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Businesses The Internet Entertainment Games IT Technology

How Voice Enhances Life Online 131

Posted by Zonk from the reach-out-and-touch-someone dept.
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.
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How Voice Enhances Life Online More

How Voice Enhances Life Online

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  • Arg (Score:1, Funny)

    by Neil Blender ( 555885 )
    More sounds to come from my officemates' computers. Great.

  • Experience = Annoying (Score:5, Insightful)

    by robertjw ( 728654 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @06:46PM (#13411977) Homepage
    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.
    • I saw a eBay listing recently where the seller had a voice message welcoming you every time the page loaded.

      And are you regularly deleting your cookies that would tell it you've already heard this message? :^)

    • Note to web designers: SOUND IS OFF (Score:5, Insightful)

      by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @06:55PM (#13412054)
      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).
      • Does HTTP, etc. offer anyway for a web page to check if sound is even on?

        Probably in Windows. I mean, I assume there is some security hole somewhere that would allow it.
        • Does HTTP, etc. offer anyway for a web page to check if sound is even on?

          I leave the system set with sound unmuted, since I find it much quicker to adjust by physically reaching across the desk and tweaking the volume button om the speakers manually. No html or javascript in the world is going to detect that.

          I mostly leave it set at zero, however, since I find unsolicited noises annoying and intrusive.

      • have to agree, i tend to turn the sound off too, for a lot of reasons.

        can you imagine a coffee shop full of people with voice-enabled ads?

        sounds like a good excuse to spill coffee on their keyboards.

      • 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,

    • Re:Experience = Annoying (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Seumas ( 6865 ) *
      I would rather chat on AIM than via voice. I would rather get an email than discuss it via VoIP. I would rather play a game and type to people than chat with them in-game (ruins the flow and feel of the game's mood). And I certainly don't want to get in huge online "chat" communities via voice.

      Stop treating the internet like a fucking night club or highschools you stupid fucks. Jesus fucking christ. ENOUGH ALREADY.

      • Re:Experience = Annoying (Score:4, Informative)

        by peragrin ( 659227 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @07:55PM (#13412389)
        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 haven't found much use for it in games. Maybe a little in Counter Strike.

          It just depresses me that the internet is turning into one big version of those phone chat lines they advertise at 3am on local/cable stations for total losers who have nothing better to do on a Friday or saturday night than call some "chat line" to talk to other fugly desperate and boring people for $3.99/minute.

          When it comes down to it, that's mostly what livejournal, meetup, makoutclub and all these things are turning into. With s
    • Then you can't miss ZOMBO.COM [zombo.com] !

    • 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.
    • I agree. This isn't a new idea -

      I, as I know other webmasters were, tried doing this in the 90s. Because of the lesser availability of broadband technology back then, however, it didn't really take off.

      Now that broadband technology is here, my opinion remains the same as it was back then: voice is inappropriate in many situations. There is that new company that I have come across many times touting a flash app that puts a talking head on your site. To most webmasters, it's just another useless tool to add s
    • You know there is one very simple fix to your problem. TURN THE VOLUME DOWN.
    • A good implementation, such as Fords F150 website, can be a powerful marketing tool, but a bad implementation can be horrible.

      When creating the tools in vobbo [vobbo.com] to embed video blogs in other sites, we went out of our way to create nice placeholders that were silent and bandwidth friendly UNTIL the user decided they were ready to get video and sound. This saves us bandwidth, and saves the user a potential annoyance. As with all things web related, its really the implementation that makes the difference
    • I would like to amplify/ammend/fix your comment:

      Voice (or any sound) when you do not expect it and it is not appropriate for the situation, is annoying.

      Voice in MMOs to let you quickly and efficiently organize things = wonderful!

      Voice on theonion.com because some liquor distributor thinks it's clever to have their ad literally scream at you = horrible idea, and someone should be slapped.

      I'm all for engaging as many senses and communications methods as possible *IF THEY ARE APPROPRIATE* and not done for nove
    • MIT Press has just released a new book on this subject by Clifford Nass and Scott Brave:

      "Wired for Speech: How Voice Activates and advances the Human-Computer Relationship." ($21.45 at huge online bookstore near you).

