Async Voice Chat: The Next Big Thing?

First we had chat and IM, then it was VoIP. Is asynchronous voice
chat the next big thing or is it one tool too many?

TechCrunch.com reviews Say2GO, a new “near real
time” voice messaging system combining some of the aspects of IM and
voicemail to get to a place where you can voice chat in near-real-time rather
than real-time.  Currently in limited
beta, the software provides users the ability to send and receive voice
messages that are transcribed using voice recognition and sent both as audio
and text–always a good thing, if the Speech API doesn’t convert the voice to
text cleanly.

Microsoft’s Messenger software has a capability called Voice
Clips to enable users to send 15 second voice notes, but Say2GO enables the
user to playback a recording, cancel, or schedule it to be sent later.

Unfortunately, the app doesn’t do so well in the voice
recognition department, but Say2GO expects to add other features on top of
existing IM networks.

For more:
– Techcrunch.com reviews Say2GO

Related article:
Microsoft buys voice
recognition company Tellme