Orange Vallée, an R&D arm of the Orange Group, updated its voicemail app for iPhone – ON Voicefeed. There are several new features included in this release (version 1.7), such as: Free voice-to-text transcription for premium users. Three new Localization VoiceTags – &address, &city and &country – which are added to users’ location for their…
Microsoft closes Skype acquisition
Microsoft’s $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype has finally been closed, the company recently announced. The plan is for Skype to become a new business unit within Microsoft, with Skype CEO Tony Bates becoming the president of the newly created Skype division. Users should expect for Microsoft to integrate Skype into a variety of its products, including mobile. Discussing plans of the future after joining forces…
Mike Lazaridis posts BlackBerry outage apology and status update video
This morning, RIM posted a video of their co-CEO and founder, Mike Lazaridis, talking about the BlackBerry service interruptions that have been ongoing since Monday around the world. Lazaridis reported that service levels are approaching normal, but they still can’t say for sure how long it will be before everything is restored. He sounded sincere…
BlackBerry service outage goes into third day
Normally BlackBerry service outages aren’t worth much attention because they’re usually resolved within the day, but there’s a particularly big one that has gone for three days now in some areas. The initial outage knocked out instant messaging (including BBM), e-mail, and web browsing in some capacity. At the very least, it sounds like RIM…
America Movil, Citi working on an m-banking service for Latin America
America Movil is teaming-up with Citigroup to roll-out mobile banking service across Latin America. The project starts with Mexico, where the service will allow mobile transactions for as little as 1-2 Mexican pesos (7-15 US cents). The potential is huge – it is thought that approximately three times as many people in Mexico have mobile…
Vringo’s Facetones video ringtone service hits the U.S. through Verizon
Vringo, the video ringtone service we’ve covered for few times in the past, is launching its Facetones service in the U.S. in partnership with Verizon Wireless. Nope, the application won’t come preloaded on the carrier’s smartphones but will be available through V CAST Apps, Verizon’s app store. If you’ve missed our previous posts on Facetones,…
Music lover’s social network Flowd launches in the U.S.
After achieving some success in Europe, the music lover’s social network Flowd is launching in the U.S. As part of that effort, the company has signed Mike Johns, mobile brand producer and CEO of Digital Mind State, to develop mobile social media campaigns for major U.S. hip-hop acts. In Europe, Flowd has signed up more…
Game Center is 67 million users strong; Receiving upgrades in iOS 5
It’s been over a year since Apple announced it would be delivering its own gaming network on iOS called Game Center and today, Apple announced the service has over 67 million users on it. Seeing as how popular the service has been among iOS gamers, Apple will be making some new additions to the service when…
Google Wallet hacked to all Nexus S phones
You may’ve been looking to Sprint’s Nexus S 4G users with a dose of envy, cause they can use Google Wallet and you can’t. If you happen to own the original (GSM-based) version of the Nexus S, you still have to wait for the search giant to release its mobile payments service for your device.…
Rhapsody to acquire Napster from Best Buy
As part of its expansion strategy to grow via direct acquisition of members and distribution deals, Rhapsody has signed a deal to acquire Napster from Best Buy. Under the terms of the agreement, Rhapsody gets Napster’s subscribers along with “certain other assets,” which include a “robust IP portfolio.” In exchange, Best Buy gets a minority…