Texting may still be cool in the world
of BBMs and WhatsApp, but imagine a tool that lets you easily
communicate with your voice without spending a dime on the web. We
aren’t hinting at Skype, but at Croak.it – a brand new way to share your
voice over the internet.
Launched last week, Croak.it’s mantra is
simple. It lets people interact using 30 second voice notes generated
over unique URLs to share anywhere on the web. Croak.it does this
through a web app, mobile app and a bookmarklet.
Croak.it is the brainchild of two IIT
Kharagpur students, Srinivasa Teja and Protik Roychowdhury,
conceptualized back in January 2011. After launching it within campus,
the application became an instant hit, helping the two founders realize
Croak.it’s potential on the web. The fact that it all began from an
impromptu bathroom singing competition at their campus dormitory, is
either a tribute to their batchmates’ lousy voices (a croak!) or a
hat-tip to Croak.it’s amphibian ambassador. Or both.
To experience firsthand what Croak.it is all about, simply visit
http://croak.it.
Not only are you greeted by a logo that happily reminds you of Froggy
Jump, but a large button encased inside a wood-paneled ancestral radio
immediately draws your attention, inviting you to “push” it and “croak”.
We recommend doing just that, provided you have a built-in microphone
in your laptop or desktop PC.
After hitting the “croak” button, a
countdown timer informs you of the 30 second time limit – that’s all the
time you have to record a voice note. Once you finish speaking, your
brand new “croak” is saved and the console reveals a unique URL to hear
your croak or voice note. One-click buttons to copy and share your croak
on Facebook and Twitter also appear. Croak.it also lets you adjust the
pitch and tempo of your voice note – a thoughtful post-processing
feature.
Croak.it’s also available as a mobile
app on iOS and Android platforms for now, and it is simple and easy to
use as well – we tried the iPhone app and found it even simpler to use
than the existing web app.
According to its founders, Croak.it is determined to make interactions over the web simple and fast. Through its API,
Croak.it makes it easy for web developers and online businesses to
incorporate this unique voice service onto their platform. Imagine live
chat widgets on websites replaced by a “croak” button? It’s nice to have
that option.
The beauty of Croak.it is it just works
like a charm. It doesn’t promise you the moon, but it does what it aims
to do pretty darnn well, just as advertised – Push, Speak, Share. We can
see how Croak.it tries to bring the focus back on voice communication
over the web, and it can be especially useful in an environment shackled
by the constraint of written words.
Whether Croak.it will realize its
founders’ dream to “revolutionize” the way we communicate through the
web remains to be seen. But for now, it’s a useful new way of
communicating with your voice, something we haven’t done enough.
So yeah, go “Croak” some.
Presenting
the 101 most useful websites of 2012. These sites, well most of them,
solve at least one problem really well and they all have simple web
addresses (URLs) that you can memorize thus saving you a trip to Google.
