Google has launched a service aimed at allowing Egyptians to post Twitter messages without the use of an Internet connection.
The move follows the blackout of Internet services in Egypt, amid protests demanding the ousting of the country’s president, Hosni Mubarak.
The service allows users to dial into any of three international telephone numbers and leave a voice message. The messages are instantly translated into text and posted on Twitter using the hashtag #egypt, according to Google.
Users can listen to the voice messages by dialling into the same numbers (+16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855) or going to twitter.com/speak2tweet.
The voice-tweet service was devised by a small team of engineers from Twitter, Google and SayNow, a company Google acquired last week.
“Like many people we’ve been glued to the news unfolding in Egypt and thinking of what we could do to help people on the ground,” wrote Google product manager AbdelKarim Mardini and SayNow co-founder Ujjwal Singh on the official Google blog. “Over the weekend we came up with the idea of a speak-to-tweet service — the ability for anyone to tweet using just a voice connection.”
Egypt’s ISPs are currently blocked from connecting outside of the country and mobile phone services were temporarily cut off, but were restored on 29 January. The Egyptian government initially blocked Twitter communications last week before proceeding to a more widespread communications blackout.
Some users have reportedly turned to internationally based dial-up Internet services to stay connected.
The Internet Society (ISOC) has expressed concern over the cyber blackout in Egypt, calling it “an inappropriate response to a political crisis” and “a very serious intrusion into people’s basic rights”.
“Cutting off a nation’s access to the Internet only serves to fuel dissent and does not address the underlying causes of dissatisfaction,” said ISOC. “If the blockage continues, it will have a very detrimental impact on Egypt’s economy and society.”
Following the cyber restriction, Hewlett-Packard asked its employees in Cairo to stay at home, while Microsoft is reportedly moving many of its call-centre staff out of Cairo’s ‘Smart Villages’ information technology park.
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Martin Reber, CEO of SVOX, the specialist in embedded speech solutions, has made the following comments:
“The way that we communicate with others online has changed dramatically over the past few years with social networking and micro blogging sites such as Twitter increasing in popularity. Instant channels of communication have come to be expected and new technology is constantly being developed to ensure that people can stay in touch, even if circumstances prevent users from updating online contacts using the traditional methods of typing an update and posting it online.
“Speak2Tweet is allowing Egyptians to keep the outside world up-to-date with occurrences during this period of political unrest. This innovative technology is a great example of how the way we communicate with people and devices is changing. Using sound files which post automatically on Twitter or technology that can turn voice messages directly in to text can enable people to keep contacts updated and allow them to communicate with devices in a new and innovative way.”