Hey there ‘Voxers…

(yeah - I just said that)

How goes it? Good weekend? Work hard? Play hard? Good. Glad to hear it…
Me? I chilled out, relaxed had fun… But hey, that’s not why I’m here! Well, I *am* here to have fun, but I’m not here to tell you about my weekend. I’m here to tell you about Ping.fm

Here at SpinVox HQ, we’re a big fan of “Speaking Freely”, (you may’ve noticed), and with Ping.fm (say it), allowing you to update like, a MILLION places in one go… Speaking Freely TO EVERYONE kinda resonates nicely, (should that be ‘Ping Freely’ ? - Heh).

Taking that thought and expanding upon it, wouldn’t it be just a little bit cool if you could Ping… through SpinVox?

Well, now you can. If you’re a Ping.fm user already get yourself along to the SpinVox page, add your details, dial the number.. and start saying it with Ping through SpinVox!

…if you’re NOT a Ping.fm user, what are you doing!? Sign up now!

BTW - For the more cynically minded of you out there, you’re probably wondering where this leaves our current Social Networks through SpinVox service…
Y’know, surely setting up this Ping.fm integration means we’re kinda in competition with ourselves right?

WRONG.

SpinVox converts Voice into Text. It’s what we do. Enabling this for Ping.fm users just makes sense.

SpinVox this, SpinVox that, SpinVox coming out my EARS!

No really, there’s just SO MUCH that has been going while I’ve been away it’s actually quite insane…

Now, I’m not one for regurgitating press releases on this ‘ere blog of ours, (I mean that’s why we have a press section, right?), but some things, sometimes, are just too big to ignore - so just indulge me for a minute will you? Cool.

First off, as I plough through the mountain of emails in my overloaded inbox… Charlie Engle!

Who?!

CHARLIE ENGLE!
(clue - that’s him down there)

Here’s a guy who, along with his running mate Marshall Ullrich, has decided he’s going to run across America. That’s right - I said RUN across AMERICA!

From New York to San Francisco to be precise.

Yeah huh. Let’s just take a moment to digest that.

Running. Across AMERICA. …and a record attempt to boot!

Now look I’m all for these hardcore nutters achieving amazing sporting feats and stuff, but this is just simply ridiculous! How is anyone REALLY, supposed to compete with this…?!
OK OK OK, I’ll stop having a moan…

Back to the point; Why am I mentioning this? From the picture above you can see that Mr Engle here is on the phone while RUNNING (ok ok - we’ve established the whole running thing now dude), but he’s not phoning home, or checking with his Mum… Oh no. The man is BLOGGING! Oh yes. You’re way ahead of me now aren’t you. The dude is blogging through SpinVox. Uh huh. That’s right.

His latest voice post goes something like this:

I don’t know about you, but I think this is awesome.

Their blog is being updated daily and if you’re interested in following their journey as they RUN ACROSS AMERICA then I suggest you jump over and check it out.

Good luck guys - we’re rootin’ for ya!

More to follow tomorrow…

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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You pick up the phone, you make a call. You’re ‘The A Party’.

My phone rings, I answer it. That makes me ‘The B Party’.

With me? Right.
Get comfy, it’s time for some meaty thinking.

A couple of months ago, shortly after I posted my response to Mike Arrington’s ‘Think Before You Voicemail‘ post, I started to really examine the way SpinVox had changed the way I communicate…

And before you all start - really, it has.

In the original post I said something along the lines of:

“Whenever I call anyone with a ‘traditional’ voicemail box (voicemail 1.0 if you will, natch) I certainly think about what I’m going to say - most of the time, if I’m honest, I hang up.”

But, what I also point out is that, when I encounter SpinVox… Actually no… Past tense..
When I’ve encountered SpinVox… i.e.:

Once I’ve been pushed through to the mailbox, left my message and then hung up…
I leave the call knowing that my message will be delivered.

My callee - the ‘B Party’ in this instance - can’t give me the usual schtick of:

‘Sorry, I never checked my voicemail.’

…because I KNOW that, through SpinVox, the message HAS got there via SMS, (and/or email).
I know that the callee ALWAYS checks their SMSs and I also know that they place the same importance over their emails.
So either way - my message gets delivered.

Y’see, there seems to be a lack of importance placed on voicemail messages these days which is thanks, in no small part, to the hideous amount of work you have to do to retrieve them, I’m sure…

I mean really, someone is calling you RIGHT NOW that means they clearly have something to say to you RIGHT NOW. Right?