      It presents research on voice interaction and gives advice about how to do voice without annoying people so much. I've not read it yet but it's on my list.
  • So how do I add voice to this /. post?
    • That's quite a question, if you're blind. I don't think most programs/sites are easily accessible to people with disabilities (I tried a screenreader once, it was awful, but then again, what can substitute vision?). To them, voice has a much more important meaning than to you and to me.
  • 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.
    • It's the same way all over TV. I'm sure you've seen those overlay ads where a cable TV network will advertise other shows they are running (TNT, TBS, FX, and ABC Family are notorious). Well, apparently, a GIGANTIC AD on top of your favorite TV shows isn't good enough - they also put in sound effects. Like during baseball season, TBS advertises Braves games by having the sound effect of bat hitting ball, fans cheering, and then showing a ball come in and hit the screen, accompanied by a cracking noise and
      • It's amazing how insidious it's gotten. Tivo grabbed an episode of The Practice for me a couple weeks ago and I was actually angered by the sound attached to the overlay ads, so much so that I turned off the show and promptly deleted it. The insidious part is that I've actually stopped being irritated by the overlays with no sound - even the tedious NASCAR overlay on TNT (a pit crew creating the NASCAR logo) has stopped affecting me consciously. The ones with sound, though, are particularly awful in dial
    • This sort of advert and websites with background sounds or music make me wonder why the hell we don't have per application volume control.

      In fact a nice firefox extension would be to mute the browser (possibly on toggle)

  • Remote Exploit (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @06:48PM (#13411995)
    Old-school remote exploit:
    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!

  • Voice = Annoying! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mesmartyoudumb ( 471890 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @06:50PM (#13412006)
    Is it just me, or does anyone else cringe and immediately close the site when they open a website with a loud obnoxious voice?

    • Is it just me, or does anyone else cringe and immediately close the site when they open a website with a loud obnoxious voice?
      Especially when I'm at work and that voice says, "HEY, EVERYBODY! I'M LOOKING AT GAY PORN!"
    • Only when I don't want my wife to know I'm looking at porn.
    • You mean as in AOL's "YOU'VE GOT MAIL!!!" and "GOODBYE."
      I hate those.
      • becasue there are just .wav files that can bge replaced. Some opportunity for humor.

        In the early mid 90's I changes a friends to say I've got MAIL...Pattern baldness.!"
        I think he still uses it.

        Also I change another friends so it says "Mail for you, sir."(from monty python's "Holy Grail")

      • I loved how the mailbox in hell in Zork: Grand Inquisitor would tell you "you've got mail" in that AOL voice...
    • That's why I always disable the plugins! It's not that hard and I haven't found my "browsing experience" reduced without Flash or QuickTime videos. The only voice I want to hear on the web is "Dear Strong Bad, ... crapfully yours."
    • Just use Linux: the poor audio support prevents you from hearing anything.

      I kid! I kid!*

      Actually, my Ubuntu box handles audio on websites rather too well for my liking. It's such an unpleasant surprise to be greeted with some obnoxious sound effect or gratingly overcompressed voice that I sometimes pine for the days of incomplete audio support.

      * Well, mostly. Audio support and standardisation could be better.

  • New button (Score:5, Funny)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @06:50PM (#13412009) Homepage
    now were gonna need a STFU button on our browsers.

    • I've already got one of those on my speakers, and it works surprisingly well. Now, if you invented one that worked on text, that'd be another thing...
    • I've been looking for that button for years. I have never visited a webpage and was happy that it had sound.
    • i always thought that was what the mute button did. or did you want it specifically for browser stuff only?
      • i always thought that was what the mute button did. or did you want it specifically for browser stuff only?

        Sometimes I want my browser to play sounds - web radio, for example. But I only want it to play sounds that I've explicitly told it to play. I don't want sounds from adverts, and I don't want the crappy background music that some idiots insist on adding to their pages.

        In other words, what I really want is the audio equivalent of popup blocking...

  • VoIP in games (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    That'll make it tough for the 10 year old kid roleplaying a uber 60 Troll Warrior. *wimper* "ChaaaarggGGGe!"

  • What a crappy article (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dnixon112 ( 663069 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @06:52PM (#13412028)
    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.

  • VoIP already in use (Score:5, Informative)

    by bigwavejas ( 678602 ) * on Friday August 26, 2005 @06:53PM (#13412037) Journal
    My buddies and I already use Teamspeak [goteamspeak.com] for playing games like WoW.
  • there are 2 ways of seeing this:

    one is where I want to view or listen, say an entertainment site.

    the second is where the site "forces" me to view/listen to its advt/propaganda and I have no control: this makes it annoying, and brochures are meant to be brochures, not something thrust onto my face when I visit a site.. I would stop going there, or disable such things in my browser, or better still use a text based browser for such sites.

    in short: I prefer what I want to see, I want to control my prefer

  • Who else is wondering whether this supposedly rich addition to the online experience will have zero longevity?

    My guess is it'll eventually go the way of flash intros and bgsound tags.

