Both Barrels Communications Ltd

Fans can vote online to help Palringo win internet’s top honour

Palringo has been nominated in the Best Use of GPS or Location Technology category in the 13th Annual Webby Awards. Hailed as the “internet’s highest honour” by the New York Times, the Webby Awards is the leading international award honouring excellence on the Internet.

“Webby nominees set the standard for innovation and creativity on the Internet,” said David-Michel Davies, executive director of the Webby Awards. “It is an incredible achievement to be selected among the best from the nearly 10,000 entries we received this year.”

Palringo’s founder and CTO Martin Rosinski said: “Being shortlisted for a Webby Award is a sure signal to our users and customers that the outstanding location functionality we’ve built into Palringo is at the leading edge of what’s currently possible and useful in a messaging service.”

Nomination also makes Palringo eligible to win a Webby People’s Voice Award, voted for online by the global Web community. From now until April 30th, all admirers of Palringo can cast their votes in The Webby People’s Voice Awards at http://pv.webbyawards.com.

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Notes to editors
The Webby Awards is presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a 650-person judging academy whose members include Internet co-inventor Vinton Cerf, R/GA’s Chief Bob Greenberg, “Simpson’s” creator Matt Groening, Arianna Huffington, and Harvey Weinstein.

Winners will be announced on May 5th, 2009 at a ceremony in New York City on June 8th hosted by Seth Meyers. Winners will be able to share one of the Webby’s famous five-word speeches with the world. Past Webby Award winners – and their speeches – include Al Gore (“Please don’t recount this vote.”), Beastie Boys (“Can anyone fix my computer?”), and Stephen Colbert (“Me. Me. Me. Me. Me.”).

About Palringo
The Palringo service combines walkie-talkie style voice (vocal instant messaging), the real-time text chat functionality of instant messaging, the ability to share pictures, location and presence – all within the context of a discussion. Supporting connections to other popular instant messaging services, it enables both one-on-one and group discussions, and enables real-time dialogue, for users from across the globe, on any mobile network or connected PC. Palringo is a privately-held company based in Newcastle, UK.

About The Webby Awards
Hailed as the “Internet’s highest honor” by the New York Times, The Webby Awards is the leading international award honouring excellence on the Internet, including Websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile web sites. Established in 1996, the 13th Annual Webby Awards received over 10,000 entries from all 50 states and over 60 countries worldwide. The Webby Awards is presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. Sponsors and Partners of The Webby Awards include: Microsoft Silverlight; The Creative Group; .ORG; Getty Images; The Barbarian Group; Digital Kitchen; Wired; IDG; PricewaterhouseCoopers; 2advanced.Net; KobeMail and Museum of the Moving Image.

See me/see you; message me/message you

iPhone users looking for their nearest friends need only to glance at their screen, thanks to the addition today of location functionality to Palringo’s popular rich messaging application.

From today, a user looking down their contact list sees not only the location of his or her Palringo contacts – typically a town name – but also how far away that contact is.

In the next update [due soon] a further click will bring up a map showing the location of that contact and also the location of any other Palringo contacts within a 10km radius.

In the same update, the location function will allow a user to display his/her own location on a map – highly convenient if visiting somewhere for the first time.

Location and proximity information adds an interesting new layer of social network connectivity. A Palringo user can choose to reveal location to any, all or no contacts, changing this selection at any time. Location can be set manually by the user, or Palringo can detect location automatically, keeping it continuously updated.

“Just knowing where someone is can be really useful, and knowing how far away they are is even better. The prospect of knowing where someone is before you start adds a whole new dimension to your conversation,” said Kerry Ritz, Palringo’s CEO. “It can eliminate worry and will probably mean the end of a lot of unnecessary ‘Where are you?’ calls. And soon you’ll pretty much be able to watch your friend, a few minutes late for your rendezvous, approaching on a map,” he added.

Location and proximity information complement Palringo’s rich messaging service, which already provides the option to send/receive vocal instant messages, picture messages and text-based messages. The Palringo service is designed for use on mobile phones, but versions are also available for Mac OS and other desktop environments.

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Resources

1. Screenshot: Palringo with location on iPhone
   
2. Screenshots: Palringo on other platforms
   

Notes to editors

1. While the iPhone has its own location service (and Palringo on iPhone takes full advantage of it), Palringo on other platforms calculates location using all available radio signals, including those from mobile network base stations and also from Wi-Fi access points known to Palringo’s database. The database is updated with new information constantly, so Palringo’s location algorithm becomes more accurate every day. Location can be calculated accurately to within a single street in towns and cities.
2. Palringo integrates with most popular IM services: AOL® Instant Messenger®, Google Talk™, Yahoo!® Messenger®, Gadu-Gadu, ICQ®, Jabber® and Microsoft’s Windows Live. People can also use Palringo to contact their friends using iChat®, Apple’s IM application.
3. Palringo is free to download from the App Store. There are no subscriptions or other hidden charges.

