Voxer, The New Nextel-like App But Better

I used to think Nex­tel push to talk (walkie talkie) was a very use­ful and pro­duc­tive tool, when it first came out for con­trac­tors. It did get a lit­tle annoy­ing when I was on job sites or in meet­ings and kept hear­ing con­struc­tion work­er’s phones mak­ing loud beep­ing alerts as I could not help but eaves­drop in on their con­ver­sa­tions. It served its pur­pose at the time. Since the release of the iPhone, Android and Win­dows phones, Nex­tel tech­nol­o­gy is pret­ty much non exis­tent. I nev­er owned a Nex­tel or Push to Talk phone, but saw the val­ue in those short and quick voice con­ver­sa­tions. Every time you get on a phone call, it is hard to keep it short. You have to start with a greet­ing, then an intro of why you are call­ing, get to the sub­ject, get an answer and then wrap up with a clos­ing state­ment. It is hard to make each phone call under a minute. With Push to Talk, you could get quick answers to what you need­ed in seconds. 

Push To Talk, Voxer

A few years ago I began my search look­ing for a Push To Talk-like app, sim­i­lar to Nex­tel. I fig­ured that there has to be a walkie talkie app cre­at­ed. I stum­bled across Vox­er, a free walkie talkie app. I down­loaded it and instant­ly was hooked. Well, almost hooked. I had to con­vince oth­er peo­ple to start using it too, oth­er­wise, it was use­less. My wife became my first vic­tim, I mean copi­lot using Vox­er with me. She, the non techie one, now uses Vox­er just about every­day with sev­er­al of her friends and myself too. She loves it. The kids love it! So what does it exact­ly do? Well, you cre­ate a Vox­er account, select peo­ple in your con­tacts that have an account (it lets you know) and start a con­ver­sa­tion with them using a big but­ton on the screen that you tap on to talk and release when done (like a walkie talkie). You can also use it to text and/​or send pic­tures, there­fore sav­ing you from bounc­ing back and forth to your text mes­sage app. You can have one to one con­ver­sa­tions or group chats too (per­fect for busi­ness users). So a field super­vi­sor can cre­ate a group of his key employ­ees, tap the group name and send them all an instant voice mes­sage (live). This group Push to Talk fea­ture is by far what makes this a great pro­duc­tiv­i­ty app for con­struc­tion work­ers. I use Vox­er more than voice to text fea­tures almost exclu­sive­ly because the voice to text fea­tures mis­spell too many words. I spend more time edit­ing my mes­sages before I send them or end up send­ing an apol­o­gy text say­ing, ​“Sor­ry, did­n’t mean to say that…I was using Siri!” Instead, I rely heav­i­ly on Vox­er to get my mini voice mes­sages across and my respons­es. It saves me so much time, and I am hop­ing more and more users will give it a try. There is a lit­tle bit of get­ting used to Vox­er. So if you have ques­tions regard­ing it, let me know. You can use it with a Blue­tooth ear­piece (and there is a trick to that). You also need to make sure your noti­fi­ca­tion set­tings are set to make Vox­er appear on your screen when you get a mes­sage. Let me know what you think. Down­load for iPhone Here Down­load for Android Here Down­load for Win­dows Phone Here