Dan Karron@UCBVAX.BERKELEY.EDU (06/13/91)
Here is a neat item from the New York Times Business Section, Page D1 from Wednesday, June 12. I would like to see the enabeling technology on the new sgi boxes. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Any Messages? Now get them all By Andrew Pollack. San Francisco, June 11. The last decade has seen the spread of many new ways to send messages- electronic mail, voice mail, facsimilie, cellular telephone, pageing. It has never been so easy to stay in touch. Now the problem is retrieving all those message. The manager on the road might have to call one number for voice mail, log on to a computer for electronic mail and call a secretary for faxes. Otherwise, messages that travel half way around the world in seconds could sit unnoticed in an office for days. Many companies now aim to clean up this message clutter by tying all these communications channels together, allowing them to be checked with one call. A Computer Voice With these new systems, executives calling into their voice mail boxe for recorded messages can also learn that a computer message, or electronic mail, is waiting, and in some cases have a synthesized computer voice read it over the phone. Other systems now appearing allow people to punch a telephone keypad to have faxes that have arrived at their offices forwarded to a fax machine at their location. And pagers can relay voice messages and electronic mail messages instantly. Come companies are developing ways to link just two systems. Others are working on more comprehensive approaches. The makers of voice mail systems to record telephone messages by computer, are already adding electronic mail and fax capabilities. The Octel Communications Corporations of Milpitas, Ca, ... introduced a system in April that also alerts users to electronic mail and allow users to retrieve faxes. The systems cost... 15K to 30K. ... The key to integration is storing messages in electronic form. Electronic mail messages, ... ,are already in that form. Also, voice mail messages can be stored in that form. ------- This is a long piece, and if anyone wants a photocopy, I will try to mail it to you. Cheers! dan. . | karron@nyu.edu (e-mail alias ) Dan Karron, Research Associate | | Phone: 212 263 5210 Fax: 212 263 7190 New York University Medical Center | | 560 First Avenue Digital Pager <1> (212) 397 9330 | | New York, New York 10016 <2> 10896 <3> <your-number-here> |