Zlango is a new Israeli startup (there is a lot of innovation going on there) that has created a very interesting new language and associated application that could change the SMS landscape (as well as, eventually, email and IM). Israel design firm Mantis is involved with the project.
The language is based on icons, or pictures. Each icon has a specific meaning - a person pointing to himself for “me” or a heart for “love”. There are over 200 icons included in the Zlango language today.
Users of the service download a thin 64K Java or Brew application for their GSM or CDMA phone. The application converts the icons into a SMS message and then re-translates back to icons at the receiver phone. To see how it works visually, check out the flash tour here and then try out the simulator here.
At first glance this is nothing more than a nifty piece of mobile software and a way to send icon based messages over inexpensive and ubiquitous SMS networks.
But I think the cultural implications of Zlango may be much deeper.
First, two users can communicate using Zlango even if they do not speak the same language. The cross-cultural implications are obvious.
Second, Zlango is not a static language. Rarely used icons will disappear over time, and new icons will be added to the language. One thing that isn’t clearly addressed on the site, though, is whether users will be able to evolve the language directly as happens with spoken language. Allowing users to create, use and share their own icons, some of which will eventually make it into mainstream usage, will be critical for Zlango’s success in my opinion.
Zlango claims that user testing shows that “the majority of youth who tried it, felt comfortable to say that they commanded the language in less than one hour.” After testing the simulator for just a few minutes, I believe that to be true. Complex messages can be created in just a few keystrokes, much faster than normal SMS.
I don’t know if this will catch on with users or not - we’ll have to wait for the upcoming launch to see. Downloading the software is certainly a barrier to adoption and I suspect Zlango will focus on doing deals with carriers to build this directly into phones. They’ll need mass adoption quickly to ensure that copycat services don’t destroy the potential network effect before it has time to establish itself. But all that being said, it’s intruiging to see the birth of a new icon-based language and watching this spread virally, or not, will be interesting. Watch for updates on the Zlango blog.
Well, the idea certainly sounds interesting, but I just can’t see myself
using it… I don’t think u can convey complex information, though it could be
useful to articulate simple messages such as I HEART YOU or something.
Nevertheless it is interesting, but I don’t think its realistic for wide spread
use.
I agree with Peter - a new language has to make a trade off between being easy to pick up, and powerful enough to communicate real life messages. Zlango seems skewed too far to the former.
Nevertheless, interesting… would be nice to see more of these.
It sounds interesting, but I too wonder about it’s usefulness.
How many people do you know who you would want to send an SMS, but you’ve never communicated with the verbally because of a language barrier? If that’s the market this app seems to be aimed at - then it’s a tiny one.
I can see more mobile manufacturers adopting inline substitution like SE do with common smileys. Then it’s all built into the phone and -most importantly- degrades gracefully on unsupported handsets.
I’ve been following Zlango for some time. They are launching at an Israeli Operator (Pelephone) at a certain point in the future. Cool team, cool app and cool product. I wish them all the luck!!!
Some years there was a similar project, regrettably it failed, it was going to be like the Esperanto. A lot of luck to these new startup, because if it works, we see a very good project being born.
There is indeed alot of innovation coming from Israel and this is only the tip of the iceberg. I believe we will see many more in the coming months. The leading Israeli Web2.0 blog, http://www.thecoils.com covers much of these ventures. Currently it is still in Hebrew, but very soon will be available in English as well.
Good Luck
Looks like a very nice product, wish them all the luck. Btw, it points to a much more complex subject, worth thinking of: imho, the language we use today is to verbose for the internet. Too many words, too much time to read them. That is is why we use “btw”, “imho”, aso.. (and so on..). The “…” will fade into “..” (30% more efficient). OK, that was a joke, but a serious one. As for the Zlango, very pretty. I would prefer using symbols, not pictures. Anyway, good look. RConte.
I disagree with Peter, I too can not imagin my 60 years old dad using this , but he is not the target, its kids and young people, and kids hardly send complex information via regular SMS , in any case, if you wish to use text, the zlango application allows this too, it is mostly a picture based language, but when it comes to going to a specific restorant or address, zlango allows you to write anything you want in the same line as the icons, so you have it all.
