How did you do that voice sending thing to me?

Ha-ha... I'll tell you when I see you again, said I rather craftily. That was the gist of my conversation with an old friend who I had not seen for over a year.

I had sent her a voice short message or voice SMS - not the same as a voice mail - to remind her of just that fact and she called me about it.

What's a voice short message service? Before I tell you that, do you remember my technology challenge from last year?

Well, it seems to me that voice sms fulfills a big part of that same technological gap in one of those life threatening or emergency situations that one often inadvertently finds one's self in sometimes.

One of my fixed wireless phone providers introduced such a service recently. All you have to do is put a '*' symbol before the number you wish to dial and just record your voice message after the tone beeps.

The voice message ends when your call credit finishes or you hang up. Talk of the ultimate voice recording machine!

Now, if only all the phone networks would have it as standard, along with video capabilities...

I understand that two twits on Twitter can now tweet to each other with both voice and text separately. Wow!

There is a caveat though in this seemingly magical voice throwing technological advancement. The receiver pays a fee - as much as the voice sms sender - in order to retrieve the message.

Of course, that fee would probably disappear after a while, especially when the service becomes very popular - very soon, I hope.

The voice clarity is excellent because the recording is done directly on the service provider's server network, which must be dialed in order to retrieve the message.

Do you know the best part? The service provider sends you an sms - or short message service or text message - whenever the receiver first dials in and listens to your voice recording!

To me, that is real mobile communication: no need to waste money and time trying unsuccessfully to reach a switched off or low-battery powered cell phone - whether GSM or CDMA - on any digital or electronic telephone network.

Of course, there is a little caveat: the receiver pays to retrieve the voice SMS after dialing the number sent by the service provider by way of a text message.

The best part is that the sender of the voice SMS is sent a text message as soon as the receiver has dialed in to retrieve the voice message, unlike ordinary text messaging! Talk about a great feedback!

As with any newly introduced technology, I guess that as more people avail themselves of this cutting edge newbie, the receiver shall get the voice message as free of charge as a simple text message.

With Twitter now in the loop for a new round of funding worth about $100 million - making it worth a whopping $1 billion in the process, I hear - maybe we will get not only good text twits, better phone call tweets, and the best video thrills too...