Recently, while on a business trip, I found myself needing to print out my boarding passes for my flights later that day. My hotel room was not equipped with a printer, and I wasn’t about to pay the ridiculous Internet and printing rates at the hotel’s business center. So, I wondered if VoxOx could help me out.

Our CEO, Bryan Hertz, who was traveling with me, suggested I do the following:

1. Check in for the flight using my laptop and the hotel room wifi
2. When the screen displays my boarding passes to print, save them as PDF files on my computer
3. Then, open up VoxOx and use the fax feature to send the PDF to the hotel to my attention
4. Grab it at reception at check-out and voila — all set!

This was incredibly handy for me, and, I imagine, this would be useful to any traveler in need of printing a document from a hotel room. So, whether you need to print your boarding pass, a copy of your passport, or your day’s agenda, VoxOx has you covered.

Michael is our Harvard/Wharton-educated, though technologically-challenged, president. In fact, when he’s not speaking with investors, we mostly use him for usability testing -- if HE can use it we know ANYONE can. Michael grew up in Italy and was very happy about the launch of our Universal Translator service as he can now pretend that he still speaks fluent Italian.

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1) Update your global status to let everything know your team scored

When your team scores you have about a second to react before the moment is gone. Just imagine yourself trying to post your “WE OWN YOU BRAZIL” on your Facebook, Twitter, AIM, etc.  By the time you’re done, the other team may have scored, and that’s just embarrassing. With VoxOx, you can update all your networks with one click. Just go to the status bar, bang out your best heckle and enter. Takes 2 seconds and your friends know who’s boss.

2) Use the Universal Translator to gloat to your friends in their language

Talking smack about other teams is fun, but what about talking international smack?  Not so fun when the other person doesn’t understand what you’re saying. Well, luckily we have just the thing – with the VoxOx Universal Translator feature, you just type your…er… feelings… in the VoxOx chat window and it gets instantly translated into the language of your international buddy on the other side of the world. You can do this with texts, emails and Tweets too.  I don’t speak any Spanish, but… mi abuela patea mas duro que tus delanteros! (It may not be perfect but it sure gets the point across.)

3) Screen your calls until half-time

If you’re a true fan, you probably don’t want to be interrupted watching the World Cup, except maaaaybe if someone has something really important to say.  With VoxOx you can screen all your calls, at least until half-time. You can even listen to the caller leaving a voicemail in real-time, and pick up the call at any point with VoxOx’s Eavesdrop™ feature. So, if your buddy calls and starts leaving you a voice message, ragging on your team, you can pick it right up and tell him what’s on your mind.  If you haven’t had a chance to give out your VoxOx number to your friends yet, you can just forward your cell to VoxOx and use many of these calling features. 

4) Set your country’s flag as your VoxOx avatar

It will be nice to look at and it’s one of the easiest things you can do to show your team pride. Just Google the image you want, save to your desktop, and then right click on your VoxOx default pic and browse for the image file. Or you can even get a little creative, like these guys we found online:

5) Call your international buddies for cheap when your team beats theirs

If you didn’t get enough gloating and smack-talking done with the Universal Translator, it always helps to finish the job with a phone call. VoxOx international calling rates are crazy cheap, we’re talking as low as a penny per minute. Did you see that goal? Was that striker off-sides? Can you believe that ref? With such low rates, you can talk about anything and everything and still have plenty of cash left to stock up on refreshments for the next match.

So with that, have an awesome time watching the World Cup in the coming weeks and don’t forget to use VoxOx to “express yourself” about it!

Matt is a software developer, working tirelessly behind the scenes to give us the tools we need to work faster and smarter. He’s the type of guy that is always updating his status, Tweeting, or jumping in on the newest social media network, which makes VoxOx a more-than-natural home for him. When he manages to disconnect from the Internet, you’ll find him glued to his xbox, enjoying the beautiful scenes of San Diego, or throwing a Frisbee.

follow Matt twitter.com/voxox

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With VoxOx, you have incredibly cheap calling rates for more than 200 regions worldwide, including:

Plus, when you sign up for VoxOx, we give you some initial pocket change so that you can make a few calls on us! For example, when signing up within the U.S. or Canada, you get a $1 credit, and at $.01 per minute that gives you more than an hour and a half to fill Dad’s head with things that’ll make him go awwwww. 

It’s so easy too – just find him on your contact list, right-click to select the contact, and then press the little phone icon. You’ll be giving him a call in no time!

And, if he’s not in your contact list, just go for the keypad tab:

So, there you have it – VoxOx connects you with a bunch of places worldwide for super cheap and eliminates the excuse that you couldn’t find an affordable way to call. So, this June 20th, let Dad know how much you love and appreciate him on his special day.  

And with that, our VoxOx team would like to wish a Happy Father’s Day to dads everywhere!

