Chris Koehncke blog author (chriskranky.com) and Dean Bubley (disruptivewireless.com) were late one evening discussing the topic of contextual communications, namely about how our computers could be doing more to help in our collaborative communications. While we have many tools today to communicate over the Internet, programs like Skype, Google Voice and numerous chat services, they really aren't all that intelligent
Dean imagined you wearing a FitBit and your computer sending a slight vibration to you during a conversation if you had been "talking too much." Chris had recently heard an industry speaker who denoted that while a typical sales person spoke 80% of the time in a conversation that top performing sales people only talked about 50% of the time. Putting the two topics together, Chris wondered whether a simple WebRTC powered single web page could be a training tool to those trying to "listen more and talk less."
Working with the great folks at &yet and particularly developer Philipp "fippo" Hancke, Chris cajoled them into creating the underlying algorithm to detect when someone is talking or listening. Our offices have various background noises and this web application automatically and intelligently determines when you are speaking or talking.
In practice, the application is simple, load up this page before you start a normal phone call (using your desktop or mobile phone), press the call button as you begin your call and the application continually calculates your talk/listen ratio. Most of us are all guilty of "talking too much" and this basic but handy tool provides you a simple to use training application for your daily office usage.