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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.
Voice all over the Internet is annoying. I saw a eBay listing recently where the seller had a voice message welcoming you every time the page loaded. The first time was OK every subsequent view was increasingly annoying - and I viewed it every time.
Voice has it's place, and for meetings or tech support it's OK, but in many places it has become the blink tag of the 21st century.
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So how do I add voice to this /. post?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
seriously, it's like half my bandwidth is going to some moronic animated ad or a video ad, and all it makes me want to do is avoid that company forever.
and then throw sound in and I get really miffed.
whoever thought it was a good idea obviously has never watched pop-up videos on MTV2 - the only reason it's funny is they keep popping up and getting in the way and it reminds you of how you hate that kind of thing.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Co-worker: "Run. Cee emm dee dot ee ex ee!"
Me: "FORMAT! See Colon! Yes! Yes!"
> 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...
Jeff: "But now a lot of services are becoming a part of the Internet experience, including video, email and voice."
Me: "Aitch-tee-tee-pee colon slash slash. Goat dot cee ex. And be thankful it's only the pumpkin version these days."
1. Enable voice in your Internet application.
2. ???
3. Profit!
Is it just me, or does anyone else cringe and immediately close the site when they open a website with a loud obnoxious voice?
"Comedy's a dead art form. Now tragedy, that's funny."
now were gonna need a STFU button on our browsers.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
What utter tripe. No research involved. They're basically trying to hop onto the voip journalistic bandwagon and pretend like they actually have something insightful to say. Guess what, people have been using voice communcation while playing games over the internet for close to 7 years now (Roger Wilco came out in 1999 I believe). Instead of doing something interesting like maybe writing about the history of video game voice com technology, they try and pass it off as if MS and EA are big innovators who came up with the idea.
My buddies and I already use Teamspeak for playing games like WoW.
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
I hope that web designers don't assume that the sound is on and try to transmit important information via voice because on my computer it is not.
Does HTTP, etc. offer anyway for a web page to check if sound is even on? If not, then sound is only useful for useless background audio.
Personally, I think voice is a horrible one-to-many communication medium because it is intrusive and linear -- its not browsable. It's like all those horrible Flash animations that slow down the user to a 1st grade reading level while you wait for the words to swirl/materialize into place.
Please keep the web self-paced (not designer-paced).
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Well, voice is great for provin that Hotqt4u071282 is really a legal chick.
since they can't justify it any other way.
sad, very sad.
Commander: I have to go to the bathroom now.
Squadron Leader1: Me too
Squadron Leader2: OMFG! We're under attack you newbs!
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In games such as WoW alot of the guilds have, ive noticed, started to require voice on guild raids. I do not want to seem like a troll or seem like im poking fun at people, but i really hate it. This is for several reasons. The first being in a game like WoW it ruins the magic. I do not want the lvl 60 warrior im fighting with to sound like a nasiley 18 year old. I want to IMAGINE what they are like irl, based on the style and language that their character uses. Im not a roleplayer, and i can see the convienience of collaboration using voice, but it really does take alot of the "suspension of disbelief" away. Combine that with the fact that its alot harder to ignore people talking about stupid non related shit, than it is to ignore them typing about it.
The other reason is i hate most peoples accents online. thats kind of a personal attack but i'm really not going to take orders from, or have leadership confidence in, some guy who sounds like he lives in his parents basement and starts wheezing when he gets excited.
again, it ruins the ambiance.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
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.
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I think this is a bad idea... sitting at home trying to be inconspicuous browsing the net while the wife is watching TV then all of a sudden... "Welcome to GoatPorn Dot Com.. your interactive Guide to hot.. sexy.. goat action...... !!" Alt F4 ALT F4.. ALT F4 FOR THE LIFE OF GOD!!!!!!!!!
> a lot of services are becoming a part of the Internet experience, including video, email and voice
Email is becomming part of the internet experience? Hooray! I've been wanting to try this cool new technology for a long time...
The unofficial
Without voicechat I can pretend I'm wreaking havoc with fellow manly men instead of playing against a bunch of prepubescent nerds. It really slays the old immersion factor when the soldier next to you is squeaking like a mallrat.
enunciation nazis.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Actually voice makes me wish for the device mentioned in the top1 quote on bash.org.
(for those to lazy to go there: I mean the device to stab people in the face over the internet)
Linux is not Windows
I am a Marine on Okinawa and let me tell you, voice makes everything a lot more tolerable. I play flight sims and first person shooters online with friends back home. I talk to my wife online. I can see her on my webcam and hear her on my speakers. It just makes it so much more tolerable. It's about a 100 steps away from being in the same room as a person, but it makes it feel 100,000 closer than being on the other side of the planet writing letters back and forth, with the occasional phone call in the middle...
One of the biggest turn offs in any online game is probably being able to hear the players talk. That's one of the first things that gets turned off. My imagination is much better at providing an experience that fits the current situation than anyone else can.
How exactly is this going to 'enhance' life online for those of us who are deaf?
Not to mention the various problems with voice media - it's not easily searchable, you can't translate it with bablefish, it's low bandwidth, you can't cut and paste an interesting part to forward to someone, etc, etc ad nausum.
I actually like the clear separation of player from character that voice provides.
When I play with the same group for a while, especially across different games, where we know each other to at least some degree as existing beyond any one particular character, I find we tend to naturally talk as players on voice, and as characters in text -- if we want to have our character say something in character, (usually trying and failing to be funny, heh) we'll use the in-game text to have it come from the character's "mouth." It probably works best when the name used in the voice chat is not the same as the character name, something that's probably not practical when in groups with random people.
F12->uncheck "enable sound in webpages" and "enable plug-ins"
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.