  • Cyber (Score:2, Funny)

    by Jeff Molby ( 906283 )
    Well, voice is great for provin that Hotqt4u071282 is really a legal chick.
  • If its only video, voice and email, there's only so much of an "experience" that one can have on the web (at least with the current tools). What about true interactivity - which is what ultimately everyone is trying to achieve? The way I see it, once they had a mechanism to connect several different computers together and had a standard way of data-exchange, we then "built" add-ons to emulate human senses, thinking naively, it would emulate a human "experience"

    I strongly believe our tools are dated compa
  • 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!
  • I love VoIP. I get to actually talk to my friends from college while playing video games with them even though we are spread across the country. It let me have long talks with friends from home when they were having problems and I was studying in England.

    At the same time, there are so many pre-pubecent Halo brats I've wanted to beat senseless for their talk BS. It can be great, but without controls and ways to boot the obnoxious VoIP can really suck. We've had it for years with text, but hearing 12 ye

  • dislike voice (Score:5, Insightful)

    by crabpeople ( 720852 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @07:07PM (#13412119) Journal
    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.
    • Is it really better without voice? Many people in on-line games speak in 'net speak and do not roleplay. You know the type, "WTF? OMG! ROFLMAO! IRL". It's to the point now where people start to make words up, thinking that everyone will understand their cryptic acronym speak. Even if they don't do that, they mangle the English language with poor spelling, punctuation, and grammar. That can't always be helped in an on-line environment since everybody's education level and typing skills differ. Voice
    • 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.

      A. Asthma is sexy. B. Voice improves survivability and time spent enough that people will do it. So the question is, when can I get a plugin to make me sound like a 19 year old woman. No, I'd never exploit it f

    • "suspension of disbelief"?
      My elf has donkey ears!
      Seriously, I guess if you are into the whole roleplaying aspect and playing on an RP server, I suppose I can see that being a problem. Honestly, if you are gaming and not rping, I think the benefits of voice outweigh the problems.
    • 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'

  • yea.. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Turn-X Alphonse ( 789240 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @07:09PM (#13412126) Journal
    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?
  • Is it possible to have a voice helpdesk system on my website? a java client would be great for answering a few questions, but, am I still dreamming here? or what are the alternatives?
  • Since you don't have to worry about spelling, voice is superior to the written word. Enchances?

  • So does this mean we can finally start yelling at the slashdot editors for their laziness through our microphones?

  • Article summary (Score:3, Informative)

    by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @07:28PM (#13412235) Journal
    - 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.
  • ones where, should they use voice, we can use voice and it sounds in our chosen executive's office or boardroom.

    Hey, two can play at this game ...
  • Okay, I can see a slip of the finger where Windows was typed as "Windowsz" [slashdot.org], but the "c" isn't anywhere near the "n" or the "h"!

  • Pr0n ?!? (Score:4, Funny)

    by OneByteOff ( 817710 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @07:49PM (#13412347)
    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!!!!!!!!!

  • email: it's what's new (Score:4, Funny)

    by Gherald ( 682277 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @07:50PM (#13412356) Journal
    > 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...
  • enunciation nazis.

  • 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 th
  • "Hi! Welcome to our online store. I'm Jim, your sales rep. We're having a sale today on generic Viagra. Would you like to order 100 capsules for only $249.95? Um? Oh, surely you want to improve your sex life. Um? How can you pass up this one-time offer at this amazingly low price. Um? I'll throw in free shipping. Um? I'll take that as a yes. We already have your credit card information, and you'll be receiving your product shortly. Have a nice day."

  • Enhances? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by springbox ( 853816 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @08:52PM (#13412657)
    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.
    • Maybe someone should include a plugin in games that will change the voice of the player to match the character that he/she is using. It could also be helpful in identifying who it is that you are talking to.
    • If you disable voice then your team suffers.

      Voice is there because it is far faster to speak than type. Typing is not an option in fast paced games.
  • from the quoted article: "Microsoft's Xbox Live, an online gaming service for the console that helped pioneer the online-gaming boom...." I had no idea that the Xbox had been around since teh Roger Wilco days :)

  • How Voice Degrades Life Online (Score:3, Insightful)

    by teneighty ( 671401 ) on Saturday August 27, 2005 @12:03AM (#13413447)

    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.

  • If you haven't seen it, this [warcraftmovies.com] is a hilarious example of voice enabled gaming strategy going horribly, horribly wrong.

    In this case, a player being away from keyboard (AFK) long enough to miss all of the strategy.

    Leeeeeeeeeeeroy Jenkins!!!!!
  • My gf's phone line is awful; we can talk much more easily on google talk than on the phone, and both of us have our phone right next to our PCs anyway. Also, it allows me to talk to her daughter easily who is five, so although she can type she can't have a conversation with me. For anyone who is blind its got to be a help.

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