Thanks to our good friends at Lasai for these great t-shirts. We are making plans so you can get one too.

Our first iPhone app is available at the Apple iTunes Store.

The initial release contains “only” pronunciations in English (almost 60,000 at this moment) but we plan to add all the languages you can find in Forvo very soon. The app is free for download and it´s the best posible experience to hear pronunciations on the iPhone. Check out our special site about this app in http://iphone.forvo.com or download the app in iTunes Store.

We are very happy with this app, its design, functionality, it´s just great. We hope you feel it too and tell us your impresions about it.

The first half of 2010 we´ve been very busy consolidating Forvo´s infrastructure. Now we are ready to release a bunch of amazing tools for you. Last week we announced Forvo Translate, now it´s time for more:

- Forvo API: More than 100 developers have signed up for an API account since we opened it. Now, we are happy to announce that is completely operative. We would love to see what great websites you create with Forvo pronunciations. Let´s show the world how to pronounce!

And as the last piece of Forvo you already know what is coming next… soon.

I have to admit that Forvo Translate started as a joke… Could we do a Translation service better than Google´s? The answer was yes. And we did it :)

Using Forvo´s API, we´ve added to Google Translate the only this is wrong with it: Human pronunciations.

Sure, Google have made a great job with their text-to-speech voice synthesis but if you speak other than English the results are just hilarious. Furthermore, Google have pronunciation enabled for just couple of languages. Forvo covers the 57 languages of Google Translate, and about 200 more possible to come.

So we are now introducing Forvo Translate. It´s almost the same that Google Translate but with authentic native pronunciation. Why don´t you give it a try and comment your thoughts on it?

Or maybe you will enjoy more this presentation of Forvo Translate by Ilmostro a Forvo Editor:

Ask yourself this… would you employ C-3PO to teach you Wookiee, if you could have Chewbacca do it?

The answer is NAAAAAAAAAAAAWGH

While we have yet to figure out how to take recordings from irascible aliens, we can already upload thousands of human pronounced words on your mobile… or android. Don’t take chances with artificial voices, go for the real thing!

Nobody worries about upsetting a droid, but you don’t want to upset a Wookiee by saying things wrong, do you?”

Stop Androids. Get Human.

Three new languages available to browse Forvo, Danish, Hungarian and Hindi. The editors who have made this possible are Olfine, Detheltsort, Frankie, Komal_K, so thanks to them.

Maybe you think that we are only releasing new languages these days. Not at all!! :) We are almost done for the API final release. There are more than 40 developers pre-registered and we can´t wait to see what they have in mind to create with Forvo pronunciations.

And we are also readying a special tool that we hope you are going to love as much as we do. Prepared to be surprised.

Maximum speed at Forvo HQ. After ending the beta stage, now we are happy to announce the first steps of our long-waited API. We have opened a new site to give you more information about it and also to start receiving your pre-inscriptions. If you plan to make your site much interesing using Forvo pronunciations don´t wait to ask for your free API key.

We are quite excited about the news projects and posibilities that the API is giving to you. Pronunciations for your dictionary? A better Google Translate with real human pronunciations? Whatever you want.

Last week also saw the light the German translation of Forvo. We have translated, with your help, Forvo into 11 languages and 5 more are under development. Thanks!

It has been almost two years online collecting the greatest pronunciation database in the world so we decided last week to close the Beta stage of Forvo.

The last improvements were related to the recorder. Now it´s more accurate and sensitive. We would like to thank to the great people at avchat who help us a lot with it. For the people who felt the recorder a little buggy these are great news :)

The end of the Beta is not the end of our project! We keep working hard in new translations, features and of course the “really coming soon” API.

Reading the most popular posts of 2009 from the interesting blog Global by design, I´ve found one article about the need for a standard language change / choose icon. Many icons have become quite standard in the web world: rss icon, share icons, etc.. But when it comes to choose language every website create a new way of doing it. Sometimes is a flag, an world icon, a map or hundreds more.

There is now a new iniciative called Language Icon from OMC that proposes this icon to choose languages. What do you think about it? Does it make you to choose your language in a website?

Portuguese speakers have always been very active at Forvo. They have just made their language to be the one with more pronunciations making English number 2 for the first time.

We hope to have soon a Portuguese version of Forvo, and not only portuguese but a dozen more languages too. Don´t wait too much for these new features and if you want to collaborate with any translation in your language you will also be able to do it. Contact us for more info.

Have you tried to use Forvo from a mobile device? It works pretty fine, but when it comes to listen to pronunciations… oops, you won´t hear anything.

We are introducing some changes to give a better mobile experience. So depending on your device you could listen to pronunciations. Here are the requirements:

- Javascript and Flash Lite enabled browser.

We are not happy with this solution but it´s a first step to bring more compatibility. Feel free to comment your mobile experience in this post.