Judy Gladstone is executive director of CHUM’s Bravo!FACT

BARCELONA, SPAIN: After spending four full days at last month’s 3GSM World Congress with over 55,000 other attendees, I returned home with the trophy for best original mobile content (for Shorts In Motion: The Art of Seduction – a project co-conceived with the National Film Board and marblemedia) and my head buzzing with new developments from leaders in the mobile industry.

Two products stood out, SpinVox’s voice-to-text conversion and a new system for sharing media from Roamware in India.

Roamware’s Media Call service enables callers to share media within a phone call, such as a clip from a movie or a music video. Once the call is completed, the receiver can purchase and download the content directly onto their mobile phone.

The application is perfectly suited for viral marketing. As Abraham Punnoose, the outfit’s Mumbai-based head of marketing, says, ‘It enables you to integrate media into everyday calling experience. For example, when making a call, one could send out a blog or a cartoon or a video that would play/display on the recipient’s or called party’s mobile device.

‘Once the call starts, one could share videos, pictures, cartoons or music with the called party, and at the end of the call, all the content shared pre-call and in-call could be made available to the recipient for downloads,’ he adds.

For the Bollywood film industry, this service has the potential to have content personally distributed to fans, from fans, from anywhere in the world. It also has the potential to distribute and monetize content generated outside of the traditional Hollywood film production industry.

The bad news? Many mobile operators currently use technology limiting the size of files that can be uploaded, making high-resolution files impractical. Additionally, while available in 105 countries, Roamware is unfortunately not yet accessible in Canada, since none of our local telecom carriers have picked it up.

The other ‘wow’ technology at 3GSM came from U.K.-based SpinVox, which has developed a simple system that will please all e-mail addicts who hate checking voicemail – messages left on office lines, at home or on cells can now be automatically converted into text that is instantly forwarded to your e-mail inbox.

This enables SpinVox subscribers to check voicemail messages discretely, while participating in conference calls, in public spaces or while the phone is tied up by others.

SpinVox offers another practical attraction for busy executives: dictate a memo into your phone and it will be converted to text shipped directly to your e-mail inbox.

But upon my return to Toronto – all set to open SpinVox accounts immediately at the office, on my Blackberry and at home – I hit brick walls on all three fronts.

Some companies, it turns out, are reluctant to allow their employees to use the service because messages in text form would be stored off-site and become inaccessible to the company’s IT support team.

My home and mobile service provider, for the moment, is also forcing consumers to choose between their voicemail and SpinVox’s service. So no SpinVox for me.

The company hopes to roll out its service in North America within the next few months, offering the technology via telecom providers, which will allow it to bypass the current roadblocks.

www.roamware.com

www.spinvox.com