"Clarity, a division of Plantronics dedicated to making communication devices with amplified audio for those with impaired hearing, has teamed up with a company called ClearCaptions, which provides text transcription captioning services for phone calls to create the Ensemble. The Ensemble packs a one-two punch for people who have trouble hearing: It provides sophisticated amplified audio like a hearing aid, and real-time text captioning of the ongoing conversation on a seven-inch screen."
The new Kindle for iPad/iPhone (not the actual Kindle unit) will now feature books with embedded audio and video content to enhance the reading experience. The new features are already in a few books, but the new functionality could create a more robust reading/multimedia experience of what has traditionally been a relatively lean form of content delivery.
"Facebook is making strides towards becoming a multi-media communication juggernaut, its head of Messenger David Marcus announced today at TechCrunch Disrupt SF. Out of Messenger's one-billion users, 300 million people use its audio and video calling features each month. That's around the size of Skype's entire user base.
Facebook is uniquely well-suited to disrupting traditional home and mobile phone voice calling and their successor, video calling. It has the most complete social graph of family, friends, and acquaintances - going beyond what's in most people's phone contacts. It has a one-billion user chat app where people are already spending tons of time. And it has the technology infrastructure to support high-bandwidth transmissions."
backed by DreamWorks. The idea is to create "snackable media" by mashing up text, video, images and audio into 60-second slideshows or videos. The personalized one-offs can then be broadcast across channels, a full composition taking mere minutes to complete. Rather than limiting the sharing to the user's own content, all media aggregated from social feeds are fair game for users to "ptch" to their friends.
"I'm going to the gym in a few minutes. I'll bring my android and stream some music while I'm on the treadmill. Maybe I'll listen to my soundcloud dropbox, or maybe I'll check out the popular tracks on hypem, or maybe I'll listen to some fredwilson.fm. I stream music on my mobile phone all the time. I don't have a single mp3 on my android and I don't have any desire to put any on it."
One function, called LoveMail, allows musicians to record short audio messages to fans, a touch that the company, also called FanTrail, sees as more personal than artists' sometimes ghostwritten Twitter feeds. Another feature, LoveMeter, ranks fans' loyalty by measuring their activity in buying music and checking in at concerts.