Steven Echtman of HearPlanet
In an age of video, photos and the Internet, we sometimes forget that humans spend around 70% of their waking hours speaking and listening, according to the International Listening Association.
That’s the basis of HearPlanet’s mobile audio streaming service, the largest talking tour audio guide in the world with 2.7 million points of information available for downloading.
HearPlanet turns your cell phone into a multimedia guide to the world using text-to-speech technology and digital voice recordings. It’s a mobile audio service, offering streaming audio on millions of destinations that “brings the world to your ears.”
With over 500,000 downloads, the company’s iPhone app is a top travel download in Apple’s iTunes App Store.
HearPlanet is designed to accommodate media of all types on locations and exhibits anywhere in the world. Audio is currently delivered instantly to iPhone users. As the company expands, HearPlanet will target other personal mobile devices– additional smart phones, navigation devices, tablet computers and netbooks that enhance sightseeing, museum and landmark visits.
Apple featured HearPlanet in its iPhone ads and full-page spreads published in USA Today, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Steven Echtman, Founder and CEO of HearPlanet, is not only an entrepreneur. He’s also an Internet developer, media producer and marketing professional.
Previously, Steven founded Passinglane, a media production and Internet development company. Clients included AIG, Motorola, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Microsoft, Grey Advertising, K-Swiss, Disney, AOL and others.
Prior to Passinglane, Steven was broadcast producer at Grey Advertising where he produced broadcast and interactive media.
Steven is also a Board member of Challenge Day, a non-profit youth violence prevention program that has been featured on Oprah and will be the centerpiece of an upcoming series on MTV.
Steve Ectman HearPlanet Podcast
In this podcast interview with Brian Prows, Steve discusses his vision of connecting content providers with listeners who seek audio information while on-the-go. Steve also discusses why leadership in a start-up environment is critical to bringing people together by sharing the vision and inspiring employees.
HearPlanet launched using content from Wikipedia, a novel text-to-speech process and the iPhone. During the interview, Steve reveals his dream of encouraging other developers to use HearPlanet’s API to design new services for other mobile devices, such as smart phones, netbooks and tablet computers. The company is also seeking additional content partners who need distribution channels for their text, audio or multimedia products.
In the podcast, Steve talks about how the HearPlanet service delivers many “points of view” about “points of interest,” alerting listeners to additional information about historical or other travel sites. Listeners choose how long to listen from 30 seconds to 20 minutes. Surrounding POI content is sorted by popularity and distance, but app users are free to explore additional information that interests them.
While some might argue that HearPlanet replaces travel books and guides , the company is using the mobile channel to deliver on-demand information in a “non-linear” way. Unlike a guided tour, listeners may choose content in any order from any place. This enables anyone connected to the service to learn about historical landmarks, cities, bridges, memorials and other sites.
To monetize the business, HearPlanet intends to include audio ads (mobile advertising) in the future. Banner ads, if used, will display products and services that are relevant to viewed content.
The future? Steve strongly believes that voice recognition and text-to-speech technologies will change the way people communicate with their mobile phones and other mobile devices, making it easier for people to enter and retrieve information in all formats.
Listen as Steve Echtman describes the service and his vision of streaming mobile audio.
vator.tv Splash
HearPlanet is participating in the upcoming February 4th, 2010 vator.tv competition for VC funding. For further information, visit
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