Mobile Voice 'Texting' With Pana.ma

Have you ever gotten irritated over how hard it is to express yourself in a text message or 140 character "tweet"—especially when you're sending it from a cell phone? Cell phones do have this ability to do something called "voice", after all.

If that's the case, then Pana.ma might sense to you. The new free app for the iPhone provides free text and voice messaging, both between individuals and as part of a public timeline like Twitter's. 

Pana.ma is like playing voicemail tag, or using a walkie-talkie to communicate with someone. But the whole conversation is preserved, and can be played back from your iPhone.  And the public timeline messages are public, so anyone can see them, just like in the Twitter stream—except conversations around a public post are preserved as conversations.

So, why use Pana.ma instead of text or just calling? On the public side, it's like having a party line with everyone who has an iPhone (and soon, everyone with an Android phone).  Start a conversation about a topic, and anyone who's interested can chime in on the public timeline—and you can listen to all the responses, played one after another.

On the private side, Pana.ma offers an advantage over phone calls and voice mail in that it's free to send the voice message if you're near a WiFi hotspot or if you have unlimited data.  And unlike when you leave a voicemail, there's a recording of what you've sent there in the message history.

Panama would be a lot more useful if you could easily push your messages to other social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, as you can with Cinch.  Matt Kweder, community manager for Pana.ma said that this "cross-posting" capability is in testing now, and will be out shortly—as soon as Pana.ma can get it past Apple's app screening.