Q: What is MyVocal?
Q: How does it work?
Q: What are all those different products?
Q: How do I navigate on the voice portal?
Q: What happens if my phone call drops during the audio playback?
Q: Where does the service work?
Q: How much it costs to use it?
Q: Does it work on my phone?
Q: Why do I need it?
Q: What other things do you have?
 

Q: What is MyVocal?
MyVocal is a mobile audio content service. It combines different audio content - magazines, podcasts, travel guides, interactive voice services, audio-books, and more - so you can listen to it all on the go via your mobile phone.

Q: How does it work?
Using MyVocal is as easy as making a phone call. You do not need to download files or use data streaming - the requested audio content will be played back to you over an ordinary phone call.
Every individual piece of audible content in our service (we call them "items") in uniquely numbered. Examples of items are magazine articles or podcast episodes. If you know the number of the specific item which you would like to listen, you can always type it on the voice portal and the requested item will start playing. If you do not know which item you are looking for - then browse our content library.


All the content is organized in a library which you can explore via the following portals:

1. WEB portal
Through web portal you can discover all what MyVocal can deliver - you can browse the catalogue of content or search it for the content you are interested in, build selections of your favorites, drop content to the playlist, add new content feeds, even create your own mobile portal! Please do not hesitate to play with the web portal to discover all the power of MyVocal.

2. Mobile portal
Just open the URL http://myvocal.mobi from your mobile phone and browse (or search) our content library. To listen to the selected item select the "Listen on MyVocal" link on the item page - MyVocal will help you to chose the local phone number (if you are in one of the 7 countries which we currently support) and initiate the phone call.
Read carefully any messages on your mobile phone's screen - depending on your handset model, you might be able to initiate the call right away, or may need to create an account. If the phone fails to initiate the phone call, you will have to register or sign in... this takes just a few seconds!

3. Downloadable mobile application (MyVocal Mobile)
MyVocal Mobile is a Java application which you can download for free. You will definitely enjoy animations, iPod-like screen transitions, a faster interface and easy to learn shortcuts. Grab MyVocal Mobile through the "Get MyVocal Mobile" link in the bottom of any of our WAP pages (or directly from http://wap.myvocal.com/mobile). It is available on several popular handset models and we plan to support many more devices in 2008.
As with WAP, depending on the handset model you may either initiate the phone call without account registration, or will have to create an account on MyVocal. If you have an account already, just sign-in with your login-in and password in "Settings" and it will work for sure!

4. Voice portal
Most importantly, you do not have to use mobile data to access mobile audio! Just call one of our phone numbers and key in the ID of the audio item which you would like to play. Well.... in fact, you are not supposed to remember those item numbers - that is why we have the WAP portal or MyVocal mobile. However, you can navigate on the voice portal directly: for example, call a service number and type in "22" to hear headlines of the latest Economist Magazine, or "33" to listen to the latest CNN Podcast. These two demo items were prepared for you, but you can enter ANY item number shown on the corresponding item screen (MyVocal Item ID) - for example, 555500 will play the Politics section of the December 8th Economist Magazine.

Q: What are those different products?
MyVocal combines various products having two things in common - audible or readable content. In our library you will find Podcasts, Magazines, RSS feeds, Travel guides, Audio Books and different interactive tools. Although these products are quite different, they all will appear in the catalogue and will consistently show up in your search results and will be available both on mobile on audio portals.

Q: How do I navigate on the voice portal?

We will soon introduce Speech Recognition so that you can command with your voice rather than type, but for now you have to use the phone's keypad to control the audio playback and voice portal navigation.
After you create an account on MyVocal, the service will recognize you every time you dial in from the phone number with which you have registered. When you dial in, MyVocal will start playing your playlist; if your playlist is empty you will be requested to type in the unique item number of the requested audio item (those "MyVocal Item IDs" are shown next to every item on the portal) or a shortcode (3-digit code) of your favorite item.
When in the playlist or favorites folders, items will be listed one by one. You should use the middle-row keys (4, 5 and 6 buttons) for selecting the named item (5), going to the next item (6) or to the previous one (4).
 

During the audio playback, you can rewind 5 seconds backward by pressing Star key (*) or jump 5 seconds forward by pressing hash key (#). You can also use the "next" button (6) for skipping the playing item before it is finished.
Use of the Zero button is not yet fully activated - right now it will either evoke the Help instructions, or re-start the playback of the audio item.

Q: What happens if my phone call drops during the audio playback?
Imagine that you listen to your favorite news channel while driving and suddenly the phone line drops. Do not worry - we expected that this can happen and have an easy solution!
When the phone call drops (or you terminate the call yourself) the service will remember the point where the call was cut and will restore the audio playback from the moment of interruption (actually, few seconds before that). You literally need to hit the "redial" button and voila - you are at the same position which you were interrupted

One condition - you have to have a MyVocal account so that the service can track your call sessions and help you restoring the interrupted calls.

Q: Where does the service work?
Today MyVocal is available in 9 countries:

We are working on global availability of the service, so please do tell us where you would like to use it.

Q: How much does it costs to use it?
For now, MyVocal is FREE - or you pay only for the airtime according to your mobile or fixed line rate plan (if you have a business mobile phone, your employer will pay for that). Sometimes, you might also hear some short audio-advertisement - we are researching if we can keep on running our service free for you and finance it through advertisement. Please tell us if you find this advertising annoying or irrelevant.

Q: Does it work on my phone?
By definition, MyVocal service works on ANY phone - the audio subsystem of our service is agnostic to the phone model, it works on mobile, fixed-line or VOIP phones (like Skype). Just call any of the above numbers to access the voice portal.
 
To access the mobile catalogue you need at least an internet-enabled handset. The downloadable MyVocal Mobile application is available for various models of Nokia, Motorola, SonyEricsson, Samsung and LG. If MyVocal Mobile is not yet released for your handset, you can always use our mobile portal (wap) which has most of the functionality of MyVocal. 

Q: Why do I need it?
Have you every felt that you might want to learn something while driving or jogging? Have you ever felt guilty for spending too much time in the office reading blogs while your family is waiting for you? Have you ever thrown your favorite magazine or newspaper in the trash unopened because you haven't had time to read it?

if you answer "Yes" to any of those questions, you might find our service useful.
If you feel that you will use it - please share your excitement with us!
If you find it useless - tell us why...
If you think you need some other features - tell us what exactly you are missing!
If you know any other service which does it better - tell us who we should spy on (yes, we know about iTunes J )....

Q: What other things do you have?
We have LOTS!!! You can link your MyVocal account to Twitter to that your friends know what audio stories are you listening... You can set up a Facebook application which will give you insights on what is popular among your friends and allow you sharing the content with others.... You can send any text or audio file to your own MyVocal email address (customize it in Settings) and listen to it on the road!

If you have the content and would like to distribute it to your audience, with MyVocal you can create your own mobile portal (including iPhone and downloadable Java application!) and launch it in few clicks!.... Have content but do not want to bother with distribution - just add your content to our library and enjoy our distribution partnerships! We are now working on micro-billing which will enable subscription and "premium-casting" helping our partners-publishers monetize their content.

We will appreciate any your feedback... and please watch our blog!

Thank you for taking the time reading all this! We really hope you will enjoy our service.

Yours in Service,

The MyVocal Team