Voxer, The New Nextel-like App But Better

Posted by David Chism | Thu, Nov 14, 2013

 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

voice app-iconA 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

About David Chism

David Chism started his business out of a passion for helping small contracting businesses grow, be more profitable and become better known to their target clients. One lifelong hobby of David is using techie gadgets. So this blog is a place where he writes about technology, marketing ideas, just for fun (humor), personal thoughts on small business and more.

     
   
       

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