I talked to a machine this afternoon.

At my bidding, it summarized Friday's debacle on Wall Street, updated me on the Lakers-Timberwolves basketball game in progress, and gave me the weather report in Monterey.

Not sure if I should be happy with this or disturbed by it, I asked the machine that answered my phone call what I was going to have for dinner. When it politely requested that I repeat the question, I felt better and hung up the phone.

Welcome to the world of voice portals. That's the new catch-all name for services that allow you to call the Internet directly, essentially bypassing your computer. That's right. You speak to the Internet via your phone, without all those pictures you get on the web.

Thanks to improvements in voice recognition technology, we are now able to ask for and receive stock quotes, the weather forecast, sports scores, traffic updates, and directions to a restaurant. over the phone -- in real time. The voice on the other end, alternating between a pre-recording and a voice-synthesis program, answers your requests and asks if you have any others at this time.

SCIENCE FICTION?

This may sound like science-fiction, but engineers at start ups such as TellMe Networks, TelSurf, Audiopoint, and Quack.com are working on voice portals right now. TellMe, with more than $50 million in funding and a management team that includes veterans from the browser wars, began limited test-marketing April 10. Quack.com is already up and running. Call 1-800-73QUACK (1-800-737-8225) to check it out for yourself.

Will consumers vote for the voice portal with their time and money or is it simply the hyped story of the moment, as videophones and interactive television were before it? Raising a few marketing questions should give us insight into this debate.

MARKETING QUESTIONS

1) How compatible is using the new service with existing behavior? This seems obvious enough. Speaking certainly comes more naturally than, say, typing. Put another way, imagine how many more people in the US have phones than have computers. Then imagine how easily we talk about ‘calling 411 for information'. In fact, when we say, "Just call information", we are essentially personifying the function voice portals seek to expand on.

On the other hand, using a voice portal is not the same as talking to a real person. Rather, it is comparable to writing characters on a Palm Pilot: when the user stays within certain parameters the product simply works better. As long as people do not perceive these restrictions as too tight, however, this potential obstacle should be easily overcome. Plus, the technology behind voice portals should be constantly improving.

2) Do people want what the new service offers? The premise behind voice portals so far seems to be that they present a practical way to request and acquire fact-based information. In other words, imagine ‘411 on steroids' or ‘an Ask Jeeves you talk to'.

It doesn't require too great a leap of faith to imagine the usefulness of this, especially in our increasingly information driven society. Another element of this discussion, which could easily merit a separate article, is pricing. People can want what a product or service offers, but not enough to pay the asking price. Iridium comes to mind.

Quack.com deals with this issue - and significantly increases its triability - by being free. You call a toll-free number and then listen to a short commercial while the computer retrieves your information. When I called Quack.com earlier today all the ads featured Quack.com.

3) How well are other services currently meeting this demand? Most would agree the Internet does a good job of providing quick access to fact-based information, among other things. On the other hand, people do not always have access to the Internet, at least not yet. Plus, a lot of people don't have access to the Internet at all.

Therefore, voice portals satisfy the need people have for quick access to fact-based information at times when - and in places where - they are unable or would prefer not to connect to the Internet by traditional means.

A RADICAL CHANGE MAY BE NEAR

If this need exists in large enough numbers, if engineers are able to continue improving the technology, and if marketers properly position voice portals to meet this need -- and there is every indication that each of these will happen -- then we could possibly be in the early stages of a radical change in how the Internet is perceived and used.

Afterall, if a machine can understand what I'm asking and answer my questions over the phone, it won't be long before the images I see on the web start talking back to me as well.