Connie is the telephone number guru responsible for your VoxOx phone numbers (let's call her director of CLEC operations). With several certifications she’s really a jack of all trades and keeps us humming along. She may be dubbed the team step-mom, but has more fun than most! With all the RV trips to the River & Desert, VoxOx is great for staying in touch with the “real” world…who says you need to be stuck behind a desk?

follow connie.sanders twitter.com/

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Sending mom a link to VoxOx will give her even more access to keep in touch with you on a regular basis. When she sees all the possible ways you can send her your love, it will make her day. So, why not start with Mother’s Day? 

Here are five ways you can wish her a Happy Mother’s Day via VoxOx:

1.    Call her on-the-cheap

My mom’s in Canada and she thinks I spend big bucks on phone bills (makes her love me even more). What she doesn’t know is that it costs 1 penny per minute to call Canada from VoxOx!  Plus, when you sign up for VoxOx in the U.S. or Canada, the first $1 worth of VoxOx credit is on us, so you can call a bunch of places worldwide for super cheap. 

It’s so easy too – just find her on your contact list, right click to select the contact, and then press the little phone icon. You’ll be giving her a call in no time!

And, if she’s not in your contact list, just go for the keypad tab:

2.    Let the world know she’s your favorite lady!

Declare your love for mom on all your IM/social network statuses from VoxOx by simply typing your message in the global status bar: 

3.    Fax her “I love you, mom” to her office

She won’t be expecting to see it when she comes in on Monday, and it will start her day off on a happy note.

As with calling, find mom on your contact list, right click to select her contact, and then press the little fax icon. For more details on how to fax via VoxOx, see our Earth Day entry.

4.    SMS ur xoxo from VoxOx

If your mom’s like mine she won’t text you, but you bet she reads the ones she gets… so text her “Happy Mother’s Day!” and make her smile.

Just like calling and faxing, you can text by finding her on your contact list and right clicking to select. Then, hit the button that says “SMS.”

VoxOx charges a 1 penny for outbound domestic U.S. & Canada texts, a 2 pennies for international texts. All inbound texts are free! Not bad, eh?

5.    Tweet your love for mom in 50 languages

If your mom is a real “with it” mom she might have her own Twitter account. Well, if that’s the case, why not send her a few loving Twitter @replies through VoxOx?

To do this, just find her Twitter profile in your VoxOx contact list, click on the Twitter logo by her name, and select “reply to”.

Now, if your mom speaks more than one language, VoxOx has a special way for you to impress her. For example, if she grew up in France (and raised you in CA), you can type your Twitter @reply in English, it will post in French.

To do this, when you select “Reply to,” a chat window will pop up — click on the globe icon (bottom right). Set your language, your mom’s language, and voila! Now you can tell the world that you love your mom in 50+ languages.

So, there you go – five ways to let mom know how much you love her. And with that, our VoxOx team would like to wish a Happy Mother’s Day to moms everywhere!

Connie is the telephone number guru responsible for your VoxOx phone numbers (let's call her director of CLEC operations). With several certifications she’s really a jack of all trades and keeps us humming along. She may be dubbed the team step-mom, but has more fun than most! With all the RV trips to the River & Desert, VoxOx is great for staying in touch with the “real” world…who says you need to be stuck behind a desk?

follow connie.sanders twitter.com/

follow VoxOx twitter.com/voxox

The video includes how to:

• Make and receive calls
• Text
• Set up your VoxOx Personal Assistant
• IM
• Email
• Share files (up to 100 MB!)
• Fax
• Use the VoxOx Universal Translator
• And more!

Become a VoxOx expert with our video tutorial!

Natasha Grach is a PR pro by day and singer by night -- when not telling the world about VoxOx, she can be found on stage at some of San Diego’s favorite musical theater venues. She is also a travel junkie. Her favorite countries include Turkey, Israel, Spain, UK, Italy, Russia, Lithuania. She’ll be using VoxOx SMS CallBack on her next trip around the globe!

follow natasha.grach twitter.com/natashagrach

follow VoxOx twitter.com/voxox

Click on video to view:

Natasha Grach is a PR pro by day and singer by night -- when not telling the world about VoxOx, she can be found on stage at some of San Diego’s favorite musical theater venues. She is also a travel junkie. Her favorite countries include Turkey, Israel, Spain, UK, Italy, Russia, Lithuania. She’ll be using VoxOx SMS CallBack on her next trip around the globe!

follow natasha.grach twitter.com/natashagrach

follow VoxOx twitter.com/voxox

We recently asked VoxOx users to tell us interesting ways in which they’ve used the VoxOx Universal Translator. Here’s a great story from our VoxOx Facebook fan Taryn:

My son’s friend Daniel had to write a report for his Spanish class on the history of Chile and the recent earthquake they had there. This was the first report that had to be entirely in Spanish. He wrote the report, then did his best to translate it into Spanish.

