“The Most Exciting iPhone App Update EVER!!”

With James Whatley away for a week on vacation I, Matt Heath, am blogging in his place. As you’d expect, we’re a hard-working crew of speech to text zealots here at SpinVox Towers but sometimes ever we’re amazed at the reaction we get out there. We’ve just been named as being behind the “most exciting iPhone app update ever” – with two exclamation marks, no less!!

Yep, Dan C at whatsoniphone was first out of the traps to try out the latest version of nFinity’s Quick Voice PRO which has just been released on App Store at 99 cents. Quick Voice PRO is the latest version of the award-winning voice recorder that instantly became a Top 100 product in Apple’s App Store when it was released in July 2008.

What’s special is that, with the new enhancement, Quick Voice PRO users will be able use their iPhones for the first time to record voice messages which will be automatically converted to text by SpinVox and sent to the email inbox of the user’s choice.

The reason is that the folks at nFinity were able to launch this product is that they have been working with SpinVox API which we pre-announced back in February for developer registration and that already has over 400 developers signed up.

Cool, huh? Dan certainly thinks so read him here

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Last week, on the same day that we launched the SpinVox Create API Programme in fact, this article appeared in the Fashion & Style section of The New York Times:

The piece itself is actually quite informative, compiling case study after case study and interview after interview with self-confessed ‘certified voicemail haters’ & ‘voicemail phobes’ alike. Some of the facts and figures presented as evidence (although not really that new to those of us here at SpinVox), are actually quite alarming:

“Research shows that people take longer to reply to voice messages than other types of communication [and also]  that over 30 percent of voice messages linger unheard for three days or longer [with] more than 20 percent of people with messages in their mailboxes “rarely even dial in” to check them”

Astonishing huh?

Since SpinVox was founded over five years ago, we’ve conducted all kinds of research into the phenomena of ‘the lost voicemail’, and found that it really is like some kind of twisted mailbox version of the Bermuda Triangle. No, really. Reading this piece on such a reputable publication as The New York Times only lends power to our elbow here at SpinVox HQ. The article goes on to say:

“By contrast, 91 percent of people under 30 respond to text messages within an hour, and they are four times more likely to respond to texts than to voice messages within minutes, according to a 2008 study for Sprint conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation. Even adults 30 and older are twice as likely to respond within minutes to a text than to a voice message, the study found.”

Twice as likely to respond to a text than to a voice message you say? That’s a pretty impressive stat which again, reinforces how bang on the money we are that voicemail to text really is one of those services that more people need in their lives. I’d go out on a limb and say that, within the next five years, listening to voicemail messages will be a thing of the past.

They say that sometimes seeing is believing, but in this case, I’d say seeing is actually hearing. So to answer the question posed by our friends at The NY Times;

“You’ve got voicemail, but do you care?”

SpinVox says: “Yes. We care.”

Addtional Reading:

Think before you SpinVox

Confidence in Communication

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As of 10am today (UK time) Skype users ALL OVER THE WORLD can have their voicemails converted into text via the magical wonder of SpinVox

WOOP WOOP!

So if you’ve got Skype, (and if you haven’t, why the hell not?)

Why not get Get SpinVox Voicemail too?!

I’ve just been handed a copy of the global press release so, if you’d like some of the more finer details, read on…

“SpinVox, the global leader in voice to content messaging and Skype, announces the availability of voicemail to text conversion for all Skype Voicemail users today. SpinVox conveniently converts voice messages to text in English, Spanish, French and German. The messages are then sent by Skype as an SMS text directly to a designated mobile phone for users to read.

Skype users can now benefit from instant ‘visible voicemail’, and never miss those important calls from friends or colleagues when they are away from Skype. Recipients of converted voicemail messages can listen to the full voice message by either signing into Skype or by calling their Skype To Go number . As well as being able to receive voicemail as text via SpinVox, Skype users may choose instead to receive voicemail notification via SMS or for free by email.

It’s easy for Skype users to set up voicemail to text from their account page, by simply registering a mobile phone number. Each voicemail to text conversion will cost €0.20/£0.17/$0.25 plus the cost of sending an SMS at standard low Skype rates. Additional SMS charges – a maximum of 3 – may apply depending on the length of the voicemail message.

All payments are made fuss-free through Skype Credit. Users have a choice to set a limit on the number of voicemail conversions received per day and to receive messages from people only in their contact list to help them manage their Skype credit. An email notification will be sent if that limit is exceeded. For more information please visit http://www.skype.com/go/voicemail-to-text.”

Awesomeness!

We’ve been working on this deal with Skype for some time now and it’s great to finally help bring SpinVox Voicemail to the masses upon masses of Skype users all over the world!

Skype have just hit publish on their blog too…  So, as I said at the start…

Skype Me Up Baby!

You’re friendly neighbourhood Social Media SpinVox Chap reporting in… How goes it readers?

I’m just plugging back in after a whirlwind tour of spreading the SpinVox gospel far and wide – taking in Nokia’s Openlab in Helsinki, the Web 2.0 Expo in New York, the Blog World Expo in Las Vegas and finally ad:tech London in… er… London!

There’s lots to catch up on before I dive back into this blogging malarky – (including some more thoughts on the whole Hierarchy of Communication thing from a few weeks ago) – but first, just a few notes and learnings from my travels to lands afar…

First up – WOW! Just WOW!

