Where Are The Voices?

There were several voicemails, which I would have loved to preserve and several of them I did preserve as long my cell phone provider would allow me to preserve. One of the e-mails was from my 10-year old son, when he lost his pet guinea pig, Mr. Noonoo, who also happened to be the then President of our household. Then there were several voicemails from my 5-year old daughter telling me about her friends.

I searched around for a suitable utility on the Internet that would allow me to convert those voicemails to MP3 files. In the year 2000, there were none. I ran the same check again a few days back and found that there were some providers, who were in the business of dialing into your phone and converting the voicemails to MP3. You had to buy a 15-minute package for something like $30 to get your voicemails recorded.

The idea is simple but I have yet to see a self-managed and user-configurable Internet utility that will allow voicemails to be converted into MP3 files at a defined schedule and then allow download or e-mailing of those files back to the recipient.

Such a utility could be written using Skype API calls or in several other ways. Technology already exists. The challenge is to build the right business model in a clearly defined competitive space.

Such a business model would have a close affinity with telecommunications industry. If you are able to do it, you would be a natural partner of Verizon or Sprint. The revenue model could be subscriber-based, which is a major benefit. I'm sure that you have already noticed that most of the businesses on the Internet find it hard to build a subscriber-based revenue model.