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Have you ever received the 15 minute reminder from Outlook that you are scheduled to participate in a conference call, only to close the reminder and work through the start of the call? This can be a disaster if the call is with a potential client, the head of your company or anyone else who can impact your personal and/or business life.

 

One entrepreneur has experienced much of the same and decided it was time to do something about. Thus was born PoketyPoke. CSO of Ditech Networks and founder and former CEO of PhoneTag, James Siminoff (News - Alert), recently shared the background in his blog, hitting on his desire to avoid medication to control his constant distractions.

 

Siminoff compares PoketyPoke to Tripit for conference calls. When you sign up for the service, you simply forward any free form e-mail or calendar invite. When the time of the conference call arrives, PoketyPoke will call you and bridge you into the call.

By completing all of the deep dialing, conference call participants do not have to remember bridge pins, numbers or any other information about the call – including the time. The new service was announced on TechCrunch and the response, according to Siminoff, has been phenomenal.

To add to its benefits, PoketyPoke does more than make sure you get on that important conference call. It also allows you to record and transcribe calls. PoketyPoke relies on the PhoneTag/Simulscribe voice-to-text transcription service Ditech Networks (News - Alert) licensed exclusively for $17 million.

PoketyPoke is designed to showcase some of the Ditech Networks APIs, which could actually be used to build the feature directly into conference call services. On the backend, the services uses a combination of automation and humans to be sure the calls get through.

PoketyPoke can automatically dial through the major conference call systems, but if a problem is encountered, the call is kicked to a human operator to ensure the call is a success. This process trains the system so the next time PoketyPoke encounters the same system, it should be able to handle it automatically.

This new service should make conference calls easier to join and easier to remember. Even better, the first 100 people to sign up at the website will be invited into the private beta.

As for the name? According to Siminoff, AdHearsion founder Jay Phillips was once waiting for Siminoff on a conference call – who was late. Phillips shot a note to Siminoff, “Pokety poke we are on the call.” And, the new name was born.