Crowd-powering the news with SpinVox and Skype

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Now here's something that might be a brilliant conduit for mobile news sourcerers to file their stories: a new deal just announced  that allows any phone call to be converted into text, and then processed to email, a blog - wherever text can be published.

What has me excited by this is the possibility of creating news conversations in real time that can be experienced by others in shifted time.

Here's a scenario:

A hurricane makes its way up the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the entire Caribbean and the south-eastern US. NowPublic members gather on Skype, reporting to each other what is happening locally (we do this, on occasion).  

Yes, we can record the Skype call using Pamela.  But these conversations usually would need extensive editing in order to prevent the risk of human fatalities through terminal boredom. Editing audio is a laborious affair.

But text is insanely easy to edit. A transcript of even a one hour conversation could be turned into a 500-word news story in minutes. It would be fresh and potentially, highly newsworthy. 

It is tagged automatically, the way we do right now with Highlight. 

It's formatted brilliantly, sent to the right category, and makes its way toward any number of blogs, radio talk shows, political websites.

People have their say and it makes a difference.  You can see why I am so excited by the possibilities. 

According to SpinVox propaganda, "At the heart of SpinVox is the patented Voice Message Conversion System™ (VMCS) which today underpins the company’s retail, enterprise, service provider and global carrier products. VMCS is maintained on an enterprise-class hardware infrastructure by an expert management team
to meet the rigorous demands of global carriers."

The press release is available here but for some reason it won't download.