Today, mobile startup Skydeck is coming out of beta with a serious set of features that bridges cell phones and the Web, and a serious business model to boot. Up until now, Skydeck’s beta took data from your cell phone bill to show you what your real social network looks like based on who you call the most.
Now it is offering a service that syncs what happens on your phone to the Web, listing all of your contacts, received calls, missed calls, voicemails, and text messages. You can listen to your voicemails from your browser or, better yet, read a transcribed version of each voicemail (via SpinVox). Since it is online, you can also search all of your voicemails and text messages. And you can reply to messages from your browser, with all the calls appearing to come from your cell phone number. It works best on Blackberry and Android phones (although most of the features work on nearly any phone), and costs $9.95 a month.
In order to do the voicemail transcription, Skydeck actually takes over your voicemail (with your permission). Calls from your browser are free to other Skydeck members, or 3 cents a minute throughout the U.S. I want this service, but I’m not sure I want to pay $9.95 a month. Would you?
Skydeck raised $3 million last September, and CEO Jason Devitt previously founded Vindigo. Here is a video, in which he demos the new features.
Doesn’t dashwire do a lot of this already… for free?
Besides the calling over the browser?
Holden, the premium features include Internet calling and voicemail transcription. Dashwire does not offer the first and charges for the second.
Callwave does voice mail transcription for free….
http://www.call....1&os=Win32
which is what dashwire does there voicemail transcriptions through.
The only thing dashwire doesn’t do is internet calling… I just don’t see how skydeck is worth 9.95 when you can get virtually the same thing for free on dashwire
But hey, at least they have a business model, welcome to web 3.0
That’s just a promotion. Here’s the regular rate for the Blackberry:
http://www.call...rryService.aspx
Well the Android client does not work..well the service does not seem to work at all…
To summarize it, too much of an entry hurdle, negative experience.
Skydeck = fail
Well, here we go again. Another “bridging” application. Well best of luck to them.
http://stuckinf...es.blogspot.com
Nice work Skydeck. I like the additions a lot, and the fact that it brings my cell phone to the place where I do most of my communicatons during the day, my PC.
Still on free version, but I dig being able to easily send SMS from the same place where I’m looking at all my calls and contacts … and one tab away my emails (and where I typically remember I need to get back to someone).
For premium calls what shows up in caller id?
Except for the searching and transcribing, my phone–my piece of crap phone, mind you–already does all this. Who isn’t sitting at their computer with their phone in their pocket?
woops
way to much money for this application to gain any traction.
It´s a fantastic new to know this aplication for us, furhermore if you are abroad and wish to speak with your family.
Hmm…I see a lot of (impressive) features but I can’t see what the benefit is.
They’re fixing a problem which isn’t broken. The way I do all this stuff now works fine. But then again, I guess that’s what people said about text messages (why would I text if I can just call?).
One suggestion for they’re business model: may want to offer some sort of free account (like on Jott) for people to try it, and then ask them to upgrade later.
Brian
StartBreakingFree.com
I’ve been using YouMail.com for a while now. Similar service, but not as expensive.
Cool features, what’s the benefit? {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/A8RtAqEhPa_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”Cool features, what’s the benefit? ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/LfQBQbDSeX”}}}
This is awesome! I’ve been using Skydeck already and thought how they made use of my phone activity was terrific…but this update to the application is HUGE. I think the concept of merging VOIP and my cell phone is simple but powerful…A lot of individuals who use their cell phone for business can really benefit from a product like this. Count me in that bunch. Searchable voice mail is awesome too, especially with limits on how many voice mails your system can save. $9.95 per month isn’t bad at all, especially seeing as though my SMS plan costs me $20 a month alone…They mention that it’s sort of like a CRM “for the rest of us”… Most people don’t use a good CRM system — I use one for work and have been wanting one for my personal life for the longest time. Now I can note down that Lisa’s going to Mexico in March and Joe’s getting married in August… For anyone who appreciates noting the small details about friends that most people forget, this is a life saver! Great job Skydeck team.
Kenny – if you want CRM for your social life, you should check out Socialfly. It plugs into your Facebook account and lets you write notes, prioritize people, etc. We’re adding new features all the time and it’s free.
http://www.social-fly.com
Nick
damn this looks really good – 9.95 not bad I guess – I am traveling soon too might be good – wonder if you can receive calls too?
