Phoning It In From ETel – Radio Handi Makes Its Debut

Brian McConnell is at O’Reilly’s Emerging Telephony conference revealing his latest project – Radio Handi.

I’ve been watching Radio Handi come to life (Brian and I go way back*). It’s been exciting. I think it’s a really neat way to tie voice and Web.

One interesting thing is that such a system would be very expensive to set up just 5 years ago. Now, Radio Handi has local phone numbers in over 30 countries, you can call it via Gizmo (or probably any SIP device), and you can follow conversation via RSS.

I think big sites with big communities could benefit from this. If you are interested in talking with Brian, let me know. I can make an introduction.

Link: Phoning It In From ETel – Radio Handi Makes Its Debut – O’Reilly Emerging Telephony.

Radio Handi enables people to create voice communities around any subject, place of interest or peer group, and to telecast live audio from MP3 feeds or conference phones. You can create a message board and party line for your club, for people who share an interest, or for your friends. With it, you can create an open party line that people can dial into from all over the world (30  countries and 1 VoIP network to start with, much more to come). This is our first public demo of the platform.

*Please note: Many years ago, Brian recruited me to PhoneZone/Hello Direct, helping me make the transition from biomedicine to telecomms (and to be a full time writer!). Thanks, Brian. We then worked a bit together on his subsequent venture, TrekMail, which was sold last summer to Visto. We’ve been in touch over Radio Handi for some time now. I told Brian I’d help him, as I could, to make some connections, if it helps (never know where that might lead). In short, I am partial to Brian. Don’t be surprised if I pitch it to you out of the blue. 🙂