[asterisk-biz] Ribbit.com ?

Matthew Rubenstein email at mattruby.com
Mon Dec 17 15:34:51 CST 2007 

	Dean, how would you describe Mexuar, with its embeddable but
proprietary IAX applet, in that context?


On Mon, 2007-12-17 at 16:18 -0500, Dean Collins wrote:
> Matt,
> 
> As someone who has been pushing voice driven web applications since Astricon 2006 in both Java with Mexuar and Flash with (a yet to be named company) I think I can add some comments here.
> 
> The asterisk community has potentially a major part to play in "voipifying" websites and social networks.
> 
> For a number of reasons this hasn't come to pass.
> 
> I can say however the biggest issue is never technical but often driven by corporate capabilities, lack of foresight; and often just plain greed.
> 
> I have looked at Ribbit (thankfully not under NDA otherwise I wouldn't be able to comment here), they have a major 'Achilles heal'  - their funding.
> 
> The problem with Ribbit is they want to be a big company with a big 'swinging XXXX'. This is often a problem with companies who come up with one good idea and then plant their entire retirement/exit strategy/pick up chicks for the rest of their life on this one good idea.
> 
> The reason Asterisk has been successful is purely because Digium as a company never wanted to have the biggest office on the block. They were quite happy never to crack 20 staff for a long time and as such didn't need to take the gobs of VC money being offered to them. (will this continue...to be seen - but magic 8 ball says doubtful).
> 
> This goes back to the tellme concept I was trying to float on the voip-info.org site a few years ago as well.
> 
> As long as you have easy and well defined api's developers will come and will build apps around your tools. 
> 
> Make the price low and the barrier to entry minimal and the customers will come.
> 
> More important than any of it though....build your business with a clean heart and people will know they aren't developing on your behalf while expecting to get screwed at the first opportunity you see.
> 
> (oh and VC's are for suckers who cant get laid :)
> 
>  
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Dean Collins
> Cognation Pty Ltd
> dean at cognation.net 
> +1-212-203-4357
> +61-2-9016-5642 (Sydney in-dial).
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-biz-
> > bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Matthew Rubenstein
> > Sent: Monday, 17 December 2007 3:41 PM
> > To: Asterisk -Biz
> > Subject: Re: [asterisk-biz] Ribbit.com ?
> > 
> > 	Why is it taking so long for OSS SIP or IAX clients embeddable in web
> > pages? There's one or two products out there, while desktop clients are
> > fairly plentiful. If "Web VoIP" clients were as plentiful as, say, MP3
> > players, then the "Voice Web" would be growing probably as fast as the
> > Web itself once did.
> > 
> > 
> > On Mon, 2007-12-17 at 07:10 -0700, Rehan Allah Wala wrote:
> > > Any one tried this yet ?
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Ribbit Pulls Back the Covers On Its Voice 2.0 Master Plan (And Raises
> > > $10 Million B Round)
> > > Erick Schonfeld
> > > 12 comments ≫
> > >
> > >
> > > ribbit-small.pngIn case it isn’t abundantly clear by now, voice is
> > > just another application-bits that can be co-mingled with other data
> > > in unexpected ways. Ribbit, a startup that officially launches today
> > > and calls itself “Silicon Valley’s first phone company,” takes that
> > > concept as its basic premise. It wants to be the platform company for
> > > Voice 2.0 applications. If its plans succeed, there will be thousands
> > > of new phone apps appearing soon, and they almost all will be Flash
> > > apps. In other words, these won’t be stand-alone pieces of software
> > > like Skype. They will let people make calls right from the browser and
> > > tie deeply into other apps and data on the Web.
> > >
> > >
> > > “If you were to invent a phone company today,” asks CEO Ted Griggs,
> > > “what would it look like?” It wouldn’t be just cheap calls over the
> > > Web or a one-trick startup built around a single feature like
> > > click-to-call buttons. No, says Griggs, who founded Junction, a VoIP
> > > software company he merged with Summa Four and sold to Cisco in the
> > > late 1990s. It would be a complete end-to-end environment where
> > > developers who know nothing about telephony could plug into and
> > > quickly create Web-based phone applications. Ribbit recently closed a
> > > $10 million B round led by Allegis Capital, with KPG Ventures
> > > participating. The company also raised $3 million (the amount was
> > > previously undisclosed) from Alsop Louie Partners in October, 2006.
> > >
> > >
> > > ribbit-chalk-phone.pngToday’s launch is a developer launch, not a
> > > consumer launch (that will come later in the first quarter of 2008).
> > > It is releasing a more robust version of its APIs for its private
> > > developer beta, which is open to any programmer. Already, about 600
> > > developers have built Ribbit apps under certain restrictions (they are
> > > not allowed to go live on the Web until early next year). These apps
> > > range from an Adobe AIR iPhone that can make calls from your computer
