New Credit System and Search

 April 9, 2014 -  Thomas

Howdy! We have recently updated RhinoSpike to use a new credit system. And we also opened up our entire archive of 25,000+ recordings to search!

Credit System

To help encourage more users to contribute recordings we have added a new credit system to RhinoSpike. Here’s how it works:

Record audio to earn credits

Whenever you record an audio file and submit it to RhinoSpike, you now receive a fraction of a credit. Three uploads equals one full credit. Once you have earned a credit, you can use it to unlock a recording for download!

Correct Me if I’m Wrong

 May 16, 2013 -  Thomas

Howdy! Good news. We just released a new feature on RhinoSpike   that let’s you correct the text of an audio request before you record it! It’s really easy.

When you click the link to record, you will see that there is a new step. Before you record, you are given the option to correct the text first:

Simply edit the text in the textbox to make your corrections and press the ‘Done’ button:

The New and Integrated Queue on RhinoSpike

 December 7, 2012 -  Peter

You may have already noticed that the queue looks a bit different today. Take a look:

The Recording Queue has been Improved

 October 19, 2012 -  Peter

We have made a few small changes to the recording queue   on RhinoSpike which should benefit both recorders and those who request recordings. You can now see more requests in the queue on one page, and click to see more pages of requests on the queue if you need to. We have also tweaked the sorting of the requests in the queue a bit so that you should not see an entire page of requests from just a single user now. As always, we are open to feedback and suggestions, which you can submit to us through our feedback form   .

RhinoRecorder Lets You Record Audio Within Your Browser on RhinoSpike

 November 22, 2011 -  Peter

We are excited to announce that RhinoSpike.com   users can now record audio without leaving the browser with RhinoRecorder! Check out this short demonstration video to see RhinoRecorder in action:

You will need to install Microsoft Silverlight   to use RhinoRecorder, which works on both Windows and Macintosh with Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer.

RhinoSpike Now Supports Ogg Vorbis

 June 16, 2011 -  Peter

Today we updated RhinoSpike.com with support with Ogg Vorbis   . What the heck is Ogg Vorbis, you say? Ogg Vorbis is a popular open source audio format that is unencumbered by patent and licensing issues, and arguably offers better quality audio than the MP3 format. We’ve also upgraded to a new in-browser media player that supports both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, using HTML5 where available and Flash where it’s not. Also for certain browsers that don’t support Ogg Vorbis natively (like Internet Explorer and Safari), there is a Java-based media player that we use. We hope this will allow everyone to play all of the audio on RhinoSpike within the browser. We’ve done a lot of testing to make sure that it will work for everyone.

Get YouTube Transcriptions on RhinoSpike

 May 16, 2011 -  Thomas

Just a quick update to mention that RhinoSpike now supports YouTube videos. What this means is that you can find a YouTube video in your foreign language and make a Script Request out of it. A native speaker will watch the video and transcribe it for you!

To do it, create a Script Request as you normally would. See the last post about how to make a Script Request on RhinoSpike for details on that. When you get to the Script Request creation page, enter a YouTube video url in the appropriate space:

Foreign Language Transcriptions on Demand

 May 9, 2011 -  Thomas

We updated RhinoSpike   today with a new feature. It’s still a work in progress, but we wanted to go ahead and roll it out and get feedback on it.

One of our most requested features was to have a “reverse” RhinoSpike. Users wanted to upload a foreign language audio file and have a native speaker transcribe it for them. Well, now you can do just that with a little thing called a Script Request.

Happy Birthday Rhinospike!

 March 25, 2011 -  Thomas

Today, RhinoSpike   turns 1-year-old. Depending on your time zone, we launched on March 24/25, 2010. Happy Birthday RhinoSpike!

Since launch, we’ve attracted over 6,500 users, all by word of mouth! Thanks to everybody who signed up and double thanks to everyone who told a friend about us!

As you know, RhinoSpike.com   is the place to get custom-made audio content for any foreign language text, recorded by native speakers for you. Since launch we’ve received a ton of recordings. How many? Check it out:

Better Profiles, Better Friend Search, Better RhinoSpike!

 March 11, 2011 -  Thomas

Howdy!

We updated RhinoSpike again today. We updated profiles, improved Friend Search   and cleaned up the recording path. Here are the details:

Profiles

Due to popular demand, we added a few extra fields to user profiles to make it easier to connect with other users. The new fields are:

• Gender
• Twitter
• Skype
• Facebook

We hope that these new fields will make it easier for you to connect with your language buddies outside of RhinoSpike. But it won’t work if you leave them blank. Go update your profile!