My husband and I have been excited to tell everyone about VoxOx’s new real-time translation capabilities (we’re actually new stockholders in the company – TelCentris). So, when Daniel mentioned his report, I asked him to email me the English version. I then instantly emailed it back to him through the VoxOx Universal Translator. Daniel was interested to see how it compared with the version he had translated on his own – pretty close! Helps to have an answer key to compare with (like you do at the end of a math book. =)

Then Daniel and my son Jake did a little instant messaging through the translator. Jake wrote in English and Daniel received it in Spanish. Daniel then replied in Spanish and Jake received it in English. Amazing technology! We are thrilled to be involved with such an innovative and exciting company.

Daniel ended up getting an A on the project thanks to his translation efforts. He did the work himself, but it was nice to be able to run it through the Universal Translator and instantly check his work. So, congratulations to VoxOx on your first A in 9th grade Spanish class!

So there you have it! Comment on this blog entry to let us know creative ways in which you’ve been using the VoxOx Universal Translator – first comment will receive 300 free U.S./Canada calling minutes…

P.S. You can also read some more examples on how to use the VoxOx Universal Translator feature by our intern Ben — “Ben’s Fave Five Ways to Use the VoxOx Universal Translator”

Natasha Grach is a PR pro by day and singer by night -- when not telling the world about VoxOx, she can be found on stage at some of San Diego’s favorite musical theater venues. She is also a travel junkie. Her favorite countries include Turkey, Israel, Spain, UK, Italy, Russia, Lithuania. She’ll be using VoxOx SMS CallBack on her next trip around the globe!

follow natasha.grach twitter.com/natashagrach

follow VoxOx twitter.com/voxox

Beautiful Barcelona Welcomes the VoxOx Team

And now, “we’re baaack …” and what a trip it was! Already a hip and trendy place, Barcelona welcomed VoxOx (and our new Universal Translator) with open arms!

Despite several, well, blunders affecting folks we were in the company of (one person having her purse snatched, some folks getting food poisoning, and one person not even being able to leave their country on account of their passport being revoked), nothing could throw us off track!

What amazed me about this trip was that almost everyone I spoke with about VoxOx had already heard of it. I imagine that’s how up-and-coming rock stars feel, to be greeted with a smile when folks realize who you are. What’s even more amazing is the amount of press attention we got at the show.

Walking around the show and peering in at some of the hundreds upon hundreds of booths, from infrastructure equipment manufacturers to mobile “adult content” vendors, it was all too obvious that mobile is where everything is going! That’s why it gave me great joy to tell reporters who asked “So, what’s your mobile strategy?” that VoxOx is completely platform independent and primarily runs “in the cloud.” What that means is, the infrastructure that runs the majority of VoxOx services does not run on the desktop, or on a mobile phone, but rather in the Internet cloud and can be accessed from virtually anywhere.

It is true that we are planning to launch apps for the iPhone, Android and other mobile phones, but more importantly, VoxOx has been built first and foremost to deliver a level of functionality that operates from any mobile phone, anywhere in the world, and not just “smartphones” that are operating on their local network with a (sometimes expensive or unavailable) data connection.

For example, imagine the billions of people around the world who are using phones that do not have “apps” at all, who want to place an inexpensive phone call while on the road. With VoxOx SMS CallBack, you can simply send a text message to a special number we give you, and then type in the number of the person you want to talk to. Within a minute, VoxOx calls you back and conferences you in with that person at astonishingly low VoIP rates.

Or imagine calling your VoxOx Personal Assistant from ANY phone and instructing it to call one of your contacts, create a 20-person conference call on the fly, change settings like your “Find Me” numbers, listen to your messages, dial directory assistance, and so on. No app to download or keep up to date, or to worry about a data connection for, and no need to continually launch something that takes over your phone whenever you want to access a feature.

One powerful example of VoxOx’s platform-independent mobile integration is the new VoxOx Universal Translator feature, which we launched at the show last week. From VoxOx, you can text someone in just about any country in your native tongue and the message will be translated to their language when they receive it. With NO app running on their phone (and, in fact, without them even needing to know what VoxOx is), their replies will instantly be translated back into YOUR native tongue – voila! If you think about the functionality a user wants in a mobile application, it’s often quite different than what they’d want in a desktop app. The media immediately “got it.” We kept hearing things like, “wow – there’s just NOTHING out there that covers the breadth of functionality that VoxOx does!”

So as I reflect back on the meetings and the comments about what the future looks like for us, my thoughts were validated on multiple levels. VoxOx seems to be the only player that has both the most advanced front-end technology (VoxOx) and back-end technology (the award-winning TelCentris cloud-based UC Service Delivery Platform) and that mobile is an increasingly important space that we will play in.

And now it’s time to get back to work… until next time!

As CEO, Bryan Hertz operates on many frequencies. Some say Megahertz, others say Gigahertz and when they're really mad, they say Kilohertz. Although there's no known connection to Heinrich Hertz, Bryan likes to think VoxOx will prove to be as important to history as the discoveries of that famous scientist. When he's not geeking out on universal communications, he dabbles in multiple areas of alternative health and Eastern medicine.

follow Bryan Hertz twitter.com/bryanhertz

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