Any progammers looking for a killer app to develop? How about a voice enabled forum?

One of the most powerful, exciting, and engrossing experiences on the Internet is the Forum. The first great Internet forums were the Usenet newsgroups. Usenet is still a powerful force, but many different types of forums are also very popular (such as message boards like Vbulliten and XMBforum).

I love forums. Love em love em love em. My web site has a great one. But I think the time has come for an important and breakthrough evolutionary advance in Internet Forums. I will describe the idea to you, and I hope you will take the idea and run with it. Create this product. Develop it. Make millions of dollars. I offer this idea to you-because I am not a programmer-and I want this to be made.

The idea is pretty simple. Any fairly savvy application developer with some skills in MySQL should be able to do this. Whoever does it right will make a lot of money.

I want someone to simply improve upon the Internet forum technology.

The amazing power of a forum is that you can walk into a forum and have a conversation. You can ask a question and get insightful, funny, and interesting answers. You can then reply and have a dialogue. You can do all this at your own pace, your own convenience. You can ignore people who don't interest you and you can be as patient as you want in replying. It is a wonderful thing. And the time has come to liberate this experience from the necessity of a keyboard and full powered computer. The technology is here, we just need to take advantage of it.

This is what I want.

I want to be able at any time of day, whether driving my car, or doing dishes, or hiking through the woods -to ask a question of the world. I don't want to have to find a computer, go to the website or newsreader, and type up my question. I want to just be able to say outloud, "What is the fastest any human has ever travelled?" or "What the heck does a county commisioner do?"...and I want my question, an mp3 recording of my actual voice, immediately posted in a forum. And then I want to receive responses-but not responses i have to go sit down and read. I want to hear the responses, in the voices of those listening to my question.

Imagine, you could be driving in your car...and you have a question. You simply say out loud, "Post this question: Can anyone give me more details about the Xbox2? Or "Can anyone tell me real quick how to make tomatoe soup?" Or while reading a history book...you could say outloud, "Post this question: "Was Wyatt Earp a real person?" Whatever you are interested in. For whatever reason you communicate with people in Forums, you could do it-but simply with your voice-at any time anywhere.

After you post a question, you might hear a little beep in a few minutes letting you know you have responses. Then you could just say out loud "Play replies" and the replies would start to play-not in a computer voice but in the actual voice of the people answering you-because they would be using the same technology.

With this type of voice message board-you could have engaging, interesting, convenient, and fairly natural conversations over the Internet. The experience could be liberated from sitting at a computer-and it would be enhanced by being able to hear human voices-rather than reading text. You could have all the fun and convenience of natural conversation-but enhanced through the reach and expertise and convenience available over the Internet.

That is the concept. It may seem daunting, but the technology already exists and is available. All this idea requires is a MySQL based message board (such as the XMB Forum) and a pretty basic client side application. The SQL database could store all the voice messages in mp3 format. The client side application would run on a pocketpc phone or palm phone.All this application would need to do is

1. interface with the MySQL database (the message board). Be able to upload and download the mp3 files in the appropriate thread-and play them on demand.
2. encode into mp3 format as people recorded their posts.
3. This part is optional, but would be the ultimate addition: be able to recognize some simple voice commands such as "Record" "Post" "Replay" "Skip" "Next" "Back".

Thats it. If you can program or hack MySQL and make pocketpc Apps, then you can make this amazing voice enabled internet forum.

Limitations:
Bandwidth for moble internet access is an obvious limitation. But remember, voice forums will be just as fun and convenient on desktop computers and where high bandwidth is available.

Webstorage. Voice messages will be much bigger. The MySQL database will grow fast. But hey, it will be so fun, I think users will be willing to pay the message board host a little to help cover storage costs. Another alternative is to delete or archive all messages after 3 days-limiting discussions to fairly current threads.

Ok thats it. I know this will arrive someday. But why not sooner rather than later? Any programmers out there interested in a little project like this? If so, go for it. Make millions. I maintain no copywrites on this idea. But if you are going to run with this idea, please just let me know so I can use the forum on my website.

The best way for this to be developed is through an open source project. Anyone who wants to collaborate on this project with other programmers feel free to post on my website to make contacts. Or just go for it if you already know how to do something like this. Good luck. I look forward to hearing all about it!

Go here to find other people to help collaborate on this project: http://www.thesearchforwisdom.com/community/boards/viewthread.php?tid=104

Submitted by Matt Ready
http://www.wisdomproject.net Received on Thu Jan 29 2004 - 23:38:34 CET