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How Voice Enhances Life Online
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "A Wall Street Journal article looks at the myriad ways, some surprising, that voice is being integrated into websites and other online tools. Usages range from the familiar--multiplayer gaming--to conducting business transactions and long-distance relationships. 'Ten years ago, the first Web sites were like company brochures, says Jeff Pulver, the VoIP pioneer. 'No one ever expected to have the ability to engage a community virtually. But now a lot of services are becoming a part of the Internet experience, including video, email and voice.'" Update: 08/27 00:12 GMT by Z : Corrected the attempt to 'enchant' and 'enhance' in the same word.
My buddies and I already use Teamspeak for playing games like WoW.
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
Yea I've heard people talking online before and some how I always thought it was a stupid idea. Do I REALLY want to listen to a 12 year old kid going "YOU FAG FAG FAG FAG FAG FAG FAG!" every time I frag him?
I like muppets.
- Voice chat is used in FPS games.
- Voice chat is used in e.g. Skype (my example) for conferencing and dating.
- Some people even use voice chat in FPS games for business conferences. (wtf?)
- There exist services for phone Internet interaction.
- Google Talk has been released.
- A managing director think Internet phoning will become important.
- A couple got engaged after they were able to talk more via voice chat than they could have been on phones.
- 20% of 20 million gamers use voice chat, +10% from last year, according to Vonex.
Hmm, a strange potpurri of voice related buzz anyway... Most, if not all, of which any respectable nerd should have realized before reading the article.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Opera HAS that button. Or chechbox.
Tools->Preferences->Content: Enable sound in web pages.
Been there for years. Always off in my settings.
Other than game play, I do agree.
in FPS's, and even real time role play live voice chat can be very useful. As real time decisions can be made enhancing tactical strategy.
Though I can't even imagine a voice or video blog.
Heck i stay off the phone whenever possible. But somethings work better with voice.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Does HTTP, etc. offer anyway for a web page to check if sound is even on?
Yes, via Accept-Encoding. You can set it up so that audio types (audio/* for the most part) rank below, say, a blank text file (text/plain). Then use MultiViews (content negotiation) on your server, and set up BackgroundSound.wav and BackgroundSound.txt (empty), and just do <embed src="BackgroundSound"^gt; with no extension.
The mechanism is in place on the protocol level. Server admins have to start setting up the double-file trick, and browsers have to start detecting if sound is muted and accepting-encoding based on that.