ROK Talk With Everyone

This week’s Application of the Week is from a frequent topic here at SMStextnews – those folks at ROK Entertainment Group. This week we took a look at ROK Talk, the company’s latest application to help make organizing conference calling quick and easy, directly on your mobile phone. We had the opportunity to get in on the beta test of this new S60 3rd Edition version, and a few of our Application of the Week panelists were able to give ROK Talk a run for its money.

ROK Talk installs with a simple download from a mobile web link. I opened the link and was able to download and install the application on my N95 very easily. Setup is a breeze, simply asking first if you have your own vCard stored in the phone. If not, you enter some details and choose an internet access point. The application politely asked for permission to send a standard SMS for setup, and then it was ready to rock and roll (no pun intended).

The main screen is really simple, with a prompt asking if you’d like to setup a conference call. Once you confirm, you’re taken to your phone’s internal phonebook in a checkbox-format, so that you can scroll through and choose the contacts that need to be part of the call. A search box is included to make navigating through large contacts lists easy. Once you’ve chosen your attendees, you can decide whether to start the conference immediately, or schedule it for later. There is also an option to save several regular attendees as a ‘group’ for quick selection in the future.

Scheduling a call in advance allows you to send a reminder to each invitee with the reason for the call, along with time, date, and approximated duration. I like this, as it eliminates the extra step of the invitees wanting to know why they’re being invited to the call, and roughly how long they can expect the call to last. I found these small details to be very polite and a great touch to the application.

Here’s a few screenshots, but as you can see, the application is very straightforward and simple to use, without overloading you with options.


There are only a few options to worry about:

We also had Patrick and Jonathan offer some feedback on the application:

1. How easy was it to get started with this application? (Ease of
download/signup/installation)
Jonathan: Took a couple of attempts to install. Handset
installation message didn’t appear the first time.
Took several attempts to setup account – stuck on ‘waiting for server’
message.

Patrick: Very easy, just a simple download and away it went.

2. How easy was the application to use?
Jonathan: I found ROK Talk quite flaky. Several call set up attempts failed & these
failures necessitated exiting & relaunching the application before a
successful call setup could be made.

Patrick: The only problem I had was the fact that some of my contacts are stored without the international dialing code, so I tried to invite them into a conference and ROK Talk couldn’t seem to find them, however it just left me on hold and didn’t let me know that they couldn’t be found (I waited about 1-2 minutes).

3. What I liked about ROK.
Jonathan: Ability to make instant or scheduled conference calls from my handset.

Patrick: The ease of use and the fact that this gives me the ability to have a conference call just by pushing a few buttons – I like the fact that there’s no login or sign up to do it, no different numbers to remember etc.

4. What I didn’t like about ROK.
Jonathan: The app seemed very slow, even for an S60 app.
The Help menus don’t work.

Patrick: The hold music – I had an Elton John ‘live album playing!
The voiceover – just a bit weird

5. The best feature is…
Jonathan: Conference calls on the go.

Patrick: Ease of use

6. Other comments
Jonathan: Could be big! Needs to be as reliable as other conferencing products.

7. Would I recommend this to a friend/colleague?
Jonathan: Possibly – if I could be convinced it is reliable.

Patrick: Absolutely

If you’re one to be setting up conference calls constantly, or needing to keep in touch with groups of people, ROK Talk could be a great solution for you. It’s currently in beta, but you can apply to be included in the beta by visiting www.ROKTalk.com and signing up.