> > > to a Flash phone with a chalkboard interface to a browser-based phone
> > > that works inside Salesforce.com (see screen shot below).
> > >
> > >
> > > All of these phones can call other Web-based phones (including Skype),
> > > VoIP phones, or regular landline and mobile phones. Ribbit handles the
> > > calls and other voice-related services (call logs, voice messages,
> > > speech-to-text transcription,contact imports, directories,
> > > provisioning, billing, security, authentication) and provides the APIs
> > > to developers, who build their apps with Adobe’s Flex development
> > > tools. (Ribbit does not support Ajax apps because Ajax does not let
> > > you access the computer’s microphone, says Griggs, but he might
> > > consider extending support to Silverlight, which does). Ribbit will
> > > create its own consumer and enterprise phone apps, but it will also
> > > host a marketplace where consumers and businesses can find (and buy)
> > > Ribbit apps.
> > >
> > >
> > > For the most part, Ribbit plans on charging for its calls. “There is a
> > > company a week that tries to avoid paying for the call. We are not
> > > doing that,” says Crick Waters, senior vice president of strategy. It
> > > is free to play with the API’s and develop a Ribbit phone application,
> > > but once it goes into production and actual calls begin, Ribbit will
> > > start charging. Pricing will start at $30 a month for 20 simultaneous
> > > sessions, or seats (for, say, call center reps logged into the
> > > application making and receiving calls), plus per-minute fees to the
> > > regular phone network. (Internet calls are free). The developer can
> > > then choose to charge its customers or provide it for free, and make
> > > up the cost in other ways. There probably will be free consumer apps
> > > from both Ribbit and its developers, but the business opportunity here
> > > is for enterprise voice applications that can be charged for. Instead
> > > of developing a custom call-center application for $250,000, for
> > > instance, an entrepreneur could build the same thing for much less on
> > > Ribbit and charge, say, $5 a month per customer service rep (with
> > > Ribbit taking $1.50).
> > >
> > >
> > > ribbit-diagram-2.png
> > >
> > >
> > > At its core, Ribbit has built a telephone switch in software, known as
> > > a soft switch. It works just like a switch made by Lucent or Nortel.
> > > Except that it is software running on hosted Linux servers. Ribbit’s
> > > “class 5″ switch has been tested in Lucent’s labs and passed with
> > > flying colors-meaning it is as reliable as any telco switch, Griggs
> > > assures me. Ribbit’s soft switch can send calls to regular phones,
> > > mobiles, Voice-over-IP, Voice-over-IM, and Web pages. It supports many
> > > voice protocols (SIP, Skype, Google Talk’s XMPP). Through its APIs,
> > > Ribbit will give developers access to all the functionality of its
> > > phone switch. “In the old days,” says Griggs, “it was a hardware box
> > > Lucent built talking to a hardware box that Nortel built. Today, there
> > > are a lot of clients people are using.” Want to create a unified
> > > messaging service that follows you wherever you are, even ringing on
> > > your IM or in your browser? No problem.
> > >
> > >
> > > Sending phone calls over the Web is not what makes Ribbit interesting,
> > > though. What makes it interesting is that it offers a way to create
> > > voice apps in a familiar Web application development environment that
> > > can easily be linked to other Web apps. Voice is just a feature of the
> > > Web, and Ribbit recognizes that. The Ribbit phone created as a demo
> > > for Salesforce.com, for instance, will not only let sales people make
> > > calls to prospects directly from the browser-based CRM application. It
> > > will also log the call. And in the next release, it will be able to
> > > record portions of a call at a click of the button and transcribe it
> > > (Ribbit uses speech-to-text technology from SimulScribe). Other
> > > developers have used the same transcription functionality to create
> > > phone apps that let people leave voice messages on blogs or on
> > > people’s Facebook FunWalls that then get turned into text comments. In
> > > the future you might call a friend and hear, “Press 1 to leave a
> > > private message, Press 2 to leave a message on my FunWall.” Ribbit has
> > > big ambitions. If it can deliver on half of them, it just might become
> > > Silicon Valley’s first phone company.
> > >
> > >
> > > Here is a screen shot of the Salesforce app (click to enlarge):
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Rehan Ahmed AllahWala
> > > Msn/Yahoo/GoogleTalk/Email: Rehan at Rehan.com
> > >
> > >
> > > http://www.supertec.com/ - Internet Telephony Solutions
> > > Http://www.DIDX.net - DID Number Market Place.
> > > Don't Remember Me ? Visit http://www.Rehan.com
> > >
> > >
> > > ‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾
> > > "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you,
> > > then you win."
> > > By Gandhi.
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > --
> > 
> > (C) Matthew Rubenstein
> > 
> > 
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-- 

(C) Matthew Rubenstein

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