radio waves. You were lim­ited by the power of the unit and the type and num­ber of obstacles between you and the per­son you were talk­ing with.

And gen­er­ally, your con­ver­sa­tion could be over­heard by any­one else using a sim­il­ar device.

Fast for­ward to this cen­tury and the digit­al data­phone. And this nifty Android & iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad app called Hey­Tell, brings the Walk­ie Talk­ie concept up to date.

Simple, but it works
Hey­Tell is a simple app. On an iOS device (I assume it’s sim­il­ar for Android), Hey­Tell uses your con­tact list to man­age con­tacts and invite oth­ers to the app.

Using Hey­Tell is drop-dead simple:

1) Select the con­tact to speak with

2) Push the ‘Hold and Speak’ button
That’s it. The voice mes­sage is beamed to their device. They can talk back to you immediately.
And that’s the way it works. It’s not real-time two-way com­mu­nic­a­tion, rather staged deliv­ery of voice mes­sages… a great way to check in, update someone, when it’s not con­veni­ent or prac­tic­al to send out an email.

And it’s free (exclud­ing Inter­net charges).

This post of is one of many I pub­lish weekly at the Future Shop Techb­log. Read more of my stuff here.