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Shock! SpinVox speech-to-text service relied heavily on human translation

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spinvox-logoSpinVox was a great concept in principle: phone a number and speak your message which then gets translated and sent as SMS to your recipient.

Spin-my-Blog was based on a similar idea, except (wouldn’t you know it) it posted the resultant text to your blog.

Standards have been slipping of late, though, which led many to believe that the initial promise of highly intelligent supercomputers automagically translating your text weren’t quite as accurate as stated by the company.

That’s not to say they weren’t trying, but when you get Egyptian call center staff telling the BBC they’re hacked off with the whole deal, and then you see some of the laughable translations being sent back (after the computers have failed and the humans have had a go) you do wonder how scalable the whole thing is. [Read more…]

Shozu lowering cost of mobile multimedia sharing

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shozu-swirlShozu, which connects mobile users with various social and media networks, has announced a partnership with MAXroam that will allow users to send multimedia files for much lower cost across 139 countries.

Initially marketed to iPhone users, who can download the ShoZu app for $4.99, the application will also be rolled out across Windows Marketplace, Ovi, and the BlackBerry App World (no Android Marketplace?).

With the app comes a coupon code offering them a $4.99 credit on a MAXroam account. [Read more…]

Vodafone UK offers “free Facebook” for customers

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vodafone_logoWell isn’t Vodafone the friendly mobile phone operator at the moment? Not content with slashing mobile roaming rates (forget the fact that they’re unfair and should never have been so exorbitantly high in the first place) and offering up Twitter love to its customers, it’s now announced a week of free Facebook access for its users.

Yes, from Friday 24th July, for one week only, those with funky cell phones capable of viewing the web (the Nokia N97 for example) will be able to surf the social network for nothing.

Presumably, the hope is that you get so hooked that, when it stops being free, you’ll carry on and pay Voda’s data rates for the privilege. [Read more…]

Social networks driving Britain’s mobile Internet growth

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texting-teenagerWith an increase in Internet-friendly mobile phone handsets and “all you can eat” tariffs in the UK, it’s no surprise that a recent survey finds that mobile Internet usage in Britain is soaring.

The CCS Insight survey of 1,000 adults aged between 16 and 35 found that a third of them accessed Facebook and Twitter from their handsets (despite some teens suggesting Twitter is for “old people”).

Men are twice as likely as women to access the Net via their mobile phone, while this age group particularly expects mobile content, and in particular music and video, to be free. [Read more…]

MobiLuck hits milestone with one million members

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Mobiluck, a privately-held mobile services company that offers a location-based mobile social network, has exceeded one million members worldwide since the launch of its service two years ago. MobiLuck allows users to find nearby friends, people and places using simply their mobile. It is one of the largest worldwide location-based mobile social networks in the world and the fastest-growing with 6 000 new members per day. Page views tripled over the last three months to 42 million per month.

Mobile social networking is the number one use of the mobile internet worldwide and a billion people will be doing it by 2012, according to Pyramid Research.

MobiLuck’s users average age is 23 and come mainly from the US, Europe, India, Middle East and South Africa. This new generation of users is making the most of their mobile, using it as their primary connection to the internet. They want a full social networking experience on the go so they can be always connected with their friends wherever they are. They constitute an attractive audience for brands and premium ad agencies who are currently seeing 2% click through rates on their ads on MobiLuck.