The human voice on the Net just got a little louder.

On Monday, search engine Excite@Home and start-up Lipstream launched Excite Voice Chat, a service that brings the human voice to Excite_s chat service. The company also added voicemail capability to its free email services. Consumers will run the software off a basic Web page, via an ActiveX-based browser plug-in. Instead of typing questions and answers to colleagues, they need only speak into the microphone that is now built into many PCs. "The only cost to users is [their] actual [Internet service provider] connection," said Craig Donato, Excite_s senior vice president of search, communities, and network programming. The service is supported by targeted ad banners. To participate in spoken discussions, users visit Excite_s new voice chat area and choose a chat room. The plug-in application installs and loads, and a list of people appears. To join the conversation, users simply hold down their control keys while speaking... With this new service, voice communication on the PC is as simple as visiting a Web page. Participants in the pre-launch beta version of the Excite Voice Chat rooms -- whose subjects range from age-specific groups, to movies, to cooking, to "Pillow Talk," an adult area -- like what they_ve found. Users said that while other services and software have live voice capability, this is the first one tied to a general-interest consumer service such as Excite.