Voice Maps on Google, and VoxCards

Two tidbits:

The Google Maps API folks picked up our Voice Maps app to feature on their site (scroll to the bottom right).  We were very honored that they chose to highlight us; this came out of meeting many of the API developers at Google I/O, where we demoed Voice Maps to them.  I continue to feel that Google is in a unique position to help out not only end developers, but also API services like ours, and bring us all together.

We also added a new app to our gallery:  VoxCards!  VoxCards are electronic greeting cards with a twist:  you can pick up the phone and add voice to any of them.  When the recipient opens your card, she’ll be greeted not just with the visual card, but also your voice.  Check it out!

MyVox 1.1 Launches

Yesterday saw the launch of MyVox 1.1, which added a number of new features to the product.  Perhaps the most significant is the concept of the call-initiated app.

In 1.0, every MyVox application was written with the expectation that a user would be sitting in front of some sort of screen in order to start the voice recording process.  That could be a Web page, a desktop widget, a mobile app, even an email or text message… but you needed to take some screen-based action in order to start a MyVox session, and get the phone number necessary to call and make your recording.

We realized a while ago that there was a whole class of applications that opened up if a user could start the recording interaction simply by picking up the phone.  Freed of the need for a screen-based interaction, suddenly you can have people making recordings while they are out and about, untethered.  People can call in from cars, concerts, nightclubs, on bikes, hiking trails, at museums, in classrooms… wherever.  But importantly, the recording can still be tied back to an application, which takes it and makes use of it.

1.1 makes this possible.  These “call-initiated” apps still use the same structure and API; the main differences have to do with how you set up your voice recorder (the core object of the MyVox API - each app has one), and with the assignation of a specific phone number to each application (as opposed to the traditional MyVox app, where a phone number is handed out for each recording session).

1.1 also offers…

* Identification of call-initiated users by caller ID, access code, or both, allowing (among other things) the gating of access to such apps

* One-time collection of a touchtone code at the beginning of the call, to use however you will; think zip code collection, product ID entry, etc.

* Caller ID as an attribute available on any call/recording

MyVox 1.11 will be launching very soon as well.  Keep an eye out!

Ludacris and MyVox?

You may have heard of WeMix.com, a site founded by Matt Apfel and rapper Ludacris. WeMix is community for unsigned talent in the music industry — singers, songwriters, rappers, musicians and producers — who can register, create profiles, upload original music and record their own demos using the phone as a mic. The connection: the MyVox API powers the technology here and makes this musical revolution possible. Now, anyone with a phone can record a demo.

Ludacris threw a party in New York last week, and by all accounts, the WeMix Webby Awards After Party was a tremendous success. Ne-Yo, Rachel Zoe, Michael Kenneth Williams, and Seth Meyers were some of the folks attending. And of course, Ludacris.

Check out the WeMix party pictures.

–Richard

Success stories among the challenge winners

A quick shoutout to some of our Developer Challenge winners:

* Learnit Lists was recently nominated to Startup 2.0, a demo conference for European Web 2.0 startups.  They also received mention on Techcrunch for their participation in CrunchNetwork Prague.

* maaap received honors in the WHERE developer challenge.

* WeMix is hosting the Webby Awards afterparty, where we’ll be joining Ludacris to celebrate WeMix’s ongoing growth!

Google I/O: On the care and feeding of geeks

Google I/O can be seen metaphorically as a part of Google’s ongoing attempt to “feed” the Web and its developers. But sometimes developers need more than mental nourishment. Google has taken care of that too.

As with any such conference, there is the usual breakfast and lunch buffet, though with careful emphasis on access to vegetarian fare, recycling of waste, and biodegradable or even compostable plates and utensils. Like a good tech pit, there are coolers full of soda and other drinks, and goodies for snacks (yesterday, it was soft pretzels). But the afterhours party is where the cuisine really shone, with a wide variety of ethnic fare, about fifteen makeshift bars, and chocolate fondue fountains.

The party is where Google ready showed its understanding of its audience, and its commitment to making this an experience attendees would talk about afterwards. Recognizing that geeks don’t dance, Google deemphasized the DJ in favor of a nerdcore act that I didn’t recognize, but was clearly well-known to much of the crowd. Recognizing that geeks prefer emergent conversation coming out of activites instead of cocktail banter, Google filled the hall with pool tables, air hockey, and foosball. And knowing that geeks love video games, they set up multiple Wiis and banks of car and motorcycle racing arcade machines.

It worked.

Google I/O, morning report

I think most of us are used to a pretty dreary keynote experience at conferences.  The leading keynote - an opportunity to make the thesis statement for the conference - usually disappoints, offering an opportunity for industry leaders to issue platitudes and to state, and restate, the obvious.  Instead, Google took advantage of their keynote not only to give good demos of all the key products being explored at Google I/O, but also to make a number of exciting announcements about those products, from the addition of Java 5 support to Google WebKit, to AOLs announcement of adoption of OpenSocial within its products, to the complete opening up of Google App Engine to immediate use by any and all developers.  For once, I - and I could tell I was not the only one, walking through the hall - came away from a keynote energized, full of ideas.

