TeamSpinvox from http://spinvoxadventurers.vox.com/

The RAAM – aka ‘The Race Across America‘ – is known as “THE WORLD’S TOUGHEST BIKE RACE” and they are not kidding!

This year’s event, the 28th in it’s history so far, brough together 50 solo and team riders to cycle the grueling 3,000 mile ride from California to Maryland. Our glorious leader, Christina Domecq – along her racing partner, Ian Rolls – set off on this epic journey a little over eight days ago… and today? They finished!

Not only that, but with an average speed of 15.67mph Christina and Ian came first in the mixed doubles division.

Obviously, being awesome SpinVox evangelists en route – they blogged the whole thing on the move, the latest post reads a little something like this:

“We set our sights on conquering RAAM this year and we did it! In the last week we have ridden 3,021 miles across 14 states and 53 cities – a true testament to the achievement that is possible through fortitude, commitment and the power of a strong, dedicated team. We will carry with us many memories from our time riding across America – from the challenges such as the soaring climbs, fast flats, scorching temperatures, bike spills, and rain – to the incredibly inspiring encounters we have had with the other riders and teams and the fantastic warmth and generosity of spirit of the communities we rode through. But the biggest take away from this experience will be the wonderful opportunity to have achieved the seemingly impossible– they don’t call it the world’s toughest bike race for nothing! – with a team in which we all truly believe anything is possible if you put your mind to it. And if you continue to set your sights higher and higher you can really surprise yourself with what you are able to achieve!

Many thanks to all of our supporters throughout the race, your well wishes were greatly appreciated! And, thanks too to our crew who kept each day running smoothly, and to the RAAM organizers for putting on such a well-managed event.

For those wanting to get a glimpse into what the last eight days have been like for the SpinVox Adventurers, stay tuned to this site in the coming days for behind-the-scenes and on-the-road photos. You won’t want to miss these!”

I think I can speak for all of us when I say: “Congratulations SpinVox Adventurers – Well Done!”

You can read the rest of the Adventure – spoken through SpinVox – over on SpinVox Adventurers.

I’m just going to cycle to the shops, I may be some time…

Count the arrows. Go on, count them!

1, 2, 3… Keep counting… 11, 12, 13. Yup. That’s right THIRTEEN countries in Latin America.

Today, at long last, SpinVox can proudly announce that we are deploying as a network service across ALL of Telefonica’s customer base for the ENTIRE region!

That’s right, SpinVox is rolling out in… *Drum Roll Please*

Argentina; Colombia; Ecuador; El Salvador; Guatemala; Mexico; Nicaragua; Panama; Peru; Uruguay and Venezuela will offer the service as will Vivo, Telefónica’s joint venture with Portugal Telecom in Brazil.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand breathe.

Without sounding like we’re blowing our on trumpets or anything but… this deal is HUGE. Landmark even.
It’s the kind of deal that demonstrates the sort of Tier 1 Carrier-grade capability that only SpinVox can provide and that really is something worth writing home about.

Gazillions of users. Gazillions I tell you!

COME ON!

As promised last week, here we have another Twitter / SpinVox-themed blog post for your consumption.

We’ve talked about this before but, what with our recent press release around the uptake we’ve seen in Tweets being spoken through SpinVox I thought I’d add another quick ‘How to’ guide to our blogging collection on how to speak your updates to twitter…

This is open to anyone in the UK, Canada or the US – ready?

Step 1) Get yourself to http://ping.fm/signup/spinvox
Hint: It looks like this:

Step 2) Go through the oh so simple (five step) signup process.
(not forgetting to add Twitter to your dashboard)

Step 3) Dial the number you get given at the end and then you’re ready to…  PING THROUGH SPINVOX!

It’s that easy, a monkey could do it

Give it a go, you might like the results…

In the first of what will no doubt eventually turn out to be many, many Twitter related SpinVox blog posts – today I want to talk about language.
More specifically, Twitter language.

See SpinVox has this thing called a ‘Voxgeist’, which is basically a list of words that are being uttered right now. Words of the moment if you will. We can use this (and have been using this) to monitor trends, spot regional patterns and most interestingly, detect new words and phrases in around certain areas of interest.

The past few weeks I’ve been helping out on the lookout for new words that have slowly crept into the Voxgeist in around all things Twitter. What with our Ping.fm integration gaining new users week on week, it was only a matter of time before we started seeing super random words and phrases pop up in our virtual lexicon.

Here’s ten of the best:

1. Hashtag (noun): a way of marking an event or common theme e.g. “I’m off to Mobile Geeks of London #MGoL” (also – see #FollowFriday)

2. #FollowFriday (term): a weekly event, where you recommend your favourite Twitterers to your followers.

3. Dabr (noun): a mobile web interface for Twitter.

4. Twetiquette (term): appropriate behavior when using Twitter.

5. Twitpoll (noun): a survey/question posed on Twitter, often for research. Sometimes just for fun: e.g.: “Which shoes should I buy?”

6. Tweetdeck (noun): one of the most popular desktop interfaces for Twitter.

7. Twhirl (noun): a smaller, less intrusive desktop interface for Twitter

8. Mashable Effect (term): the result of @mashable, aka Pete Cashmore, founder of Mashable.com, re-tweeting your site/blog address and causing it to overload with web traffic.

9. Tweetup (noun): a meeting organised on Twitter.

10. Twestival (noun): a charity event organised using Twitter

Obviously I can’t let this blog post go by without a blatant plug of our Ping through SpinVox service…  Sign up is easy and, once complete, you can speak your tweets freely from wherever you have a phone signal!