About Palringo
Palringo is designed specifically to make instant messaging work on mobiles. It combines walkie-talkie style voice (vocal instant messaging) with the ‘chat’ functionality of instant messaging and offers the ability to share pictures too. Both one-to-one and group discussions are enabled, on any mobile network or connected PC. Palringo connects with other popular instant messaging services. For more information visit the Palringo press office.

Microsoft and Windows Live are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Symbian and all Symbian-based trademarks and logos are trademarks of Symbian Software Limited. Java™ and all Java-based trademarks and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. The BlackBerry and RIM families of related marks, images and symbols are the exclusive properties and trademarks of Research In Motion Limited. iPhone and iChat are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. ICQ is a registered trademark of ICQ Inc., a division of America Online, Inc. JABBER is a registered trademark of Jabber Inc., and its use is licensed through the XMPP Standards Foundation. Other product or service names mentioned herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Palringo, one of the most popular instant messaging applications for mobile phones, has added live location information to the latest version of its application – Palringo Local.

Accurate to the suburb or even street-level in a city, and to the closest named town in rural areas, Palringo users can opt to display their location alongside their status, for fun, personal, social, business or any other purpose.

Palringo Local goes live today for Microsoft® Windows Mobile® users, and will be delivered as an automatic update for existing users. Roll-out will follow for other popular mobile device operating systems – including Symbian OS™-based phones, Java™, BlackBerry® and iPhone™ – completing before the end of 2008. Palringo Local for desktop/laptop editions of the Microsoft Windows® operating system also goes live from today and will be automatically updated.

Palringo enables vocal instant messaging and picture messaging, as well as text-based instant messaging. Knowing the location of contacts adds further richness to the experience and brings benefits in all sorts of scenarios. For example, it may help simply when meeting a friend, or in more sophisticated ways such as assessing whether a conversation will be cheaper to conduct via Palringo than by phone, if to call someone will clearly cause them to incur roaming charges. Palringo is extremely cost-effective to use, even from abroad.

Kerry Ritz, Palringo’s CEO, said: “Since the dawn of the mobile phone era, we’ve all listened into or been part of mobile phone conversations in which the two parties have asked each other where they are – or, with SMS, spent a message establishing those facts. Now, people won’t need to do that; provided someone wishes to ‘show’, then the basic instinct to ‘know’, even if it doesn’t matter, is satisfied.”

“But there are also quite practical reasons for showing your location: if you’re part of a group all meeting in one place, like a sports team; or you want to know where your delivery drivers are without investing in expensive systems. Whatever your reason to show your location, now you can,” he explained.

Anyone using Palringo Local must specifically opt in to display their location; users can opt in and out at will. Even opted-in, users retain control over which contacts can see their location. Location may also be set manually.

The popular instant messaging services with which Palringo integrates are: AOL® Instant Messenger®, Google Talk™, Yahoo!® Messenger®, Gadu-Gadu, ICQ®, Jabber® and Windows Live. People can also use Palringo to contact their friends using iChat®, Apple’s IM application.

Palringo is free to download from www.palringo.com. There are no subscriptions or other hidden charges.

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Microsoft, Windows Mobile, Windows and Windows Live are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Symbian and all Symbian-based trademarks and logos are trademarks of Symbian Software Limited. Java™ and all Java-based trademarks and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. The BlackBerry and RIM families of related marks, images and symbols are the exclusive properties and trademarks of Research In Motion Limited. iPhone and iChat are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. ICQ is a registered trademark of ICQ Inc., a division of America Online, Inc. JABBER is a registered trademark of Jabber Inc., and its use is licensed through the XMPP Standards Foundation. Other product or service names mentioned herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Links and resources

• Palringo Local screenshots
• Palringo press office
• Palringo website
• Video: Kerry Ritz describes Palringo

Notes to editors
To calculate location, Palringo Local uses a proprietary algorithm that picks up cell site (2G, 3G, etc) locations, Wi-Fi access points and other identifying signals. There is an element of triangulation in the calculations, but the algorithm makes a significant level of adjustment to identify the location accurately. The algorithm also ‘learns’ over time, through the addition of new location data that is added to the database.

About Palringo
Palringo makes instant messaging work on mobile. The Palringo service combines walkie-talkie style voice (vocal instant messaging) with the real-time text chat functionality of instant messaging and also enables picture-sharing within the context of a discussion. It supports both one-on-one and group discussions, and enables real-time dialogue that can incorporate users from across the globe, on any mobile network or connected PC. The Palringo service also supports connections to other popular instant messaging services. Palringo is a privately held company based in Newcastle, UK.