One idea that keeps floating around in my head is the similarity of what Google is trying to accomplish in reaching out in myriad ways to the developer to our own goals at VoodooVox in doing the same.  Coming into this conference, one thing I hoped to do was to learn some lessons about developer outreach from Google, which largely does a very good job of the task.  You’ll hear Google executives talk often about how it is strategically worthwhile for Google to invest in the improvement of the Web, and that this is why, among other things, they put a lot of internal resources toward developing code and apps that they give away to the community for free.  Today, listening particularly to the Google App Engine product lead, this motive came into sharp focus, because it aligned so precisely to what we are trying to accomplish with MyVox.  Google wants to reduce or eliminate the barriers that keep developers from realizing their app deployment dreams - things like database handling, hardware deployment, scaling, maintenance, and so on.  APIs like the Maps API or the new image manipulation APIs then let developers add functionality without having to learn the ins and outs of these particular subjects.  Our goals with MyVox are the same:  let developers do things with voice without having to deal with deployment and learning details.  With MyVox, you can “do voice” without having to figure out how to do telephony-related programming, deploy hardware, figure out how to get phone numbers and connect them to your app, or pay for your connectivity.  The new functionality we keep launching corresponds well to the new API functions Google continues to put out there as well.

The comparison is rough, and we are, of course, in a very, very different position as a company from Google - so much so that any comparison is almost laughable.  We deal in a very different medium, one which is simultaneously much older (people have been making phone calls for a very long time, and working with voice apps for a while too) and much newer (the rise of Web-phone apps is quite new, and still in an embryonic state), necessitating perhaps a different response.  Still, it’s extremely interesting to see what an industry leader with huge resources does when it wants to push its particular medium forward.  I hope and believe there will be lessons for us to learn in the telco world from how they approach the development of the Web.

Meet us at Google I/O!

Are you attending Google I/O?  Then please look for us there!  I (Nick Branstator) will be attending, and may be bringing other folks as well.  So if you are interested in sitting down and talking about the brand new world of voice, phones, and how all this can be used in applications, please track me down.

In-Call Media Summit

Last week, VoodooVox worked with Jones Media and SoftBank to produce the first In-Call Media Summit.  The subject was the ever-expanding topic of in-call media: content, offers, applications, advertising, and so on, as applied to the world of telephony.  As the world of advertisers, content providers, and application builders draws closer together, we felt it was time for all the participants to begin the discussion about what we are doing, why we’re doing it, and how it can be done better.  You can see more in the press release.

By all accounts, it was a riproaring success.  I judge this based not only on positive comments, but on the amount of business that got done during and after the conference - and by the large percentage of people who stuck around after the conference itself to .  Or maybe they were just enjoying the view from our offices (which still blow me away)…

Photos here.

The Challenge Winners

The Developer Challenger winners have been selected. You can see them all here: http://www2.myvox.com/developers/getstarted_d.asp?ID=36

What really impresses me is the breadth of the ways developers have made use of MyVox.  You’ve got applications in each of these industries:

• Education
• Social networking
• Music
• Journalism
• General consumer

It’s not just that we hadn’t ourselves thought of these apps… but that we didn’t even previously recognize the value of voice to whole verticals.  And for most of the apps, voice is not simply a sidelight, but an integral part of the product (and, in the case of Learnit Lists, of the process by which the community content which drives the application is created).

Many of our participants are also in the process of seeking out their first rounds of VC funding.  We wish them the best in this effort, and hope their prizes not only help fund their development, but also attract that little extra attention from the VC community.

Voice is the new mobile app

One of our partners – an interactive agency – told us the other day that, in the search for exciting new mobile applications, they’ve concluded that voice is the real killer app. They like that everybody can use the voice channel, and all you need is a phone number to get somebody interacting. These are critical characteristics for a promotion; you can throw a phone number up on any surface, from a Web page to a billboard, which is a helluva lot more than you can say about downloadable applications. Even text messaging campaigns with short codes rely on educating consumers that what they are looking at is an address to be entered into the phone, and only work for demographics (read: teens) where texting is commonplace.

What was even more exciting is that the advertiser this agency is working with completely understood and agreed with the agency’s conclusions. Mobile spending is important to them, but they recognize that mobile can and should often mean voice, that voice is the most accessible channel for the vast majority of users, and that it’s time for agencies to start bringing voice-channel mobile promotions to the table.

It’s always a happy thing when you get ready to preach your gospel… and find that your audience is already preaching it back to you, before you even get there. Mobile marketing agencies need to get ready for the idea that mobile is not just SMS, WAP pages, or downloadable apps – it’s equally, if not more so, about voice applications.