I cannot express my happiness enough to find out how well respected SpinVox was any and everywhere I went. It completely humbled me at times; meandering up to a group of bloggers (what is the collective noun for bloggers? anyone know?) and introducing myself along the lines of “Hi, I’m James Whatley, from SpinVox”…

I actually lost count of the amount of times I got back the following response: “SpinVox?! Cool! I love you guys!” ..or variations thereof.

Really, really made me smile!

One of the great things about embarking on such travels is that you finally get to put some faces to some of the names that you see bandied around daily on teh interwebz, I managed to say hi to a few of them too…

Big hellos to C T Moore, Matt Singley, Guy Kawasaki, Mark Burstiner, Brian Solis, Chrissie Brodigan, Brett Petersel, Gary Vaynerchuk and of course, one of my favourite peeps right now, Chris Brogan, (see below).

We clearly both have a love of great shirts…

As I mentioned – there’s a huge amount of correspondence I need to get through since returning. Spending nearly three weeks shaking hands with some of the best in the business can sure take it out of you!

Thanks to all, for making me (and SpinVox!) feel so darn welcome!

Watch this space – there’s more to follow soon…

JW.

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Greetings SpinVoxers,

How you doin’? Life treating you well? Gooooooood.

Just droppin’ by because I’ve got some news for you.

As you may or may not know recently we’ve been having a few problems with our Twitter through SpinVox service…

Rubbish!

Basically a couple of nasty little bugs on our side of things combined with a few ongoing API issues with Twitter meant that anyone trying to use our Social Networks through SpinVox service could only(?!) speak their posts to their Facebook and Jaiku pages.

Thusly…

Oo.. New Facebook Look!
And of course, my personal fave, Jaiku…

Lovely stuff

Well – as you may have guessed from the converted messages above – I’m extremely happy to report that we’ve finally ironed out all of the niggles, bugs and problems etc…
…aaaaaaaaand Twitter through SpinVox is now up, running and firing on all cylinders once again… YAY!

Ta da!

So what are you waiting for?!

Go and sign-up for your account on our dedicated page or, if you’re really fancy, jump straight over and install the facebook application directly and get Twittering through SpinVox today!

Oh – and I really must, must must, give some big love to everyone that helped get this sorted out -
You all ROCK!

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Nicole Scott of BnetTV gives us her take on voice-to-text, with some awesome demos too:

Nice one Nicole!

This past Sunday, May 18th, SpinVox sponsored the first ever Food 2.0 event -

Codename – “Nom Nom Nom“

(we like that)

The Food 2.0 “Nom Nom Nom” event was the first ever Masterchef-esque event for the digital world.

Featuring 24 bloggers who like to cook food, review food, bake food, blog food, fry food, grill food, mix food, photo food… Nom Nom Nom was the place to be.

Basically anyone who had a passion for all things foodie and digi (digi-food?) came together to cook a three course meal, for four people, in just under (more like just over – ahem) two and a half hours!

And boy were they competitive! Yours truly was on hand that day and I can tell you, even though there was an overall feeling of camaraderie throughout the day you could almost cut the competitive air with a knife…

…see what I did there? “Cut it with a knife?” – And it’s a cooking event?! HA! Love it!

Blogging through SpinVox was definitely the ‘order of the day’ for me too…

“This is my shopping list so I can read it later. Vine tomatoes, whole juicy cucumber, iceberg lettuce, two lemons, lots of fresh mince, need some red peppers, some kidney beans, some vegetarian mince I think. And some herbs. Some eggs.” – Spoken through SpinVox

…or maybe I should get it re-named to ‘Shopping List through SpinVox’, what do you think?

Nah. Doesn’t scan so well. Maybe not –

Anyway -
The competition for Food 2.0 is far from over.

The contestants now get judged on their overall content from the day.
So that’s foody photos, videos, blog posts… Everything!

All entries to be up by May 28th.

And hey, it’s all for a good cause too!

Keep an eye on The Official Nom Nom Nom Website for updates. More to follow here soon.

In the meantime…

Why not head over to the flickr page and feast your eyes…

(enough with the puns now please?)

…on some of the culinary treats that were made that day.

Also, keep your eye out for a very special, extremely limited…

SpinVox Speech Mobster: Chef Edition

———————–>

Bon appetite!

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There’s something up in the SpinVox Kitchen and the Mobsters want in…

What are they are up to?

So I had this super duper, uber-fantastic CTIA blog post that I was just about to hit ‘Publish’ on…

…when all of a sudden this video lands on my desk.

Brilliant.

SpinVox @ CTIA – c/o our friends at Heist Projects – Cheers!

Tony Carter, it’s over to you…

Still recovering from the madness that was CTIA in Las Vegas, (more pics and stuff to come later today), can you imagine how happy I was to wake up this morning to an email from friend of SpinVox and all round nice chap, Neil Bird, from iGadgetlife.com:

“Dude! Gadget Show! SpinVox! AWESOMENESS!“

Well – something like that anyway…

Anywhoo, Neil (the absolute star!) not only recorded the whole thing on his Sky+ (it’s the UK version of TiVo) but also uploaded it to the web for the whole world to behold!

Cheers Neil… And of course, HUGE thanks to The Gadget Show!

I don’t know – last week Radio, this week Television… Next week: The Internet!…no, wait!