2008 Wrap up, What's up for 2009?

Hey there Green-Ear fans,
Happiest of Holidays and Merriest of New Years.

2008 was a big year for us here at Green-Ear and first off I want to send a big thank you shout out to everyone who has supported us and helped successfully launch Green-Ear this year.

First a recap. This year was the year a group of super smart people got together and tried to decide the best use of our vast amount of technology and features for VoIP other than the business communications products we were selling at the time. A collective gasp, a burst of thought, some storming of brains and the answer was Green-Ear- it was the answer we wanted all along but didn't dare to dream that we would get to live out our hobbies and passion for games at WORK, too? This was the best news! So, in a very short time following the tech was reconfigured and repackaged for gaming.

GarageGames was a natural first partner for us because our companies share the same vision and desire to provide affordable solutions for not just the big guy and not even just the small guy- All the guys (*I'm a girl and can say that with no sexism implied;). We all want to make game development accessible to anyone with talent and passion and drive. Easy to implement, affordable. And GarageGames definitely helps us make that happen. With a Green-Ear SDK that is Torque integrated it is simple and fast to add complex voice features in your game.

With prices starting at just $49.95!!!

(Had to break up my rambling with an infomercial.)

Back to ramble: Anyway, everyone at GG has been amazing- from just "getting" what we were trying to do to sharing their space with us at Austin GDC, we couldn't have done it without them and we owe them a debt of gratitude. (and sales. buy buy buy)

Since then we have added additional SDK's and features to the Green-Ear offerings. Developing in Flash? C++? have no fear, you can Green-Ear those games up too. For a quick run down of all the fabulous features to date (including voice morphing, text to speech and much much more): www.green-ear.com/features.aspx

Also this year, we found our demo to be less than stellar so we instead asked you, our brilliant development community to compete for our demo love. The contest ends December 31 and the prizes are fierce. 1st prize: $1000 and a showcase at our GDC booth in March. 2nd and 3rd prized are $500 and $250, respectively. For more information on this amazing opportunity: www.green-ear.com/contest.aspx
Hurry, time is running out. There is nothing to lose!

More cool stuff is going on over at the Green-Ear developer area of our site (http://www.green-ear.com/developer_newuser.aspx) Now, in addition to being able to add titles, manage your users, power up your voice slots and track usage...you can also download the SDK's for which you are licensed and any of the documentation you seek!

So with all that, its on to 2009 and all sorts of excitement!

Our next release is expected any time now-and will include (drumroll.....) Voice Commands, Speech Recognition and Input Record & Playback.

Did you catch that?
Voice Commands?
Sweet, I know!
And they couldn't be easier to execute. Just login to the developer area on Green-Ear.com, create your own lists of prefixes and words to recognize. Submit and you have specific speech rec. event files that you can insert in to your game so that your "FIRE FIRE FIRE" really fire, fire, fires.

You can expect the 2.1 release very soon.

Also in 2009, look for announcements of at least two additional partnerships that will make Green-Ear available for a couple of super hot (but top secret) platforms in the first part of the year.

Whew. That was a big year, no wonder I'm tired. Well, I'm off to Florida to recoup and come at you in a big way in '09. I hope each and every one of you get everything you want for whatever gift receiving holiday you celebrate. I wish for you a breath and a break, for health and happiness and lots of fun stuff. See you in the new year. It's gonna be a doozy. ;)

Best,
Leba

Green-Ear for Flash, plus... new features!

Green-Ear for Flash is now available!

Happy December, Everyone!

With the new month come some exciting new developments for Green-Ear. Including, Green-Ear for Flash. Yep, now you can get all the voice functionality of Green-Ear and all the versatility of Flash at your fingertips. Green-Ear Flash integration allows flash applications running locally in a browser or standalone to access all the Green-Ear features. Flash developers are provided with ActionScript code that allows them to invoke functions in Green-Ear network client access library by calling methods of an ActionScript object called FlashGear.

Here’s an excerpt from our Press Release:

Green-Ear for Flash enables Flash game developers to easily add voice and text chat, voice morphing, voice fonts, conferencing, and other features to Flash games and Flash game portals. With Green-Ear for Flash one can rapidly deploy voice capabilities inside games and across multiple games on portals. All without the costs and complexities found in competing alternatives thanks to Green-Ear's managed services and Tier 1 voice network.

"According to reliable sources over 20,000 Flash game portals exist, each containing anywhere from one to thousands of games. We believe the majority of them could benefit from adding voice chat and other voice features from Green-Ear. While playing many games your fingers are busy with game controls and you can't type to text chat, adding voice chat to the game experience allows you to communicate with others and still keep your hands in the game." Dave Govan, Vice Chairman of Green-Ear.

"The addition of Green-Ear for Flash provides a feature set that isn't currently available anywhere else for flash at an affordable cost. A lot of people can benefit from this technology; this market is huge and growing all the time. I think we will begin to see more and more flash sites finding a way to get in on the current trend to socialize online communities." Mike Rojas, Green-Ear CEO.

Green-Ear has added some new features, as well:

· Mutli-Channel Chat: Developers now have the ability to participate in multiple channels simultaneously. Chat with up to 32 channels at a time with both live chat and push-to-talk capabilities. This is particularly great for battle type games, for example, where players can participate in a HQ channel and a squad channel.

· Individualized Chat Control: enable/disable audio play out of the speakers or from being sent to the voice chat. An excellent way to implement Push-to-Talk service.

· Enhance Voice Chat Volume Control: Control the overall volume of the incoming audio from the voice chat(s).

· Stereo Voice Chat: Individual Right and Left Speaker Control.

· .Wav file Supported Chat: Introduce .wav files into a chat, available on a loop- great for background audio.

And of course don’t forget there are only 26 days left to enter the Green-Ear Demo contest and the competition is heating up. Go to www.green-ear.com/contest.aspx for contest details.

Cheers,

Leba