This sounds like a good idea. It would be much easier to implement if we don’t have to translate a voice into a command. Basically, the sound quality on a phone really sucks.
I can imagine a plugin to an IM client that does this sort of thing. It would have to tell the asked user what people have been asking, or limit the number of requests from a user, or something. The privacy would have to be controlled by the asked. A sweet use for this would be to ask “What does Erik want for Christmas” to which it responds with a Froogle wishlist or Amazon wishlist (or thinkgeek). If it involved actual phone lines, I wouldn’t be able to own one, since I only have a cell.
Crazy thought:
I call up the co-op, it picks up and asks me to log in with my 43things user/pass (engunneer becomes 364866337) and ask a question via a menu niterface, where it reads results back to me. The extension of this is that people on the website could ask, then the phone interface would just log in as me and ask.
I have no idea how this would scale. One request would take about a minute by phone, so that limits to 60 requests/hour. Another option would be to get a Skype phone number, and a program that redirects the call onto a cluster of computer. When there are too many calls, add more computers.
In short: me buying an answering machine: not going to happen; Me calling the 43things machine, could be useful.
VoIP is our friend.
