BY LAURA GUEVIN
Associate Editor, INTERNET TELEPHONY

Grab Your Disguise: It's Time To Chat!

It seems like I hear new announcements about popular Web-based companies adding voice-over-IP (VoIP) offerings to their mix every day. A variety of voice integration applications are now available for popular online chat clients like ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger, and Excite@home. But let's face it: Even though the technology for real-time voice chat is beginning to reach an acceptable quality, the medium has a long way to go before it reaches the popularity of text chat. Internet Relay Chat (IRC), for example, has thousands of servers and hundreds of thousands of users -- largely because it's anonymous.

Sure, you can remain anonymous and still chat with your real voice online. You can disguise your name and your personality, and in some applications, you can even assign a graphical avatar to represent your online presence. But it's much more difficult to maintain an online persona when you're having a real-time voice conversation. Your voice is part of the essence of you, and while you can backspace and rewrite comments during a text chat, you can't take back the first thing that happens to fly out of your mouth -- no matter how awkward or ridiculous it may sound.

I've heard several folks in the telco space comment that videophones haven't taken off in popularity because people really don't want or need to see each other when they're having a phone conversation -- whether it be a private conversation or a video conference. I think the same principle can be applied to voice chat, it's too revealing to appeal to the large group of people who are online to meet strangers. But I recently uncovered a few products that aim to change that perception.

ARTICULATING IN DISGUISE
Devices that camouflage the human voice on the telephone have been popular for some time, and are commonly used for security, screening annoying calls -- or just for fun. Several companies now extend that anonymity to IP voice chat.

Creative Technology, Ltd., maker of the popular Sound Blaster sound cards, recently announced Creative VoiceChat in collaboration with MediaRing's free MediaTalk voice chat software. One of the key elements of Creative VoiceChat is VoicePersona, which enables chatters to take on one of five different voice disguises. One catch is that users must have Creative's Sound Blaster Live! card installed on their PCs, as well as the Live!Ware 3.0 upgrade. Chatters can disguise their voices to sound like a chipmunk, a member of the opposite sex, or they may choose from two disguises which morph the pitch and tone of the existing voice. Creative also boasts an online voice masquerade chat zone -- so users can feel comfortable that everyone is chatting in disguise.

The Video VoxPhone GOLD from E-Tech Canada is H.323-based VoIP software for calling and conferencing with other VoxPhone users through a PC or phone. It also offers file transfer, text chat, and the ability to leave voice e-mail, and video is optional if users have the hardware installed to support it. One of the product's features is E-Tech's proprietary VoiceFonts, which allow chatters to change the sex and age of the voice they use.

COWON System, Inc. offers the COWON Jet-VoiceMail software for recording and compressing voice mail messages to be sent as e-mail attachments. The software uses a 53:1 or 24:1 compression ratio, and Jet-VoiceMail may be used to record music, meetings, or conferences. It also offers digital voice effects and pitch control for masking or enhancing your voice. Some effects include echo, reverb, "helium voice," robot voice, and chorus.

It's not certain whether the ability to put a mask on voice chatting will have any impact on its popularity or growth. Perhaps one day there will be thousands of voice chat servers with varying themes -- and voice will take the place of text communication on the Internet. And maybe one day more people will grow accustomed to having real-time voice conversations with a chat room full of strangers. Until that time, we can all rest assured that if we're going to make fools of ourselves in an online voice chat room -- at least we can do it sounding like chipmunks.

Laura Guevin welcomes your comments at lguevin@tmcnet.com.