A major shift is underway in how we think about telephones. For decades, they were used solely for oneto-one, synchronous communication. The increasing use of answering machines and voice messaging, however, is shifting the public perception of telephones, thus opening a space for more innovative applications. Five years from now, some of the most interesting and popular cooperative work applications will probably use telephones as the primary means of access. This paper presents evidence that there are practical phone-based cooperative work applications and describes a set of software tools that facilitate the development of such applications.