The Next Web » texting

Text safely while driving by using your voice, thanks to YC company Sonalight

Drew Olanoff — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 19:15:22 +0000

While we’re here at YC Demo Day, one of the companies that caught our eye was Sonalight.

The company has an extremely powerful voice controlled app that will let you send and receive texts without worrying about taking your attention away from the road. During the presentation, the speech recognition technology seemed pretty efficient at capturing the message that was dictated to it.

The app is only available for Android right now and the sounds coming from it were extremely similar to Apple’s Siri.

Here’s a demo video:

Since its launch, the app has sent over 500K text messages on behalf of its users, which is pretty impressive since it was just released a few months ago.

The founding team called it “Siri on Steroids” and their pitch was definitely a crowd-pleaser. The really interesting thing about the Y Combinator Demo Day is that there are a lot of investors here hoping to get involved with the “next big thing”. There’s a lot of press here covering the companies too, and what Paul Graham and team have put together here is nothing short of impressive.

We all know that texting while driving is dangerous, yet we have all done it at some point. With companies focusing on making our lives easier, and safer, its another reminder that we haven’t even scratched the technology surface yet.

➤ Sonalight for Android

Study shows that we don’t need voice and text from carriers, let the carnage begin

Drew Olanoff — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 18:38:51 +0000

In a study published by BGR today, it has been made clear that the slew of messaging and VOIP apps on the market are already making a dent into the paid services provided by carriers.

The study by mobile(SQUARED) shows that according to operators, messaging, voice and video apps will cause usage of its own services to drop between 11% and 20% over the next 5-10 years. Some operators see that number being closer to 31%-40%.

Even Steve Jobs wanted to build his own wireless carrier to bypass services provided by carriers. For example, iMessages completely bypasses text messaging. Will we just need data from carriers in the near future? Probably.

Since companies like Facebook are ramping up its free Messages platform, and Google Voice getting more and more integrated into our social experiences, carriers may have to look closely at its offerings to keep its customers happy, and more importantly paying.

The study was carried out for Mavenir, and its VP Shubh Agarwal had this to say about the findings:

The findings confirm what we have found in discussions with the mobile industry. This is one of the primary reasons the industry is currently moving towards an all-IP converged core network accelerated by the deployment of LTE technology. By allowing users to place high-definition voice and video calls, chat, share content, and discover new services as part of a globally connected framework, operators can retain and even grow their share of customer communication spend.

mobile(SQUARED) analytics Gavin Patterson shared his thoughts about the upcoming decline in need for carrier’s service:

The mobile landscape is changing as users embrace messaging of all kinds that enable them to seamlessly message a multitude of devices. This study confirms that lucrative messaging revenues are already impacted and operators are assessing ways to deliver core-network services in the all-IP environment. Rich Communication Ecosystem (RCE) applications are one example of how mobile operators can overcome the hurdles they face.

With apps like Skype, GroupMe, WhatsApp, and Kik replacing the need for voice calling and texting on the carrier’s dime, the operators are looking to dig in and build its own group messaging and VOIP services to embed into devices tied to your existing phone number.

Just recently, WhatsApp announced that its users now send over one billion messages a day. That’s got to hurt carriers, not just because they’re missing out on potential business, but because they simply can’t control it.

Some people believe that phone numbers are a thing of the past. Yesterday, I spoke with Enflick‘s Co-Founder Derek Ting, creator of popular messaging apps TextNow and PingChat. He thinks numbers are dead in the water:

Everyone has a smart phone, 5-10 years from now, we’re going to a numberless world.

Do you text and call more than using services like Skype, Facebook, GroupMe, and Kik? Tell us in the comments.

‘Losers’, A Short Film On Bullying Will Get You Thinking [video]

Drew Olanoff — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 17:00:25 +0000

Today, film production team “Everynone” released a short film about bullying. Bullying has become a hot topic everywhere, including on the internet. With the ability to anonymously contact people, teens are turning to texting and internet posts as a means and way to harass their classmates in school.

It’s not just kids who have to deal with bullying though. Harassment happens in the workplace, and in our streets everyday.

Have a look at Everynone’s video “Losers”, and stop and think about how we treat others for a moment.

Pretty thought-provoking piece, I’d say. Musicians like Lady GaGa are taking a stance against bullying in their Twitter streams and Facebook posts, trying to buck the trend of suicides and depression in the youth of America.