With SpinVox Voicemail YOU make the choice as a voicemail recipient - as a ‘B Party’ - that your Voicemails will be captured, converted through SpinVox and delivered to the destination of your choice. That’s great. But by doing so you also restore confidence in the calling party, the ‘A Party, that their message will get through to you.

Already this changes things…

Ok, if you’ll indulge me for a second while I show a scale that I knocked up on the white board last week;
Call it my ‘Hierarchy of Communication’:

I say ‘my’ hierachy, because it applies to me. Yours maybe different.

…in fact - draw yours now, you’ll need it later on.

A Party on the left and B Party on the right. The importance you place on how YOU like to communicate against the channels you allow others to communicate with you.

- A call comes in, I answer it - if not, push to Voicemail
- SMS, I check these quite quickly
- Then Twitter (or ‘Social’ in this instance), as they sit in with my SMSs
- Email follows after that
- Then finally, we meet on Voicemail; Traditionally the last thing we all check

If you’re a SpinVox user you know that any message converted through SpinVox, (be it a Voicemail or a Memo or even a Twitter), arrives at its destination with our little Quotation Marks wrapped around it…
Hang on a minute, I’ll call myself and show you what I mean:

These marks, aside from coinciding with our rather lovely branding, mark out this message from the others. A visual representation, if you will, that this message is different from the rest. Why?

Because it was spoken.

Now - how does that affect our scale?

Well, for me, this one small change has an immediate effect on how I prioritise my incoming messages…
Let’s take a look:

Suddenly things change.

SpinVox messages takes prioirity over my SMS.
Well. Kinda.

So a SpinVox Voicemail is delivered to my phone via SMS and sits in there with the other ‘unreads’…
Now, when it comes to checking over these text messages my eyes immediately jump to the message starting with the quotation mark.

Why? Well, I KNOW that this message was SPOKEN, right? So I know that, when that message was left the caller, the A Party, had something to say to me RIGHT NOW, (or right THEN, as it were)…
…and not only that but also what that person had to say was that important that they felt compelled to pick up the phone and speak.

Not text, not email… Speak.

That denotes a certain amount weight. Speaking a message makes that message personal. There was moment in time that someone wanted to share with me. Be it an experience or an emotion or just merely impart some knowledge. Momentous or not - something made that person want to pick up the phone and Speak.

As they say -

“If something is that important, it needs to be said.”

Empirically I’ve noted that this happens with my email too…

If I’ve been away from my desk (and - shock horror - away from my phone too) and my email inbox is the first thing I check, my eyes will always, ALWAYS jump straight to the emails from ‘SpinVox Voicemail’.

Again, spoken messages taking on this strange level of importance. Their currency has a higher value, if you will…

…

Ok - so now we pause for a second - is everyone still with me? You at the back, can you hear me OK?

Everyone following me so far? Good Good.

Now, how about we take this new found knowledge and apply it to the rest of the scale…
Like so:

By inserting SpinVox into each of these channels, the entire communication landscape changes, both inbound and outbound…

Spoken messages, no matter their origin/destination, take precedent above all of the others…
Take a moment to think about that
Really. Take it onboard.

Changes things a little… Right?

So - opening it out - What about you? Has SpinVox helped you prioritise your incoming messages?

What about our outgoing messages?
What if ‘SpinVoxing’ someone becomes an ‘A Party’ decision?
What then?

There’s a small shift in communication power there… small, yet somewhat significant, wouldn’t you say?

What do you think?

What does your scale look like?

How does SpinVox change your priorities?

Does this new prioritisation of messaging restore the primacy of voice?

Readers, it’s over to you.

Now don’t get me wrong, Marlow is a lovely place…

Source: Marlow Town

But, when the General Manager of your latest South American outpost in Chile drops you a note saying:

“I hope you enjoy these photos… Welcome to the backyard of the Chilean SpinVox Office!”

I for one I think I’m allowed a certain amount of doubt as to whether or not I chose the right place of work or maybe, just maybe, I should put in for a transfer…

Take a look for yourself and you tell me…

(and I’m serious - these are actual photos that were sent to me - not something I’ve pinched off flickr!)

Well I don’t know about you but I’m packing my bags RIGHT NOW!

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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Yes - that’s right, you heard me - and it’s as simple as making a phone call!

