A not-so-dumb cluck

We all know how frustrating it is when you want to insert the sound of a rim shot or a clucking chicken into a phone call and just don't have a convenient way to do so. Well, problem solved.

PhoneBites, a San Francisco start-up, has created a headset that lets you slip any of 10 sounds into a cellphone call at will. In addition to the rim shot and clucking chicken, the RAZZ headset (price: $19.95), features a crying baby, a moan, a giddy laugh and the all-important fart.

In an instant car-pool survey of three tech-savvy 15-year-old girls, we found 33.3% thought it was "cool," 33.3% thought it was "weird" and 33.3% said "huh?"

After conducting presumaby more research into the matter than I, three venture capital firms have given the company $3 million to develop a downloadable "suite of interactive content and voice-productivity applications." The benefactors are Garage Technology Ventures, Cardinal Venture Capital and the Siemens Mobile Acceleration.

While most of us can ad-lib a pretty decent cluck without elaborate technical assistance, this technology looks to have legs as another pipeline for selling consumable audio (and perhaps other products like games) to the same people who buy $2 ringtones.

Personally, I am not going for canned sound effects. Any bodily sounds you hear from me will be strictly live productions.