Okay…. So They Found the developer of Ikea’s innovative universal instruction booklets and hired him to do a phone based pictorical language?
Kudos. Now I can actually sign up for the unlimited banwith plan with Cingular and actually have a use for it ! Yay for extra charges instead of using a phone call!
It is a quite nice idea. I am quite curious about how it works. What is the carrier, still SMS with GSM?
But the basic idea is not quite new. I have developed a service called ColorSMS for hobby. This service can convert a SMS to an animated MMS message where each text character or word is replaced by a small icon then all the icons are combined into one picture sent with MMS message.
For me, my service sounds more handy, no client required!! I will put some demo pictures in my blod site.
Anyway, good luck for Zlango. Hope they can solve the complex language philosophy in future..
Awesome! This has got to be the chance now for mobiles to move on to something more like IM Smilies.
The only thing touching this right now are the small amount of Skype-running smartphones but then again, does that allow for icons to be sent?
I think this is the start of something much bigger.
I’m guessing: they picked up the concept when trying to communicate between recent Jewish immigrants to Israel who don’t know Hebrew (or English).
Back we go 3000 years ago to ancient Egypt and hieroglyphs.
ZLANGO is unique and the interface of this site is just A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!
Think about it for a sec, wouldn’t it be lovely to start writing eMails only with icons?
Umm.. should be cool.
BTW, you can digg this story in here:
http://www.digg.com/gadgets/A_.....ke_out_now
10x for the “on” link mike
Great App indeed, cant wait to use it .
This is a cute idea, but I don’t see it truly having any cross-cultural potential.
Under what circumstances does a normal person want to have a conversation with someone else who doesn’t speak the same language? Having recently learned Mandarin, my drawing skills have improved. But pictures describe objects (nouns), describing an abstract concept that everyone will intuitively understand is very hard.
This is kind of like “Beginners Chinese” in that there are many characters, many of them pictures. Which brings up the issue that people aren’t going to be able to communicate with this outside of using their phones/e-mail (i.e. when you’re face to face with someone). If you’re not face to face… why not just use an online translator which is gauranteed to be more descriptive?
Not to mention this seems to merely replace words with icons, but grammer is of huge importance too and the world’s languages aren’t all “object+verb+subject” based.
Nonetheless, it might be faster than SMS and more fun to use. Who knows it might catch on, it sounds pretty cute. In all honesty it would be really neat linguistically if this caught on in multi-lingual environments, but for the reasons stated above I kind of doubt that will happen.
Anyways, fun product with certainly an interesting future ahead.
Didn’t the Egyptians have something like this 3000 years ago?! I can see the ‘MySpace Generation’ getting really into this, but suspect it’ll never be adopted by the ‘rest of us’ who already struggle to interpret an SMS with cryptic words and symbols.
This is not new idea! It’s as old as writing itself.
Both Kanji and Hieroglyphs are pictorial, using icons to depict abstract concepts, such as time, emotion, and intention.
But one big difference here is that over time the older pictorials got modified party because they had to be written and “stroked”. The economy of strokes required simplification, and eventually the invention of phonemes/consonants-vowels). This new, icon language does not face that burden, since it will only be “written” using devices capable or recalling a (relatively large) bitmap.
However, the natural languages do benefit from ages upon ages of evolutionary adaptation and refinement, making them quite rich in nuances and expression. This is why the expression IMHO, has a very powerful H (and not O) in its core. There is no time, nor any obvious mechanism for these icons to evolve.
Will this new language succeed? Will human beings further relinquish the nuances of their communications to even more simplified, and cookie cut, bricks? Unlikely.
To me, this writing, at its present form, is a fad. Cool? Yes! Practical? No.
I think it’s a fun app, but I also think it may be doomed because it’s trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist - I don’t think most teenagers have a problem with the speed of input, it’s only us old crusties who find it time-consuming. And we’d find downloading, then later finding and launching a separate app just to send a message just as frustrating.
Factor in the time taken to become fluent in the symbology - it’s simple now, but add enough icons to represent most commonly-used words and it will be considerably harder to remember whether the icon you need lives in one category or another.
In the meantime, there’s a number of words/concepts for which there isn’t yet an icon, which slows early adoption.
Then consider that both the sender and the receiver have to be fluent and running the app at the time of communication.