Basically all you have to do is call 0151 266 8283 (UK only) and tell us which accents you love (or hate) the most and why. Your message will then be posted directly to the brand new (and quite sexy) Moblog site -

We Love Your Accent

The best caller will win a brand-spanking new Nokia N82!
ROCK!

To be honest - that alone is a pretty awesome prize -but wait there’s more…

We’re also throwing in a year’s free subscription to both SpinVox and Moblog!

Yep. That’s right… MORE FREE STUFF!

What?! What’s that?
You want MORE?!

OK OK OK!

How about we chuck in 250 Moo cards too huh? Would that suit?!
Yeah?!

YEAH!

Awesomeness - Great prizes for a GREAT Competition - How’s that for a slice of fried gold?

That’s pretty much all you need -  but just in case - I grabbed the press release for you too - have a look see…

______________________________________________________________________________

Speech is one of humanity’s greatest gifts – but it has now been revealed that almost three quarters (73 per cent) of people in Britain don’t like the sound of their own voices.

Given the chance to change the way they talk, most Brits would prefer to sound like the Queen, whilst only one in twenty would like to speak Cockney.

The problem is at its worst in Birmingham. Brum, made famous world-wide by foul mouthed Ozzy Ozbourne, not only tops the league of regions where people dislike their own accents, it is also bottom of the league of voices other Brits would like to exchange for their own. Only one per cent of Brits would choose to speak like a Brummy.

Said Tony Robinson, SpinVox linguistic expert: “It seems Britain is being gripped by an epidemic of Accent Envy and Accent Self Loathing. After decades where dialect diversity has been celebrated, the majority of Brits now aspire to Received Pronunciation (RP) and to share the sound of their voice not only with The Queen but with celebs like Liz Hurley and Hugh Grant.â€

A poll* of more than 2,000 people around Great Britain, by voice-to-content company SpinVox, found that after the Queen’s accent, most Brits would choose an Irish accent, followed by Scottish.

When it comes to who actually does like the sound of their own voice, the Scots, Geordies and Welsh take the podium positions.

Overall the Queen’s English is the most popular accent in Great Britain.

Tony Robinson continued: “Accents are intricately tied into our own sense of identity. It’s interesting that those with distinct cultural or class identities are more satisfied with the way they speak and it’s precisely those accents that the rest of us want to acquire. The fact is that English as spoken in the UK is incredibly dynamic, precisely because of the regional variations in the way we speak - we are still seeing new words being added to our D2 system’s dictionary at the rate of thousands a week 70% of those words are not even contained in published English Dictionaries.â€

Tell us your favourite accent and win!
We’d love to know what your favourite accent is and why, just call 01512668283 and tell us in under 2 minutes and our favourite call-in wins a Nokia N82, a years free subscription to Moblog, a one year free trial of the Spinvox voicemail service, and 250 free Moo cards of their choice!

Visit http://lovetheaccent.com to listen to the nations favourite accents and add your own.

http://lovetheaccent.com is powered by the mobile blogging site Moblog. Moblog lets you easily upload and share images and videos you record on your mobile phone, and even keep a voice blog using SpinVox.

`Voice-to-Content`, the process of automatically converting the spoken word into the written word is one of the fastest-growing telecommunications trends of 2008. In less than two years, SpinVox has converted over 50 million voice messages in four languages and on four continents, delivering them as SMS texts, emails, blogs or posts on social network walls and spaces.

GET CALLING!

Over the weekend, one Michael Arrington, (Hello Mike), wrote a post entitled ‘Think before you Voicemail‘.

Mike can be a tad ‘controversial’ sometimes, having an opening gambit like “Voicemail is dead” is bound to ruffle a few feathers… and of course, it did.

As predicted, Sir Mike of Arrington has sparked quite a large and heated debate. At the time of writing, the original article has nearly 200 comments and also has prompted some fantastic responses.

“Think before you Voicemail” is an interesting notion, I say “Think before you SpinVox” is a better one.

Allow me to explain…

Whenever I call anyone with a ‘traditional’ voicemail box (voicemail 1.0 if you will, natch) I certainly think about what I’m going to say - most of the time, if I’m honest, I hang up.
If I continue, normally the first thing out of my mouth is something along the lines of “Dude, first of all: Get SpinVox…” with the second point being something like “…oh, and call me back”.

