App makes voice calls more like emails

Talko brings together live chats and voice messaging with multimedia attachments to help teams organize more quickly.

Despite the fact that the majority of people carry a phone round in their pocket, the voice call has largely been superseded by email when it comes to doing business. However, a quick phone chat can be far more productive than waiting around for a written response. While apps such as SayWhat have already attempted to apply email features to phone calls by attaching a subject line, Talko brings together live chats and voice messaging with multimedia attachments to help teams organize more quickly.

When collaborating on a project or trying to organize a team, email is often preferred because the thread can be archived and reviewed. Talko brings this capability to spoken conversations, using voicemail-style audio snippets instead of text. Much like iOS 8's audio messaging, Talko enables users to record their message and send it as part of a thread. They can attach a subject line, priority, or keyword tag and send it to multiple people. Recipients can then bookmark key parts of the audio and forward on the message to others, and use their own tags to help them find it later or mark it for follow up. Audio conversations can also include multimedia attachments — text, video or documents. If other members of the team are able to speak live, they can do, while also sharing live video.

Talko is currently available as a free iOS app, with support for other devices on the way. Are there other ways to more seamlessly improve multimedia collaboration and team productivity among remote teams?