New year, new job and all that, there have been a few moves in the industry these past few weeks. Heres a brief run-down
Voice-to-content company SpinVox has hired Oscar Rodriguez as General Manager of SpinVox Latin America. Rodriguez will be charged with developing the market for voice to text services in the region. Rodriguez will be based in Mexico City. He has previously jheld senior positions at IBM, Grupo Empresarial Angeles and Avantel.
SpinVox notes that according to figures form Pyramid Research, mobile phone penetration in Latin America increased by nearly 31% percent in 2008 to reach 488 million connections, but with only 67 lines per 100 inhabitants, there is still huge potential for both mobile telephony and voice-to-content services in the region.
SpinVox has also appointed David L. Thomson as Senior Vice President for Speech Technology. Reporting to SpinVox CTO, Philip Marnick, he will be based in the US and charged with building relationships with technology centres in North America. 
Thomson has 24 years experience in the speech technology and telecommunications business, covering a broad range of technology development, network engineering, and business development roles.
He worked for 18 years for AT&T/Lucent where latterly he was CTO for Lucent Speech Solutions and was responsible for developing the speech technology behind systems that have handled over 10 billion calls.
Mobile Distillery, which specializes in software solutions for mobile application production and testing services, has made several appointments. Steve Haney joins the company as Vice President of its North American office, based in San Francisco. Mobile Distillery has also opened a Singapore office, and appointed Emilie Guldner as Business Development Manager for the Asia Pacific region. Jean-Marc Rocchi joins the company as Business Development Manager, and Franois-Joseph Viallon has been appointed Head of Operators Business Unit. Finally, Delphine Guyot Giler joins the company as Head of Mobile Distillerys Testing Labs.
Digital innovations and design consultancy Fjord has hired Joachim Hoffmann as Business Development Director, working out of the companys London office. Hoffmann joins Fjord from the European business development team at Yahoo! Connected Life. As Senior Director, Business Development, he played a key role in helping to secure partnerships with operators and publishers for Yahoos mobile search product, oneSearch, as well as mobile advertising and further partnerships for Yahoo! Go.
Virgin Media has created a Device Portfolio and Campaign team. The team will by headed up by Kate Randall, following a promotion from Campaign Controller to Device Portfolio and Campaign Controller.
Team member Chris Tatton has also been promoted from Assistant Handset Marketing Manager to Device Portfolio Manager (Pay Monthly). Other new additions to the team include Chris Connon, Wayne Daniel and Victoria Marshall.
Finally, messaging company Acision has appointed Tony Morrish as Senior Vice President and General Manager for Europe, Russia and Africa. Morrish joins Acision from Sonus Networks, where he was Vice President and General Manager for the companys EMEA operations. Morrish brings with him over 25 years of communications and technology experience to the role, leading teams at international companies, including Cisco Systems. Morrish also has experience building and leading start up companies in Europe, such as Juniper Networks in the late 90s.