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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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.

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1) Qu’avez-vous dit?

It’s a pretty typical new year’s resolution…”This year, I’m going to learn (whatever) language”. I say it all the time. I know for me, besides learning to juggle, perfecting my French has been up there for a while, which is being VERY generous to my current level of French. Do I do it? Of course not. But not everyone has to know that…and the VoxOx Universal Translator gives us a really nice shortcut. So I took advantage and faked out my Facebook friend Laura, from Paris mind you.

I found Laura in my VoxOx buddy list (under Facebook friends) and clicked the globe icon on the bottom right of the VoxOx chat window, selecting “English” for my language and “French” for hers. Then I started chatting with her in perfect French, convincing her that I suddenly was quite the francophone savant. Good times…I mean, quelle bon temps!

Quick Tip: Facebook translation works best when the person on the FB leg of the conversation has their default language set appropriately so that the symbols and characters come out right on their end.

2) Update my Twitter status via @reply…in Italian

Because..you know, why not. Kinda fun to write “vi soggiorno di classe, San Diego. Sono Ron Burgundy?”

Just find an unsuspecting Twitter contact in your VoxOx buddy list, click on the Twitter logo by their name, and select “reply to”. Then set your languages and blast! Now your Twitter status is in Italian and your friend knows that you’re… Ron… Burgundy?

3) Email….anyone, anywhere

Not to be all bussinessy, but ever have to send emails to a client, or a colleague who doesn’t speak your language very well? Well, this new tool is great for just that, and this way you don’t have to go back and forth from some online translating site. Just open up the email tab of whatever contact you want to email, click the globe icon again and off you go. You might even get business out of this…but go ahead and keep the commission for yourself, we’re in it for the love and adoration of our fans, not the money.

4) Text message my new Russian mail order bride

Just kidding.

5) Communicating with my Spanish in-laws

Well, not mine per se…since I don’t, you know, have any in-laws…But a friend of mine just got engaged to a girl from Zaragoza, Spain, and her family speaks zero English. Not the best way to keep yourself very ingratiated with the mother-in-law. But with the new VoxOx Universal Translator, his awkward family interactions can be a thing of the past…well, maybe, but at least there’s finally a way for him to placate his new extended family without just nodding and smiling. This doesn’t have to apply just to in laws of course. Use this tool to finally get to know your family from around the world better with just a few clicks!

Well that’s it for me. Thanks for reading everyone, and remember to keep on Voxin’

Ben a.k.a “the Intern”

Ben, the VoxOx Intern, is a second-year MBA student at the Thunderbird School of Global Management. He has drunk beer on 4 continents, is fluent in 3 languages and has an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure NBA players. Ben also...wait, are you really still reading this? Because, you know, he's just an intern.

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Thank you!

Erik Bratt is the master of his domain and the head of communications for TelCentris, the creator of VoxOx. He loves Quentin Tarantino movies, dabbling with the electric bass, and fiddling with the text-to-speech functionality on the VoxOx Personal Assistant.

follow erik.bratt twitter.com/erikbratt

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