TechCrunch Cribs: Iovox Is Rocking The Voice World, Literally [TCTV]

Iovox is a startup specialising in something known as VaaS (Voice as a Service). Their telephony platform allows companies to build services on the telephone network that do real-world, heavy-lifting style jobs which normally require call centres. Companies which have taken on the service include News International and many others.

I went over to their West London offices (yes, not all startups in London are in the East, incredibly), to check out the legendary guitar playing skills of CEO Ryan Gallagher in our TechCrunch Europe version of TC Cribs. Maybe next time we should do a duet.

Iovox’s latest product is an identity verification product CallSign. This is quite current, given the recent controversy with AirBnB being among those companies that failed to screen users very throughly.

CallSign contacts an account holder via an automated call and records the confirmation of any transaction or request. During the call, the user is identified by a set of security questions and can accept or reject the transaction, either with a simple 1 to confirm or even entering a full passport number. It’s ended up being used by the likes of Ebay, Livebookings and others.

Iovox is in Notting Hill, thusly henceforth this shall be known as “Silicon Hill”. Here endeth the lesson.

CrunchBase Information

iovox

Information provided by CrunchBase

CrunchBase Information

Ryan Gallagher

Information provided by CrunchBase

Motorola Droid 4 Specs Leak Out, More LG Phones Will Receive Android 4 Upgrade & Apple Had A Better Black Friday Than It Expected

Quietly Brilliant Story of HTC Shows off Innovations Through the Years
While HTC has often been overshadowed by its competition, and has recently been overtaken by Samsung for overall Android market share, it had its most successful quarter ever in Q3 ’11, buoyed by the succes of the Sensation and EVO 3D. And with stunning devices like the Ville arriving in early 2012, its success should only be more pronounced in the quarters to come.
MobileSyrup

Motorola Droid 4 Specifications Leak Out
The official specifications and pictures of the upcoming Motorola Droid 4 have been unearthed by Droid Life, revealing a device very similar to the Droid Razr, with the addition of a physical QWERTY keyboard.
Mashable

More Optimus Handsets Will Receive Ice Cream Sandwich Upgrade, LG Confirms
LG’s list of Android 4.0 phones is about to get a little longer, now that the manufacturer has confirmed the arrival of Ice Cream Sandwich for even more handsets.
Engadget

Apple Had A Better Black Friday Than It Expected
According to a 9to5Mac source inside Apple, the company had originally expected to do four times the sales it usually does. By 7pm on Friday, however, Apple had blasted past its original goal and had its biggest sales day to date.
TechCrunch

The Roundabout Tapes – RjDj Plans To Game Reality With Sound [TCTV]

RjDj’s Michael Breidenbruecker, also a Founder last.fm, has certainly opened up the avenues for sound apps on mobile platforms. The startup’s apps have become platforms for musicians, but are gradually evolving into augmented reality mobile apps.

Most recently the company partnered with screenwriter Christopher Nolan on Inception: The App, which reached 4 million downloads. The amount of “dreamtime” (time spent listening to the app ) was over 94 years. The average listening time per session is over 30 minutes. This was not your average app!

Now, RjDj is beta testing a new mobile game project called Dimensions. This uses augmented sound to warp the sound around you and lead you into a game of ‘enhanced reality.’ Dimensions is currently slated to release early in December, so look out for our coverage of its release.

Indeed Will Wright, creator of the hugely successful SimCity and The Sims, is working on something similar, called HiveMind, a sort of “personal gaming” platform.

Meantime, we caught up with Michael’s team, based in London’s ‘Silicon Roundabout’ area as part of our series of interviews we’re calling The Roundabout Tapes, interviewing the largest cluster of tech startups in London which happen to have gravitated towards East London.

Today’s Mobile Brief: Flash for Mobile is Dead, a Galaxy Nexus is “Coming Soon” & iOS 5 Adoption is Rocking

It’s Official: Flash Mobile Player Is Dead
Adobe confirmed what reports were saying all morning: It’s done with the Flash Mobile Player and has now thrown its lot in with the HTML5 crowd — for mobile at least. “We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook,” wrote Danny Winokur, Adobe VP and general manager for interactive development in a blog entry this morning.
Mashable

iOS 5 Now On Nearly 40% Of iPhones, Study Finds

The new OS can be found on more than 38% of iPhones, 30% of iPads and 12% of iPod touch devices. The iPhone’s adoption rate is clearly the most impressive, especially considering the new software is not compatible with two of the five iterations of Apple’s popular smartphone.
BGR

Official Google Galaxy Nexus Page Now Shows Canada As “Coming Soon”
The Galaxy Nexus is coming. At one point on the official Google Nexus registration page Canada was left out, now our fine land has been included into the mix of other countries – this is certainly great news and now we’re just waiting for something official.
MobileSyrup

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