Erick, I’m in the same boat as you. I think its an awesome service, but I don’t think I would ever pay $9.95. Plus, I’d hate having yet another tab always open…I’ve already got my work email, my personal email, my calendar.
Come to think of it, do they offer any integration with email so that I only have to have one tab open?
Regardless, I think I’ll check out Dashwire to see how that stacks up.
I also see a lot of (impressive) features but I can’t see what the benefit is
i don’t like the idea of having them online
http://cashcratereview.com
For some reason I can’t sign up – has anyone else been able to today?
IPhone already stores text messages and voice mails.
Otherwise, I agree with the video comment.
Great new set of features from Skydeck {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/dToFYPMFO3_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”Great new set of features from Skydeck ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/kzRXDoA4DH”}}}
Kevin, that’s a really well informed question.
We have a lot of respect for Ribbit, but it’s a platform for building telephony applications. Ribbit’s end-user apps are mainly demonstrations of what you can do with Ribbit’s technology. Ribbit Mobile is similar to Skydeck, but it only knows about calls that are handled by Ribbit (outbound calls from the web and incoming calls that are forwarded to Ribbit). It has no support for text messaging either. Only Skydeck can keep track of all of your calls, all of your text messages, and all of your voicemails.
Our customers are people who live and die by their cell phone: lawyers, consultants, realtors, salespeople, biz dev, recruiters, Hollywood agents, plumbers, contractors. ‘Prosumers’ if you like, not enterprise users.
Thanks for the comment
Jason
Excellent Jason, that’s exactly what I wanted to hear from you. Go skydeck!
By the way, we are willing to help if and when you are ready to make a move on Brazil’s 145 million (and growing) cell phone users market. That’s a lot of call data locked down by mobile operators that needs to be released…
At YourNurseIsOn.com we use the IntelliBlast Internet communications system to power our Nursing Shift Fullfillment System. It allows us to instantly contact our client’s available nurses and immediately confirm them for open shifts via 2-way text, email and phone communication. More industrial but very effective. It is at IntelliBlast.com or see our info at http://tinyurl.com/7qfsd7
To those guys who say they won’t pay 9.95/m for a service that is very useful, I hope one day you will be able to afford that staggering price. To skydeck, whatever you do don’t offer these jokers a free trial since they will obviously never pay anyways. Wow, 9.95/m way too much…wow! Why do you bother looking at this site since your mission seems to be to destroy innovation?
Woe U.R.Cheep, well said. People have forgotten that in the ol’ days, people would actually pay for products they found useful. Suddenly, a web startup with a solid business model comes around and folks are shocked. My my how Google spoiled us.
Its a crowded market for Voicemail transcription – Phonetag, Jott, CallWave, Spinvox, MessageSling, …
I thought SkyDeck was doing something different with parsing your call/text usage. But instead they decided to join the rest at the same price point even. I guess there was no money in their original idea.
James, voicemail transcription is just one feature in a service that has expanded dramatically from the original version.
Jesus…looks like the company hired some people to drop off some positive feedback… it’s just odd everyone praising them when the service doesn’t even work…wtf. Tried Android.. nothing happens STUCK… so wtf is up with all that praise… besides way too little information…
This entire things smells a bit fishy to me…. reaaly fishy….
I haven’t tried Skydeck, but it looks very slick and I do see them solving a real problem — data management. Well done. Harvesting the call logs realtime like that across multiple platforms is fairly complex, so well executed.
The only part I don’t fully understand is if SkyDeck is aimed at mobile “Prosumers” who “live and die” by their cell phones, why make a web client that’s best attributes are only accessible via desktop?
Good luck….
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You give them your credentials to log into your site then they scrape it and put it together in a pdf format for you to view easily.
Skydeck can draw data in real time from your handset if you have a Blackberry or Android phone (with Windows Mobile coming soon) OR from your cell phone account if you do not. Skydeck can take over your voicemail (with voicemail transcription), offer Internet calling (with your own cell phone number presented in caller ID) and text messaging from Skydeck.com no matter what kind of phone you have.
We do not offer a PDF of anything, Holden.
You did at one point in time, you could view your calls and what not in PDF format… I do know I got it off of your site (have the files).
I haven’t used your service in a while though so that probably changed.
Does skydeck actually pull the SMS’s that are already archived on a Blackberry or does it only archive new incoming and outgoing messages?
I ask because there are currently services such as dexrex.com that will take your Blackberry SMS but only once the application is installed.