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Bobby Travis

This is a post by Bobby Travis, who wrote with me at 40Tech from 2009 through 2012. Bobby has since moved on to bigger and better things, but I've left all of his great contributions up on the site. - Evan

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I used to love my FRS. I didn’t have to pay for anything; I could talk to people a fair distance away — and it always reminded me of playing with walkie talkies as a kid. Good times. Well, those days are gone. The iPhone/Android app HeyTell has put the proverbial smackdown on my FRS use — when it comes to other HeyTell users, anyway.

HeyTell basically turns your Android, iPhone, or iPod Touch into a world-wide walkie talkie. Pull up another HeyTell user from your contact list, press the big, fat button, and start talking. Your message will be recorded until you let off the button, and then sent to your contact. On their end, they will get a push notification of your message, and can respond to you in kind — from anywhere they have a 3G or WiFi connection.

This may sound like a novelty to you, but it is actually very useful. Consider this:

• You’re busy driving, but you just remembered something extremely important to tell your husband/wife, or business partner.
• It’s long distance. You don’t have the time or ability to open up something like Skype — or maybe you just don’t have a Skype Out account.
• You can’t text the person — texting and driving is stupid! Dangerous and stupid. People die.
• HeyTell to the rescue! Your husband/wife or business partner has an iDevice or Android phone — all you have to do is (wait for a light), fire up the app, pull the contact and press that big button to say what you have to say.
• If your partner needs to talk about this thing you remembered, you can continue the conversation without texting or long distance charges, and in relative safety.

HeyTell messages, according to the developers, are actually faster than SMS. Data usage is very low, costing you no more than it would to send an email. You can favourite messages, as well, and even export your own messages to Facebook or email.

Another nice feature of HeyTell is the selectable geolocation option. You can show your contact where you are, and you can see their location — but only if both of you are actually sending messages from the Map screen. There is no accidental “here I am” with HeyTell; sharing your location is a conscious choice.

Further privacy options include: three ways to control how people can contact you, contact blocking, SSL encryption on broadcasts, full functionality without sharing your personal information with contacts.

Further features include: earpiece and speakerphone capability, connect to Facebook to grab your Facebook contacts, twice the frequency range of a cell phone call, in-app purchases for fun plugins like group messaging and voice changer (including your own personal auto-tuner), and more.

HeyTell works great as an FRS/walkie talkie (provided you have signal, of course), a voice messaging service, or an intercom device. I’ve been playing with it a bit, and I’m liking it. I would like to see a few  more features, though, like the option to press once to talk and again to disengage, as opposed to push and hold to talk; or maybe some other recording options; or a way to connect with phones that can’t use HeyTell. I would love to see this service become more widespread — at the very least, it might help relieve the pain in my butt that is the cost of text messaging data!

What are your thoughts on HeyTell? Would you use it?