Thanks for posting this.

What we're doing with Radio Handi is really pretty simple from a user's standpoint. The service enables people to create meeting places for groups of friends, their club, or affinity group, and then to communicate via whatever mix of media work for them (email, SMS, live voice). At first, it may seem muddled, but different modes of communication work best for different things.

If I want to blast out this week's practice schedule for a swim team, email probably works best for that, so I'll fire a message to xyzswimteam@radiohandi.com. If I am stuck in traffic, and need to tell everyone I'll be delayed an hour, a voice mail broadcast is a good option. If I need to get everyone on the line for a meeting, then a conference call is a good idea. These are all different versions of group communication, it's just that different media work better depending on whether you need immediate feedback, or are sending a fire-and-forget message. incidentally, and importantly, we're leveraging services that are already built in to most mobile phones (live voice, SMS, email).

The best way to look at this is that it creates something akin to a plaza where people can meet and talk live (conference call), or tack a note on a message board (voice mail, email or text)

So thanks again for pointing people our way. We're just getting started with this, so this should be humming along pretty nicely later this summer.

Brian McConnell, Open Communication Systems

PS – points about the the profiles, etc are well-taken. VoIP systems are still pretty bleeding edge. our main priority now is making sure the phone/sms systems don't break. we did this on a pretty tight budget, so we couldn't get everything done perfectly on the first pass.