However, when I encounter a SpinVox enabled voicemail box I *definitely* have a good think. As soon as I hear those wonderful words “SpinVox will convert your voice into text” I KNOW right there and then that the person I’m trying to reach WILL get my message. Therefore a simple “Call me back” becomes redundant - how about leaving a full message with all the facts in? With the confidence of delivery!

A good example of this is a few weeks ago, I stepped off the tube in town and this SpinVox/Voicemail arrived:

I SMS’d Jonathan straight back -”Diary is empty on Thursday, I’ll be there.”
Job done - (that’s me on the right)

I digress…

Voicemail is not dead.
Voicemail is alive.
You just need to know how to use it.

The only thing you should “Think before you Voicemail” is:

“Why doesn’t this guy have SpinVox?!”

____________________

Oh and one final thing: Mike says ‘It takes much longer to listen to a message than read it’.

That’s something we’ve talked about before (over The Future of Voice actually), but dig a little deeper and there are some hard facts out there that back this up:

It is actually SEVEN TIMES quicker to read than to listen.

However it is also seven times quicker to speak than to type, so speaking someone an email for example? That’s a good idea. Oh hang on - they’ve got SpinVox - you already can!

Of the 360 BILLION voicemails (minimum) left every year, a staggering 20% of them go unlistened to. Combine that with the fact that your average voicemail can lose 50% of its value after a mere 45mins, the case for SpinVox becomes increasingly valuable.

So a message to Mike, from all of us at SpinVox: Voicemail has evolved. Come join the party.

Greetings Adventurers,

How have you been? What have you been up to and what have you seen?

Me? I’ve not been too bad thanks. I’m writing to you today to let you know that the SpinVox Speech Mobsters have been out and about on a few adventures of their own lately.

First I get an alert telling me that they’ve been ‘roughing’ it down in Pilton at the Glastonbury Festival, (of all things), assisting all and sundry Love the Farm by making sure they Leave No Trace…

Good on them!

…Then, word reaches my ears that they have also been off gallavanting around San Francisco TAKING PRIDE in supporting certain events that MAY have something to do with a certain MTV campaign entitled: Stand By What You Say

Make of that what you will… Scandal?!
All this talk about sex, shocking.

More. Soon.

Undergoing MyBlogLog Verification

No really. Come on.

SEX SEX SEX SEX SEX SEX SEX.

Want more?!

Ok, what about if I get the Mobsters involved too? How’s this?

Hehehehehe….   So, why the SEX talk?

Well. A few months ago I was taken along to a meeting with some of the people behind MTV’s Staying Alive Foundation. The Staying Alive Founation (SAF) is a global charity setup by MTV to empower and support young people who are protecting themselves from HIV and AIDS.

The meeting was organised to discuss how Social Media could be used to help people across the world connect over the issues surrounding sex today. “Wow!” was my initial response “What a brief?!”

Sex in society today has a stigma attached to it which means it can be embarrassing to talk about openly. Something as simple as buying a pack of condoms from a pharmacist to some can be the hardest thing in the world. This needs to stop.

The Staying Alive Foundation believe that the best way to combat such pressure is to encourage conversation. Conversation is education. Only by truly keeping discussions about sex firmly out in the open can we ever hope to relieve the parameters that seem to fence young people when it comes to this subject matter.

So what can you do to help?

SpinVox & ‘U’ see - clever huh?

You can start by stimulating conversation around some of the points and issues that I’ve outlined above. Moreover, the Staying Alive Foundation needs YOU to be vocal in your support.

It needs YOU to GIVE VOICE TO THIS CAUSE.

Today SpinVox launched its first ever Social Responsibility Campaign - it’s called “Stand By What You Say“

Its in partnership with Staying Alive, you can donate through Facebook Causes, Kelly Rowland is voicing the campaign (call the numbers and see) and YOU can get involved by heading over to the website right now and speaking freely about SEX.

More info:

The joint SpinVox/Staying Alive Press Release
More about Staying Alive
And of course, some fun pictures on Flickr

The numbers you can call on are below, call and Speak Freely about the sexual issues you want to address:
Your message will appear on http://www.standbywhatyousay.com

United Kingdom +44 151 266 7700

Ireland +3531 657 1891

USA +1513 729 6417

Canada +1416 628 8501

Spain +3493 184 2078

France +3317 666 0863

Germany +4921 1237 061072

Call, leave your message and remember - “Stand By What You Say“