Aliph, the company best known for its “Jawbone” Bluetooth headset (and more recently bluetooth-based speakers for iPads), delivered its first iPhone app – a recombination of audio recording, text messaging and transcription. That makes it a good example of a new generation of multi-modal, asynchronous messaging that’s poised to replace simple voicemail.

As illustrated in the YouTube video below, Jawbone Thoughts is positioned as an alternative to voicemail, a service that is taking a beating as first generation systems reach their end-of-life and both companies and carriers are finding it hard to justify an upgrade. It is also called”better than texting” because audio feeds can convey emotion (and perhaps even irony).

Here’s the demo:

This demo shows a use case whereby all of the recipients have the app and can listen, interrupt and exchange voice messages in near real time. In that respect it has some of the feel of RebelVox, in that it supports asynchronous conversations. It lacks RebelVox’s ability to “catch up” with the live experience.

Recipients who don’t have the app will receive text messages with an embedded link to a Web site that plays the message for them. As described in its press release, recipients can also opt to have the audio message transcribed, a task accomplished by technology partner Yap/ The first ten transcriptions are free. After that bundles of transcriptions can be bought within the app. An additional 25 will cost $0.99 (about 4 cents each) or a bundles of 100 cost $2.99 (about 3 cents each).

As to why a company that is ostensibly into selling wireless headsets and speakers is getting into the messaging apps business, the service will be integrated with Aliph’s Jawbone Icon Bluetooth headset so that it can be configured to perform autodialing and messaging combined as part of the MyTalk Dial App.

Categories: Articles

Tags: Mobile Speech Apps, iPhone, Recombinant Communications, messaging, Transcription