Pinger - Instant Voice Messaging

www.pinger.com

Pinger is to Voice Messages what IM is to Email

We have cell phones, home phones, email, and blackberries. We call, we text, we pin, we IM, we "Conversation." How could there possibly be any more ways of communicating? Do we even need, or better yet, WANT anything else?

Allow us to introduce you to Pinger. It's something new, and we must admit it's kind of amazing.

Basically what it is:

Pinger is a way to email a voice message

Why it's awesome:

- It’s free

- You can send a voice message to anyone with an email address that they can play on their computer (or phone if they are a member)

-It's super fast

- Unlike regular voicemail, their phone doesn't ring, they just get an email (and text message if they are a member)

- You can send messages from your computer if it has a microphone

- You can send the same message to multiple people

- It's voice activated, so we can finally live up to the promise we made to ourselves not to drive and text anymore

- Even though we've become pros at quick texting from our phones, sometimes we just can't deal answering questions that are not “yes” or “no.”

- It's nice to hear an actual voice!!

- Once you set it up to your cell phone or home phone there are no access codes, no automated voice prompts.. just the straight up message.

- You can instantly reply, delete or forward

- You can send voice messages directly to a person's myspace page. (Since we are not down with myspace this means nothing to us.)

Why it sucks:

- The initial set up process is a little crazy

- You cannot hear via email on your blackberry unless using it as a phone.

- Yet another means of passive aggressive communication. Does anyone actually TALK anymore?

- It’s almost too easy and fast.. it's easy to make a mistake when you first try it

- We are scared about the potential for “junk pinging”

- We are even more scared for the potential for “drunk pinging”

How this will change our lives

Birthday party invitations, announcements, group plans, quick "hand-free" messages, messages too long or complicated to text. The potential for this type of technology is endless. Oh and get this.. after playing around on their website we realized that video pinging will available soon too!

We think this is brilliant.

INSTRUCTIONS:

General Set up process:

1. Go to: www.pinger.com

2. Enter your name, email address, cell number, carrier and create a personal pin

3. It will ask you to add contacts (you can import from another account like gmail or go back to this later. We just added ourselves to test first)

4. Select you cell phone carrier and model

5. It will prompt you to store the pinger phone number in your cell phone

address book: which is (347) 767-4922. You will use this number to send and retrieve messages on your cell phone.

6. It will then email you and you have to click on a link to verify your email address

7. It will then send you a text message and you have to call a number to verify your cell phone. It will prompt you to enter your cell phone number and pin.

Contacts:

- It allows you to import contacts from: AOL, Entourage, Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook, Palm, Thunderbird and Yahoo!

- Click "contacts"

- Click "import new."

- It will ask you to select your email address source from a drop down list

- It will ask you to sign in to that account

- Once you enter your username and pin for that source it will begin importing your contacts.

- NOTE: Pinger will not import contacts that are stored without both first and last names

- Imported contacts cannot be edited on on Pinger.com. Any editing must be done from the original source (ie Gmail)

- You can also add single and group contacts manually

Receiving Messages

- You will get an email notification. (Members also get a text message, unless they turn this notification off)

- Anyone can play the message on a computer.

- Members can also access the message by phone.

To send a voice message (members only)

- Call the pinger number stored in your phone

- Using automated voice recognition, it will asks you to say the name of the person you want to send a message to. (It must to be a contact or group that is already stored in your contacts on their website)

- Once you say the name an automated voice will repeat it to make sure it's the correct one.

- Record the message and hit 1 or just hang up

- You can record and send messages from your computer if it has a microphone. Just go to the website, click “inbox” and then “new”

Phone Keys:

# - skip forward

* - go back (important if you want to cancel or start over)

0- help

2- review

3-re-record