5 must-have apps that Apple should have made itself

Drew Olanoff — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 20:08:51 +0000

At The Next Web, we get asked one question a lot. “Which apps are must-have’s for my iPhone?”. It’s a common question, especially with a lot of new Sprint and Verizon users jumping on the iDevice bandwagon. Luckily, we look at quite a few apps.

By looking at so many apps, we see which ones stick and which ones get deleted quickly. Some apps are so useful, they’ll probably be on our devices until the iPhone 10.

Here is a solid list of 5 apps that you simply must have on your Apple devices. These are even better than Apple’s built in apps in some cases. Sadly for Google, the Gmail app hasn’t made the list yet. Some of them may seem obvious, but the uses for them might not be.

If you drive

If you’re a driver, you shouldn’t be looking at your iPhone first of all. But if you have a passenger, they must have RoadNinja. This app does everything you’d want a smart GPS to do, but doesn’t. RoadNinja will show you upcoming exits on the highway and what places are close to them, so that you can choose which exit will be your next. It’s completely customizable, tapping the foursquare API to tell you what coffee shops, restaurants, attractions, and pretty much everything else is conveniently close.

If you drive, you simply must have RoadNinja by your side. And it’s free.

If you’re into food

It’s pretty much a guarantee that you eat food, we all do. There are a whole host of apps that tell you where you can eat in the city you’re inhabiting at the moment. Some apps tell you what your friends think, some apps try to recommend places to go based on your previous eating escapades, but only Chefs Feed tells you what true food connoisseurs think.

Some of the best chefs in the major cities in America are on Chefs Feed to tell you what restaurants and foods you should check out. If you’re looking for a new place to eat, leave it to the professionals to tell you where to go.

If you’re tired of texting and email

It’s safe to say that most of us use Facebook these days. Over 800 millions users can’t be wrong. Even though Facebook has released updates to its iOS app and finally given us an iPad native one, it’s not the app that you simply must have.

Facebook Messenger is the perfect companion to Facebook. Even while you’re mobile and waiting for a bus, you probably don’t have the time to experience Facebook fully. Facebook Messenger takes one of the stronger features from the site, and makes it easy to use.

The app is a must-have to keep in touch with Facebook friends, letting you send photos and see who’s online. Considering that most of our friends are on Facebook too, Facebook Messenger completely replaces text messaging and personal email for some.

If you like music

Streaming is all the rage these days, and no app does it better than Spotify. This is by far the app that I use the most on the go. With a solid interface for playlists, sending tracks to friends, sharing on Facebook and Twitter, the app is a must have.

If you have a Spotify Premium account, you can sync your playlists on any device for offline listening. This makes plane trips and car rides perfect, as you don’t have to have WiFI or 3G signals to gain access to your music.

The discovery interface is equally as solid, letting you find new songs to listen to on the road. The music that you listen to on your iOS device will even update your Facebook Music feed.

If you take photos

With a powerful camera now on iPhones, iPods, and iPads, you’ll want to take a lot of photos. Even if you’re not a professional photographer, you may want to share your photos with people and hear what they have to think about them.

There is one king of photo apps, and that is Instagram. The app has a huge community around taking photos, putting a pretty filter on it, and liking them until they become popular. I’ve said it before, but the Instagram app is what Flickr could have had, if they dedicated themselves to its community like it used to.

Version 2.0 of Instagram was a huge improvement, letting you apply filters instantly. The company continues to roll out new filters and boasts a user base of over 12 million according to founder Kevin Systrom.

The not so obvious part of why Instagram is an absolute must have, is that so many developers are using its API to build fun and useful things that use our photos.

What’s in your top 5?

So there you have it. These are the 5 apps that I feel like you can’t live without, or perhaps 5 apps that can make your life a little bit easier and more enjoyable, just as Steve Jobs would have wanted it.

What apps can’t you live without? Tell us in the comments!

WhatsApp users now send over one billion messages a day

Drew Olanoff — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 18:52:04 +0000

According to a blog post from Messaging app WhatsApp, the company is now getting over one billion messages sent using its platform a day.

The company had this to say:

Just how much is 1 billion messages? that is 41,666,667 messages an hour, 694,444 messages a minute, and 11,574 messages a second.

1 billion messages a day is a significant milestone and also a small step closer towards our goal: providing a great mobile messaging system for a global market, regardless of your handset.

WhatsApp has been able to distance itself from other messaging apps by being available on iOS, Android, Blackberry and Nokia platforms. The company recently announced its first Windows Phone app as well.

