spin

At the beginning of April, I met with VoiceCloud CEO Gerald Marolda to take a tour of the company's voice mail-to-SMS service. VoiceCloud, which relies on human translators instead of software to transcribe calls, competes with Spinvox, SimulScribe, and CallWave.

A month ago at CTIA Wireless, the hatchling service was just being introduced. Now everyone is invited to try. From the Web site, enter the invite code, "cloud," and your phone details to get started. Users will be able to test the application free of charge for about a month, Marolda says, before a pricing structure is … Read more

Note: Article updated on 4/15/08 to correctly note where posts default.

CellSpin is the easiest multimedia blogging platform for smartphones I've seen to date. Similar to Utterz and Trutap, CellSpin lets people post photos, videos, text, and audio clips to various online profiles--in CellSpin's case, Picasa Web photos, Flickr, LiveJournal, Blogger, eBay, YouTube, and Windows Live Spaces. Of course, you can't post text to YouTube or video to Facebook, but CellSpin keeps it clear in a convenient chart.

Posting is fairly simple from the downloadable app. You click one of four large icons corresponding to … Read more

Up until today, only Windows Mobile 5 and 6 and BlackBerry users could take CellSpin's mobile blogging and media-sharing platform for, well, a spin. On Thursday the San Jose, Calif. company announced a big addition to the family: phones on the Symbian platform.

Adding Symbian cell phones, many of them high-end, brings CellSpin's free beta service to over 300 handsets and over 30 carriers worldwide.

CellSpinners can quickly share photos, video, text, and audio to Blogger, eBay, Facebook, YouTube, Picasa, LiveJournal, Flickr, and Windows Live Spaces, with more partnerships on the way. Of course, there are a few … Read more

SpinVox, a London-based company that offers voice mail-to-text conversion technology, doesn't hide the fact that cell phones can be downright irritating at times. Today the company released the results of a poll of the most annoying cell phone practices as chosen by SpinVox users. Though most of the results aren't particularly surprising--loud talkers topped the list--a few of the practices I never would have thought of as annoying.

For example, "taste blasters," or people who showcase their musical taste through their ringtones, ranked above individuals who talk on the phone in restaurants (aka "chow chatters&… Read more

SpinVox, a United Kingdom-based voice-to-text specialist that in October introduced support for "microblogging" networks such as Twitter, Jaiku, and Pownce, has launched a plug-in for BlackBerry handsets.

Called SpinVox Voicemail, the service identifies the caller and converts the voice message into text or e-mail or both. (The message remains audible.)

SpinVox users then have the option to reply by e-mail, voice, or SMS text message. The monthly cost of the service is based on the number of voice-to-text conversions used: there's a 10-conversion package available for about $6, a 20-conversion package for about $10, and a 50-conversion … Read more

At this week's VMworld Europe in Cannes, France, Novell made an announcement that was more startling to the server virtualization bourgeoisie than a tepid Merlot.

Novell, the company most often associated with network operating systems and red boxes, on Monday announced its plan to acquire PlateSpin, a server virtualization orchestration start-up, for $205 million in cash.

Why would Novell make this acquisition?

1. Server virtualization was passing the company by. In spite of all of the intellectual capital Novell applied to the open-source Xen server virtualization project, the company gained little business value in return. PlateSpin enables Novell to … Read more

Novell said Monday it plans to acquire PlateSpin for $205 million in cash, a move that could bolster Novell's software for helping customers manage their computing operations.

PlateSpin's software is used to encapsulate software and data running on a physical or virtual server, an infrastructure designed to make it easier to reconfigure hardware and software on the fly in response to equipment failures or changing work needs. The software also can handle the automated installation process called provisioning.

Novell, based in Waltham, Mass., is trying to rebuild its financial health by focusing on two main software areas, Linux … Read more

Novell has been on a buying binge lately, today announcing its acquisition of PlateSpin, and previously announcing its acquisition of SiteScape. SiteScape - a company whose product Novell helped to completely rewrite in Java before acquiring it, is nothing to write home about.

PlateSpin, though relatively unknown, might be more interesting.

PlateSpin offers...solutions for the management of heterogeneous workloads that encapsulate data, applications and operating systems residing on a physical or virtual host.… Read more

We've seen a horde of semiconductor spin-offs these past 10 years. Why all of a sudden? Companies are refocusing on core competencies and unloading unprofitable, sometimes debt-ridden businesses. There's also an ongoing and apparently interminable disaggregation of the electronics industry.

The latest trend is for semiconductor companies to spin off product or application-focused companies. I'm not sure that's always the right move, but you'll see a lot more of that in the coming years.

Here are 10 notable chip divestitures. A bunch of them went public during the tech bubble--exciting for them, not so much for long-term investors who, for the most part, took it in the shorts.… Read more