As for allowing two people who don’t share a common language to communicate, well, I’m sorry, but I don’t have any friends in my phone book who don’t speak the same language as me!
Um…. I found this concept quite interesting - until I realized that the language isn’t Icon-based at all.
The Icon language is related to SNOBOL; check out Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I.....g_language
The title said this was Icon-based; it’s not….
I think this is a fantastic idea and I hope it succeeds. The deal is young kids already speak a different langauge when they do SMS. Pick up a teenager’s phone and sift through their inbox. You won’t be able to understand anything.
They have literally invented their own language around acronyms, emoticons, and abbreviations. But since Zlango uses pictures I see it as being a common ground that most humans can understand. There is something very basic and guttural about using pictorial language - some of the initial languages and artwork that humans invented were pictorial in nature. If Zlango gets a decent amount of interest with young people I think it could take off.
Zlango feels like an innovation ahead of its time, almost reminiscent of Web 1.0 companies during the burgeoning bubble. It’s a great idea, but probably not ready for public consumption… yet.
I think it is a fantastic idea - and it would be even better if it was build in a mobile phone directly. I see a problem that you first need to start an application before you can start writing something. But overall - very great idea, nice appearance and I think they will do well when they connect with some device manufactures like Nokia or Samsung to build in Zlango for direct use in the already build in SMS Application.
zlango is THE COOLEST thing around…
Imagine books, greeting cards, mobile messaging, graffiti… all in ONE international language.
Can not wait for the launch.
Hey - this is a briliiant idea - was wondering how we can work together - here is a little bit about is below
I take this opportunity to introduce Cellent to you
Cellent is a mobile data company headquartered in India.
Cellent maintains strategic partnerships with numerous global carriers and has alliances & partners in Africa, Middle East, APAC, Europe, India, Turkey, Egypt, Singapore, Jordan, Tanzania, Pakistan, South Africa, UK, Germany, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to name a few. With the help of these alliances and infrastructure, Cellent is in position to provide high quality mobile data services and solutions for its customers globally.
We are looking for:
Global SMS delivery services:
We have a Global SMS delivery platform for international SMS messaging terminations into over 120 countries. We do extensive business in the middle east already and clients include Showtime Arabia, Pehla Plus, Emirates Call, Media Call to name a few.
Content platform:
We have a state of the art content platform which supports all content categories from operator logos to video clips for all devices, all formats of mobile content. This platform also supports DRM and OMA download specifications for better quality of service for mobile content download services and helps our customers deal with specialists to handle the ever increasing complexity and evolution of the mobile content marketplace.
Content Production Services:
We have a Content Production Outsourcing (CPO) outfit which comprises of telecom experts, musicians and interactive media specialists performing mobile production needs for a global customer base to mobilize content.
Global non-exclusive license for distribution of your mobile content
Our ever evolving content library can be added to your existing library and than we can help each other through our distribution channels to widen our scope.
We help in B2B business as well as we can be partners for marketing promotions through our wide distribution channel
We think there a several synergies which exist and are worth exploring. I could list a few benefits we can offer
· Established Mobile operator relationships
· Our Global Distribution
· Domain expertise and technical capabilities.
· Content production, development and Factory.
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· Content distribution system (CDS)
I would particularly be interested in discussing Global SMS Delivery services with you as and when possible
Looking forward to hear from you soon , Please feel free to IM me on
MSN-pinakint@hotmail.com
ICQ -3670836
Yahoo-piniewinie@yahoo.com
Skype-smspinie
Thanking You,
Pinakin
Pinakin Thakkar
Cellent
M: + 91 98218 76981
107/108, Mittal Chambers,
Nariman Point,
Bombay - 400 021, India
T: +91 22 2281 3137/8
F: +91 22 2286 0392
http://www.cellent.com
Take a look at it, it’s geared for teenage and adolescent people. They will be the developers in the next 10 - 15 years and this is to them as the internet was to us. This will grow and expand, and eventuall Most of the whole world will be able to communicate with simple symbols. This IS an exciting time to live in this world, if we can keep the RIAA out of it!!!!
Seems like a thoroughly pointless idea. The mobile arena seems to breed bad ideas like cockroaches.