Vlingo Continues to Evolve, Partners with foursquare

Vlingo continues to push their voice application forward, adding new features and enhancements all the time. Today finds the company partnering with foursquare to make check-ins even easier. Now, it’s possible to tap the screen and say “Check in to Taco Bell” rather than opening foursquare and checking in manually. Further, it’s possible to find out where your friends are by simply saying, “Where are my friends?” or “Who’s nearby?” into the voice widget.

I spent some time playing with the latest build of Vlingo and absolutely love it. It’s far more accurate than most folks would expect it to be, and a breeze to learn. Aside from the foursquare integration, users can also have the app help with texts, emails, directions, and open apps. If you’re running an Android phone with 2.0 or higher, I definitely recommend downloading Vlingo.

*****PRESS RELEASE*****

Vlingo Partners with foursquare
Checking In Just Got Easier With Voice

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. (September 2, 2010) – Vlingo Corporation, the world’s leading provider of intelligent voice applications that turn your words into action, today announced a new feature for Android users that allows consumers to use foursquare simply by speaking to their phone. With a seamless integration, Vlingo users can now speak to their phone to check in, connect with their friends, or shout out an update on foursquare.

“Location and social networking have become an integral part of consumers’ everyday lives—so having a strategic alliance with foursquare to provide users with a simple, easy way to connect with their friends is a natural fit for Vlingo,” said Hadley Harris, VP of Marketing at Vlingo. “Vlingo’s mission is to quickly connect our customers to the people, businesses, and services that are important to them. Integrating with foursquare’s industry leading platform is a natural way to help facilitate those connections.”

“We’ve been very impressed by Vlingo’s applications and we’re thrilled that they’ve decided to support the foursquare platform,” said Holger Luedorf, VP of Mobile and Partnerships for foursquare. “By making it easier for Android users to check in and communicate with friends through foursquare, Vlingo is broadening our consumer appeal.”

Vlingo’s integration with foursquare raises the bar for social applications because users now have the flexibility in how they connect with the people that are important to them. By just speaking into their Android device, users can use their voice to launch foursquare and:

Check in to locations
o Check in Hong Kong Express
o Check into Logan Airport
Locate friends
o Where are my friends?
o Who’s nearby
Send shout outs
o Shout headed to Fenway for the Sox game
o foursquare shout at Starbucks grabbing a latte

This latest release of Vlingo also lets users conveniently share Vlingo with their friends easily with the new “Share Vlingo” button. They can also update Facebook, Twitter and/or foursquare at the same time by just saying “social update” and speaking the update.

“Vlingo widget” to:

send text and email messages
search the web using Google or Yahoo!
update Facebook and Twitter status
open built-in and 3rd party applications
speak into any application with the Vlingo Everywhere voice keyboard
SafeReader – hear incoming text & email messages while you drive
SuperDialer – one-click calling to an infinite address book, and reviews, maps and directions for
any business.

Availability, Compatibility and Price
Vlingo is available for Android 2.x and above. U.S. users can download Vlingo on device from the
Android Market for free. Click here to see how you can use foursquare with voice.

Vlingo plans to roll out this functionality to other Vlingo supported platforms in a future release.

Follow Vlingo on Facebook at http://facebook/vlingopage, on Twitter at http://twitter.com/vlingo and on the Vlingo blog at http://blog.vlingo.com for regular news and updates.

About Vlingo
Vlingo’s intelligent voice applications turn your words into action. Simply speak to your phone to connect with the people, businesses and activities that are important to you. Vlingo is the safest and easiest way to get things done while on the go. Send text and email messages, search the web, use Google maps, update Twitter and more. Founded in 2006, Vlingo is backed by Charles River Ventures, Sigma Partners, Yahoo! and AT&T and headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For more
information, go to www.vlingo.com.

About foursquare
Foursquare is a mobile application that makes cities easier to use and more interesting to explore. It is a friend-finder, a social city guide and a game that challenges users to experience new things, and rewards them for doing so. Foursquare lets users “check in” to a place when they’re there, tell friends where they are and track the history of where they’ve been and who they’ve been there with. For more information on foursquare, visit http://foursquare.com/about.