What is it and what does it mean? Want to join the debate? Well you can!
This Friday, why not join SpinVox for a coffee and a croissant at the Social Media Cafe, London.

The Cafe itself, or The Tuttle Club (as it is often fondly referred to as), runs from 10am ’til 1pm above The Coach & Horses on Greek St.
Not far from Tottenham Court Road, (map here).

Afterwards, (once the coffee has been finished and the croissants have been munched), SpinVox will be staying on for a couple of hours to host a discussion in and around The Future of Voice.

What are we talking about?
Well…

SpinVox converts VOICE into TEXT. This much we know, but let’s examine it further.

On one side of the table you’ve got what is fundamentally, a basic utility service that every phone should come with and will one day (very soon) be as ubiquitous across handsets and networks as SMS and email.

Great stuff, but on the other, if you follow the rabbit hole a little deeper, put some meaty thinking around it, what else does it mean?
What else does ‘voice to text’ enable?

Well - SpinVox captures spoken moments which before, without SpinVox, would’ve been lost into the ether.

Capturing your words, your *voice*, and storing them at a place of your choice, for as long you need/require is something that is still relatively new, somewhat esoteric and yet also extremely exciting.

Keeping these thoughts in mind, once your voice IS written down, when you can really see it, what does your voice actually look like?

No I’m not talking about sound waves or pretty patterns on an oscilloscope, but your actual VOICE. The words you use to articulate your thoughts are similar and yet also completely different to those of the person sitting beside you.

Your canter, your meter, your lexicon, your vocabulary, your linguistic gymnastics that you may or may not choose to engage, the way you throw your words together, all of that… They define who you are.

If you saw your voice written down, could you place it?
Could you tell yours from someone else’s? Could you spot yours at a hundred yards?

This literal voice recognition is something I’ve come to enjoy when I’ve received ambling, meandering voicemails (converted into text messages) from my friends.
And it surprises the hell out of them when often I send them the same message back…

If you lost your voice and you had to put up a ‘missing’ poster, what would it say?
What does your voice actually look like?

On top of all that lofty thinking you need to understand that this kind of stuff is happening right now. Millions of people are doing it every week and now, out of the blue, the term ‘voice to text’ is changing slightly…
Suddenly it becomes ‘voice to content’. Your words become searchable. SEARCHING VOICE. That’s something quite special.

It is oft-said that ‘Only by truly enabling something, do you truly empower people to do anything’.

We’ve enabled the notion of ‘voice to content’ – now what does that empower you to do?

If you’re interested in coming along (to the SMC and/or to the discussion afterwards) please either sign up at the LondonSocialMediaClubWiki or email me directly here: james.whatley@spinvox.com

See you there!

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!

Greetings!

We made it to Las Vegas! WOOP WOOP!

…and I can tell you something: The SpinVox Stand (once again - ahem) looks AMAZING!

I gave you an exclusive look at the top secret designs a couple of days ago and now I can bring you the REAL THING!

Enjoy!

All comments welcome

Sings:

“VIVA LAS VEGAS! VIVA LAS VEGAS!”

And I’m pretty certain that won’t be for the last time either… Hehehe.

Just a quick note to mention that SpinVox is off to the 2008 CTIA Wireless Conference this week.
The show itself runs from April 1-3 and will be hosted at the Las Vegas Convention Center which is in… er… Las Vegas!

You can find us at Booth 6603 - So if you want to come say ‘Hi’ then that’s where we’ll be.

I’m flying out tomorrow to (amongst other things) assist with the building of the stand (again).
You may remember that we caused quite a stir at the recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona with all our many Mobsters… 2000 to be exact!

Well, we’ve shipped the whole stand to Las Vegas; SpinVox is coming to town and we’re bringing our army of Mobsters with us!

I don’t have any exclusive pictures/videos yet, (like before), but I HAVE managed to lay my hands on the final TOP SECRET design/blueprint…

Shh… Not sure I’m supposed to have this ^ but to hell with it!
It’s not like anyone’s gonna copy us is it?!

