Comments on: Sign up and use Pigeon! (713) 574-9488

By: Alexandre

Alexandre — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 20:51:28 +0000

I’m 343-457.
Left you some comments. I sincerely think that the main concept works on a rather deep level and I’m convinced the project will work.
I’ve signed up using SkypeOut, which may not be ideal. One issue is that dialing in Skype can work in strange ways and it sounds like some digits don’t go through as planned. It’s also difficult to dial ‘#’ as it’s not on the numeric keypad. It does eventually work but it’s a bit more difficult. Of course, Pigeon is supposed to be used with phones, but it’s part of my experience.
Another thing which is obvious when using SkypeOut is that the sound quality isn’t very good. Usually, with this headset on SkypeOut, the sound is much clearer. Not only in terms of sample rate (I’m assuming Pigeon uses a low SR) but also in terms of signal to noise ratio. Not a deal-breaker but a better sound quality could be more impressive for new users.
A suggestion I would have would be to look for was to integrate Pigeon messages into microblogs and social networks. During PodcampMtl, Evan Prodromou (behind Laconica and Identi.ca) was talking about “microcasting” which has features of both microblogging and podcasting. What he had in mind had to do with phone-based social networking as the content would be submitted directly to phones (or, as in the Pigeon model, in a public box accessible via phone). It might be useful to “share” the same content through different means, including Twitter and such.
I haven’t listened to a message yet but it might be useful to be able to reply to a given message (if it’s not already the case) and set that reply to be private or public.
Then, there could be all sorts of things done with speech and text. Pigeon could be used to listen to textual content using the speech synthesis engine (is it NeoSpeech?) or even as a way for recorded speech to be recognized and submitted as text.
Many of these uses are further from the original project, but it might be useful to imagine where the project might lead.

An important point about such a phone-based project is that even people who are functionally literature may not be that efficient in writing. Pigeon can enhance both speech- and text-based communication.

By: Cyrus Farivar

Cyrus Farivar — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 16:12:42 +0000

Cyrus Farivar here — freelance tech journalist temporarily based in Lyon, France — and frequent contributor to The World (Clark’s my boss). Very interested in your project and thought I’d give it a spin.

I’m 510-510.

By: drewcogbill

drewcogbill — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 21:59:48 +0000

Paul- I completely agree. This is an early release, and I’ve just tried to implement the most core features. Thanks, and any other feedback is always appreciated.

By: Paul

Paul — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 21:55:55 +0000

There needs to be a way to change your PIN. If you can create a PIN, there should be a way to change it.

By: Clark Boyd

Clark Boyd — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 21:07:09 +0000

Hi. Clark Boyd here from PRI’s The World, an international news program from BBC/PRI/WGBH radio in Boston. I interviewed Drew about Pigeon for our weekly technology podcast.

Audio: http://www.theworld.org/pod/tech/WTPpodcast222.mp3

Show notes: http://blogs.discovery.com/news_etherized/2008/12/pris-the-world.html

And yes, of course I signed up! 345-345

By: Martin Konzett

Martin Konzett — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:27:53 +0000

drew, if you want to move to the Java world, let me know … We can help you out with manpower … best, martin

By: …My heart’s in Accra » links for 2008-12-02

…My heart’s in Accra » links for 2008-12-02 — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:03:13 +0000

[...] Sign up and use Pigeon! (713) 574-9488 at Drew Cogbill | Thesis Blog Drew Cogbill is experimenting with a aystem that lets you share status updates with your friends - ala Twitter - via an interactive voice response interface. I'm located at 363-363 if you want updates on what I'm doing. A very cool experiment in social networks for the phone-centered… which may well mean users in the developing world (tags: phone innovation experiment socialmedia) [...]

By: drewcogbill

drewcogbill — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:49:24 +0000

Erik- right now Pigeon is built with CallXML (a cousin of VoiceXML) generated by PHP and hosted on voxeo (voxeo.com). I’m not sure if this will be the ultimate technical solution, but I’m trying to stretch this implementation to the limit before I move on to other options.

By: Erik

Erik — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 04:11:49 +0000

Drew, very interesting project you’ve got going on here. What did you build it on?

By: Haynes

Haynes — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 20:05:22 +0000

I missed Chickfila nuggets!?!?!?! oh no!