Many group messaging apps have decided to change direction since Apple announced its iMessages offering, but WhatsApp is in the best position to be competitive simply because iMessage is only available on iOS. WhatsApp is currently the #8 paid app on the Apple app store.

Many have been calling for the death of text messaging, as SMS packages have been a huge money maker for carriers. WhatsApp thinks messaging should be free, and companies like Facebook, Apple, and Google are right there with them.

Beluga is officially shutting down, Facebook Messenger now the top free app

Drew Olanoff — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 19:42:23 +0000

In a blog post today entitled “Beluga is swimming into the sunset…”, popular group messaging app Beluga which was purchased by Facebook, is shutting down.

Along with competitors like GroupMe, textPlus, Kik, and now Apple iMessage, Beluga came out on top in Facebook’s mind, and the team was folded into the Messages product.

The team had this to say:

Dear Beluga users,

We’re excited to announce that we just launched the Facebook Messenger app worldwide in 22 languages! If you haven’t used it yet, we hope you’ll give Messenger a try — it has all the great features of Beluga, and it’s available on iOS, Android and BlackBerry.

Now that Facebook Messenger is available everywhere, we’ve decided to stop offering Beluga as a separate service. You can keep using Beluga for now, but we’ll be phasing it out over the next few weeks:

Starting November 11, you’ll no longer be able to use Beluga to send messages, but you can still get to your old messages on the Beluga app and website. If you want, you can also download an archive of your pods.

On December 15, the Beluga service will shut down completely, and you’ll no longer be able to access your old pods or messages.

We’d like to thank you all for being such enthusiastic and loyal users. We’ll continue to use your feedback to improve Messenger and make messaging your friends easier, faster and more fun.

Ben, Lucy & Jon
Team Beluga

Facebook Messenger is taking the app store by storm, and is currently the number one top free app on iOS devices in the U.S. It’s nice that the team, who is now focused on bigger platforms at Facebook, is letting you grab an archive of your pods and messages.

ClassParrot makes it OK for students to text in class

Drew Olanoff — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 21:16:57 +0000

While listening to some of the companies presenting at ImagineK12 last week, I had a few questions about privacy. I was wondering how teachers and parents were feeling about information about students being stored on the cloud. Some of those answers will come during my interviews with each company in the coming weeks.

One service not at ImagineK12, ClassParrot, takes communications and privacy seriously. Its web app will let teachers set up a group to text to and a dashboard to track activity with their class.

It’s a very smart application of SMS features and social communication. Students are texting more and more, and what better way to interact with kids than by using the tools they’re more accustomed to.

The company says that since it launched two weeks ago, its seen over 1,200 teachers sign up for its services. For the education market, that’s a sizable number, and shows that teachers everywhere are looking for cutting edge ways to reach and speak to their students. Teachers are always looking for ways to be “cool” and ClassParrot could be a tool to facilitate that.

Setting up a class

ClassParrot lets you create as many classes as you want, and once you give your class a name, you’re given a unique 10 digit US number to give to your students. They can text the number with a code that ClassParrot gives you.

It’s as simple as that, really. And completely secure since the teacher isn’t giving out their cell number, and neither are the students.

Interacting with your class

The web app lets you send a message to students, and even has a polling system where students can reply with a simple reply via SMS to have their response counted. This could be great for real-time classroom polling on a variety of topics.

The other nice feature of ClassParrot is that you can schedule texts to go out at any given time. For example, if an assignment is due on a Wednesday, you could set up a text to go out Tuesday night as a reminder.

Group texting apps like GroupMe were all the rage last year, allowing you to text within small groups as if they were a virtual chatroom. That didn’t necessarily stick or become a major business avenue, especially since Apple introduced iMessages with built-in group chatting. However, things like privacy are very important to teachers and schools, so creating a service specifically for the education niche is often overlooked. It’s good to see that ClassParrot went ahead and did it.

When you sign up for ClassParrot, you are given 500 credits. Each credit is worth one text message out or in, but you can upgrade to an unlimited plan for $9 a month, or $90 a year. Depending on the size of the class you have, or your amount of usage, you should be able to give the app a good try-out with the free 500 credits. Students and teachers don’t need to download an app or have any specific type of phone, as ClassParrot works completely through SMS and its web interface.

Why you should look up when you’re texting and walking [video]

Zee — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 22:44:08 +0000

Can’t see the video? Watch here: tv.gawker.com