And finally…

You may or may not be aware that yours truly was interviewed for the extremely well-respected Today Programme on BBC Radio 4 regarding blogging for SpinVox…

If you missed it then you can read all about it via the two links below…

First Rory Cellan-Jones, Chief Technology Correspondent for the BBC, writes up his thoughts on “The Business of Blogging“

And second - Neil Bird, founder of technology blog ‘iGadget Life‘, gets an honourable mention for being the first blogger to report the story (and for also doing the hard work and hosting the exact clip from the show - you can listen to it here)

…Nice one Neil!

We’ve got a big metal wall next to the kitchen at SpinVox HQ and it’s covered in magnetic letters.
Call it a tangible representatio/opportunity for the guys and gals around the office to Speak Freely about anything they like and leave messages for their fellow SpinVoxers…

There’s been a few classics of late but I walked in this morning and saw this:

Which made no sense whatsoever…

…until I found this:

Courtesy of xkcd.com

Eh heh…

You MAY have noticed that aside from actually working for SpinVox and blogging for SpinVox and generally just being employed by SpinVox I am actually also a FAN of SpinVox!
Why?

Well - aside from it being just a BIT cool - it is also quite refreshing to have one of those services that just WORKS.

I know it’s a bit of an obvious one and all that but a lot people tend to ignore this one feature a lot of the time..

Anywhoo - the other day I was challenged to demonstrate the amazing power of SpinVox LIVE…

So I did.

And, thanks to our friends at Qik - here’s the results:

And if you can’t see the screen at the end - here’s a screenshot for you that makes it a bit clearer…

I thenkyou!

A SpinVox Speech Mobster… as modelled by Elle ‘The Body’ Macpherson

Image c/o www.socialitelife.com

Back from Mobile World Congress and back from Barcelona and back to the day to day business of turning voice, into text.

And WHY has it taken so long to update this here blog of ours?
Well… I can tell you. You MAY have noticed from the pictures that we had JUST A FEW little men - aka “Speech Mobsters” - on the SpinVox stand.

Two thousand of them in fact!

And behind those two thousand we had a further five hundred. Packed away all secretly like and ONLY given away to those folk who we REALLY liked
Thing is - we kinda underestimated how popular this little piece of ’schwag’ would be and the poor little blighters disappeared in no time!
So as it turns out - word has got around that owning a genuine ‘Speech Mobster’ is cooler than a snowman’s cool bits - and my email inbox has literally been flooded with requests…

First they started out with the normal kind of thing - “Where can I get one?“
Then the demands of “Whatley, you owe me Sonny Jim! You HAVE to get me one!“
Finally to the scary “I’ll swap you my Gran and a week’s worth of biscuits…“

I’m sorry to disappoint folks. There are NONE left! Even the one that I had in my keeping got stolen from desk whilst I was in Barcelona last week, (nice huh?).
So listen, if you’re reading this and you got one of these:

You are one of the lucky ones.
Guard it well

If you *didn’t* get one of these but still consider yourself a friend of SpinVox - i.e.: You REALLY want a Mobster! - then I might have a way to get you one.
Basically I’m currently trying to pull every string possible to get another one into my hands.

Watch this space - when I do, I’ll make sure that the readers have this blog get a chance to win their very own Speech Mobster…

Until next time,

J

PS - Have you seen Mobby?

HALLO! …and HOLA!

(again)

From all of us at Mobile World Congress, Barcelona!

It’s been “GO GO GO!” since we started yesterday (hence the lack of updates - TOO BUSY!) but the SpinVox stand.. and everyone working in and around it, has been going fantastically well..

“The best stand at the congress…“ I heard one person say.

And our Speech Mobsters are like gold dust - you only get one if you’re VERY special…

I’ve been taking some photos around the stand and I thought I’d put them on here to share with you!

All comments welcome

If you’re at MWC - Why not come say Hi?

If you’re NOT at MWC - you can still get your message through by calling me, James Whatley on +447825798998…

Leave a voicemail and I’ll send the converted text message to the board in the pictures..

Now how’s THAT for a slice of fried gold?!

CALL NOW!