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LONDON and NEW YORK, Nov. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- MTV'S Staying Alive Foundation and SpinVox have teamed up with Lapeno, Mervin and Ed the notorious puppet from MTV's Fur TV show to promote sexual health amongst young people.

The Telling It Like It Is campaign is a groundbreaking initiative that encourages young people to speak openly about sex, sexual health and HIV/AIDS. Young people can interact with the campaign via a website -- http://www.tellingitlikeitis.tv and via a dedicated telephone number to discuss issues relating to sex, sexual health and STIs. The campaign uses the SpinVox service to convert voice messages into text that are posted on the site's blog.

The campaign, which marks the 10th anniversary of the Staying Alive Foundation, will be launched by a series of television infomercials that will debut during the MTV Europe Music Awards on November 6. The infomercials, fronted by Lapeno, Mervin and Ed, will cover issues relating to safe sex and condoms. The aim is to spark discussions and debate amongst a global youth audience, who will be encouraged to add their own contributions via the website and phone line.

Telling It Like It Is aims to entertain and educate the audience around the subject of condoms. Topics will include the risks of sex without a condom, the embarrassment factor in buying them and whether they reduce sensitivity during sex. Viewers will be encouraged to visit the campaign website to win a Rubber Ring, a pledge ring that shows the wearer won't have sex without a condom.

"MTV is proud to support this campaign," said Bill Roedy, CEO MTV Networks International. "Only by having a full and frank conversation about sex and sexual health can we start to change attitudes, break barriers and reduce stigma."

"Voice is a powerful method of self-expression," says Christina Domecq, SpinVox co-founder and CEO. "By voice-enabling the Staying Alive Foundation's Tell It Like It Is campaign, we are providing another channel for young people to speak freely, openly and honestly as well as sharing advice and experiences."

For more information about the Staying Alive Foundation, visit http://www.staying-alive.org.

    Full list of campaign telephone numbers:
    US: 1513 729 6417
    UK: 0151 266 7700
    Canada: 1416 628 8501
    Spain: 3493 184 2078
    Germany: 4921 123 7061072
    France: 3317 666 0863
    Ireland: 3531 657 1891

With SpinVox, you can speak your blog posts and social network updates by simply dialling a number on your mobile phone and leaving a message which will be automatically converted to text and posted on your chosen site. For users with several blogs and networks, a new 'Ping through SpinVox' service is available that simultaneously broadcasts spoken updates to thirty of the most popular social networking sites.

SpinVox is free to anyone wishing to use the service to update their blog or social network. Visit http://www.spinvox.com for more. You can also Ping through SpinVox by signing up at http://ping.fm/ .

About SpinVox

SpinVox(R) is the world's largest privately-held speech technology company, providing the most successful voice to text messaging services which are used daily by millions of people. SpinVox services are available directly on http://www.spinvox.com and through leading carriers and service providers globally.

Through significant innovations in voice and network technologies, SpinVox has brought together the two most natural forms of communication -- voice and text -- to create the fastest-growing form of messaging: Voice-to-Content(TM).

Its award-winning service is not only upgrading voicemail -- by converting voicemail to text for delivery as SMS or email messages -- but is also empowering people to speak SMS messages or emails to anyone, from any phone. SpinVox also enables people to speak messages directly to their favorite web messaging services such as Facebook, Twitter and many other popular web networks.

As a carrier-class hosted service provider, any network, anywhere in the world can rapidly implement SpinVox and it is now live with Alltel, Cincinnati Bell, Sasktel, Rogers, Telus, Telstra, Vodacom South Africa, Vodafone Spain, Movistar Chile and Livejournal and has announced a deal with Skype.

At the heart of SpinVox is its ground-breaking Voice Message Conversion System(TM) (VMCS), which works by combining state-of-the-art speech technologies with a live-learning language process. VMCS now serves users across five continents in English, French, Spanish and German -- with additional languages, Portuguese and Italian, under development.