Pinger Aims to Replace Text Messages with Instant Voice Messages

Pinger is a free service that allows you to send a voice message to anyone with a phone, without having their phone ring. Essentially, it’s like a sending a text message but it’s with voice instead of text. Once you sign up, you import your contacts (Gmail, Outlook and most popular email services are supported). Pinger than supplies you with a free personal local number which you use for sending and receiving messages. When you’re ready to send a message, you dial your personal number, say the name of one of the people listed in your contacts and leave the message you want sent to them. Pinger also allows you to send the same message to multiple people at once. Each person gets a text message letting them know that they have a new voice message which they can listen to by calling a number instructed in the text message. Furthermore, all the messages that you ever send and receive are stored in your Pinger.com account so that you can access them at any time via the web. Overall, we can definately see how Pinger could be useful in certain situations. Voice messages are definately more personal than text messages, and thus are generally a more affective way to get a message across. The fact that Pinger works with every mobile phone is a nice touch as well. However, maybe we’re just cheap but Pinger isn’t something that we would use if we had to shell out cash for it. (Source: PC World, April ’07)