The GotVoice Tech Blog.

So, this has little to do with Voice to Text, other than the fact that I know some people who talk slow enough, that the World’s Fastest Texter might be able to shoot me an SMS in less time than it takes them to speak…From Yahoo News Australia…

Kiwi sets record for texting blindfolded
Dunedin (New Zealand) teenager Elliot Nicholls has managed to achieve something the All Blacks and Silver Ferns failed to do this year - win a world title. The 17-year-old John McGlashan College student has become the Guinness Book of Records newest world champion - for texting blindfolded.

Elliott twice broke the previous record texting a 160 character message blindfolded in 51 seconds and then 45 seconds. The old record was set by an Italian at one minute 23 seconds.

Here’s the text he had to complete - see how long it takes you to do with your eyes open….

“the razor toothed piranhas of the genera serrasal musand pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. in reality they rarely attack a human”.

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Business Wire brings us a release from the Mobile Marketing Association, featuring new data from their third-annual Mobile Attitude and Usage Study.

Particularly relevant to the world of Voice to Text and Visual Voicemail, is that “54 percent of 13-34 year olds use SMS for social networking, while 44 percent of 13-34 year olds said they use text messaging for flirting or dating…”

Also noted in the survey results: “Teens and young adults use text messaging more than any other demographic. People ages 13-24 send and receive the most – more than 50 messages per week – while half of all survey respondents use text messaging at least once a week.”

And one last thing we found interesting - “Sweepstakes and voting campaigns are the most widely used types of mobile marketing. The second most common type is receiving alerts about products, services, accounts.“

All of this data points to a single trend - More people are using SMS more often, for more types of services. Receiving SMS Text versions of Voicemail is already rapidly rising, and all signs point toward it continuing its ascent.

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Ok, don’t tell the investors, but no work was done in the GotVoice offices from 10:00-10:15am today as we tested this little homemade metal detector out.  And to be honest, it’s actually quite a nice little app for finding some of our testing phones, which unfortunately get lost a little too often around here.

Thanks to the guys at 2dayblog for digging this up.

Homemade Metal Detector - The funniest videos clips are here

Well Happy Thanksgiving. The team here at GotVoice sends along our holiday wishes, as well as some ways to impress Aunt Betty and others with your GotVoice service while lounging around the living room.

1) Have the nieces and nephews call you and leave a voicemail. They’ll think it’s so cool that their voice automatically turns into a text.

2) Take your older relatives to a computer and show them you are keeping an mp3 archive of every voicemail they send you. This works especially well if you have young children. Tell the grandparents they can call 3 month old junior, and you’ll save the voicemail so he can listen when he’s older. Then watch them tear up.

3) Send everyone in your family a Happy Thanksgiving message. Do a quick Broadcast to the whole family, and watch the whole room check their Voicemail at once. Then watch them laugh as they marvel at the new technology you have discovered.

4) Finally, when you are doing receiving accolades for being the “cool uncle” tell everyone they may see their own subscription in their stocking this year. Thanksgiving accolades and Xmas presents people want all at once.

Have a great Thanksgiving. - GotVoice

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Apple’s iPhone is certainly the current rage in consumer technology today.  And we’ve been getting a steady rate of new emails asking how GotVoice features compare with that of the new iconoclastic device.

Well, for one thing, with GotVoice, you can get one of the iPhone’s most popular features, Visual Voicemail, on any smart phone. You don’t have to buy a new handset or switch carriers.

But in addition, the GotVoice Services enhance your phone experience with other tools – some of which are not part of the iPhone feature set - such as voicemail delivered to your email as MP3’s, Visual Voicemail, Broadcast Calling, Silent Calling and now Voice to Text Transcription.

Let us know what features are your favorites.

We’re starting to see a number of blog posts around the Web asking how people can record cell phone Voicemails to their PC.  So to answer the question we keep getting - yes, you can use GotVoice for this archival service.

GotVoice automatically takes your Voicemails and turns them into MP3’s.  Then, you can download and archive them forever.  Find out more from the GotVoice sign up page.

It’s an issue every company faces. Just how hard do you make it for a customer to cancel your service? I mean, have you wondered why you can accomplish any Tivo related task from their Web site, but then have to dig up a phone number to cancel? You can change credit cards, schedule programs, even change the name of your DVR, but you can’t tell them you want to drop the service.

Well, ZDNet’s VoIP writer, Russell Shaw, has a pretty fun anecdote from a colleague trying to cancel his Vonage service, which you can read here.

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We tend to get pretty heads down over here, and get so focused on delivering our own products that we lose track of all the other cool mobile apps out there. So we started a Facebook Group called “Cool Apps for Mobile Games” that we hope people will actively contribute to. Already some of our friends from Movaya have joined, and hopefully they’ll throw a little plug about their very interesting Movaya Plug and Play technology.

So, if you know any cool mobile apps out there, or want to plug your own, join our Facebook Group.

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It’s been a while since we talked about it, so we want to remind everyone about the GotVoice Affiliate Program. If you write about technology, mobile, gadgets, travel, services for the deaf, SMS, VoIP or other related news, then be sure to join the program and make a few bucks off the products you like.

• Earn $15.00+ for every user who starts a free trial of GotVoice Premium.
• Drive traffic to customized product pages through specially designed links and ads that allow us to track sales and traffic.
• Receive the best customer service and account management possible through our dedicated affiliate team and Commission Junction.

More details are outlined here.

With Web sites, blogs, podcasts, YouTube and all things digital, it’s easy to forget about those little things called books.

A few months back, a great travel related Web site called JohnnyJet.com listed GotVoice as a top tool for travelers. Here’s a blurb:

“”Now this is a handy one for Travelers. Have your voicemails sent to your e-mail, so if you are overseas you don’t need to make a long-distance call. Or if that someone special left you a message and you want to save it forever.” “

And that listing led to publication on page 211 of Peter Greenberg’s new Travel Detective Bible. If you do a lot of traveling, Peter’s tips and tricks are bound to help.