The good news these days is that we have lot of ways to communicate with each other. Unfortunately for most of us all our communications end up in different buckets depending the the technology in use (email here, voice mail there, IMs and twitters in assorted piles)—the technology controls and constrains how you get to use it. (Assembling them is one of the major patches that unified communication technology tries to put on top of them all.)

Each type (IM, live voice, voice mail, PTT, email) has different and valuable properties. But in addition to the problem  of separate data silos, those useful properties also seem to get isolated to one type, mostly because of the particular technology used.

At RebelVox, we think one platform/application/protocol is enough—IF it is technically capable of all of the best properties of all of the common communication protocols. We think it should work exactly the way a user wants at any given moment, so it should embody all of the best features.

This week, let’s talk about RebelVox and the best attributes of email: what if voice could be managed exactly like email?

What is so great about email? Lots.

• You just hit send and you know it will be reliably delivered.
• It works on the open internet with any network access you have at the moment—use is not isolated to a special network.
• You can manage your email on any device—your computer, someone else’s computer, a phone, etc—it’s not tied to a particular device.
• You can work with it offline—on a plane, for example—and know it will be delivered as soon as possible.
• You don’t have to wait for anything to write and email; no waiting for network, signaling (ringing), or someone’s attention.
• You don’t have to interrupt someone to send them an email; and incoming emails don’t demand your attention (like a ringing phone) so you can pay attention precisely when you want. (This is because you know that you will not miss anything—it is reliable.)
• You can communicate with a group of people just as easily as an individual knowing that each of them will get the conversation with the whole group just exactly when they want to.

What if  your voice communications (live, messages, and voice chat) all worked just like that? You could pay attention if  you want, or not, knowing you would get everything in any case. Voice like this can be seamlessly integrated into email systems; or run as a highly useful standalone application. Either way, it brings the best attributes of voice  and email communications together in one system.

PS. Later we’ll talk about instant messaging and push-to-talk benefits that also exist in the same system.