[asterisk-biz] Ribbit.com ?

Tue Dec 18 09:49:17 CST 2007

Dean,

I think you may be right on the money with JIAX and the real demand for a 
web based phone.  I worked with a group that "fixed" the freely available 
JIAX code (by  Mikael Magnusson http://www.hem.za.org/jiaxclient ) but had 
no interest in giving the code back to wild, nor selling it.  It did not 
take a few good Java guys very long to get it working the same as Mexuar's. 
I was able to compile a workign jar from source myself with a few changes 
and I am not a Dev guy, let alone a Java guy at all (but it took me the 
better part of week).

I think that the demand is not really there (yet).  Most real world people 
would rather pick up a real phone and dial a toll free number than don a 
headset with mic and make a call via browser.  I think it has some wow power 
to "our kind", but I think the average Joe would not use this until 
convergence is more complete to avoid putting on headphones (like a 
bluetooth link from PC to a hardphone or cell).

It is similar to many companies that I consult for.  The people in the 
company want to know the bare essentials to use the phones.  Sometimes the 
higher ups are interested in advanced functionality but more often than not, 
they just want something to replace (insert phone system here) in 
functionality with a few remote phones or remote offices.  During the sales 
cycle however, they are wowed by the possibilities which certainly helps and 
stands out from the crowd since there are no material nor licensing costs, 
just time.

Thanks,
Steve Totaro

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dean Collins" <Dean at cognation.net>
To: "Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion" 
<asterisk-biz at lists.digium.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2007 9:42 AM
Subject: Re: [asterisk-biz] Ribbit.com ?

> My suggestion was a $25 one off license per simultaneous call.
>
> Eg you run a small asterisk server in your office where people may use
> it from time to time then it's a one off $25 fee.
>
> If you run a website with a community of users who get together to chat
> with each other and want to restrict it to 10 people at once then your
> fee would be $250
>
> And lets face it if you cant/wont pay $25 then you aren't really serious
> at any price.
>
> The question in the founders mind always was....how many people actually
> want to buy this product (at any fee) and how many would use it if it
> was free but really don't want it bad enough to fire up a paypal account
> or similar.
>
> At the end of the day Tim spent a long time developing the application
> (and at only 125k in size it's a work of art), office space, rent, food
> and telephony, sales people/tech support salaries all cost money. Mexuar
> needs a return on their investment to cover their costs and a profit
> return.
>
> At the end of the day they chose to go with the high end unlimited use
> for a single reasonable fee of $US2,000 which means any service provider
> or large company could implement it quite easily and they offered an ASP
> service for one off licenses with a monthly fee.
>
> What confuses me about this whole space is JIAX.
>
> If there is an existing free application available, albeit free and not
> perfect, why haven't more people chosen to spend time fixing this or
> offered bounties for it's improvement.
>
> At the end of the day maybe there just aren't as many people looking to
> use this functionality as 'perceived' and my proposal is wrong. As it's
> not my investment I think the founders of Mexuar made the right choice.
>
> Will be interesting to see if a lot of people chime in on this
> discussion and I'm shown to be right and there is a market for $25 per
> simultaneous call licenses.
>
>
>
> 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: Tuesday, 18 December 2007 7:33 AM
>> To: Mike Clark
>> Cc: Asterisk -Biz
>> Subject: Re: [asterisk-biz] Ribbit.com ?
>>
>> $5 per end user is way too much for little Web apps like
> chatrooms or
>> sales/cust-svc chats, or anything where a given random user from the
>> public on the Web isn't going to return at least $10 a year in profit
>> from which that license can be paid. Even $5 per running instance is
> too
>> high. The problem isn't so much the price, but just a per-instance fee
>> as a limit to scale.
>>
>> The solution is a license fee on a middleware server with
> traffic
>> capacities, and a free client. But if the middleware does't offer
> value
>> of its own (beyond being the "key" for the clients to work), then it's
>> going to be a nuisance. In any case, the client should be free. Which
> is
>> one impediment to widespread development, which is a reason it isn't
>> here yet. But since there is some development, with those bizmodel
>> constraints, I'd think there'd be several options already for "webpage
>> voice" integrated with the PSTN. These same business constraints don't
>> seem to have eliminated any number of free clients floating around and
>> seeing lots of use. Which are then harnessed to support business
> models
>> relating to the business, not to the software used by the business.
>>
>>
>> On Tue, 2007-12-18 at 07:20 -0500, Mike Clark wrote:
>> > They key is not creating a barrier to entry. It would be ideal if I
>> > could license a "Mexuar-like" client in small lots of 5 or 10 at a
> price
>> > of around $10 per license. You might even give away a "free"
> developer
>> > pack of 2 licenses so folks can easily get started. This all enables
> the
>> > little gut to get in the game, and then maybe hit a homerun
> resulting in
>> > thousands of licenses.
>> >
>> > Dean Collins wrote:
>> > > But Mike the question remains how much is it worth to you to be
> able to
>> > > do this?
>> > >
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > 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 Mike Clark
>> > >> Sent: Monday, 17 December 2007 5:22 PM
>> > >> To: email at mattruby.com; Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk
>> > >>
>> > > Discussion
>> > >
>> > >> Subject: Re: [asterisk-biz] Ribbit.com ?
>> > >>
>> > >> Matthew Rubenstein wrote:
>> > >>
>> > >>> Dean, how would you describe Mexuar, with its embeddable
> but
>> > >>> proprietary IAX applet, in that context?
>> > >>>
>> > >>>
>> > >>>
>> > >>>
>> > >> ...snipped a bunch..
>> > >>
>> > >> I'm not Dean, but I'll comment here.I evaluated Mexuar and really
>> > >>
>> > > liked
>> > >
>> > >> it, but they had no good mechanism for a small developer to get
>> > >>
>> > > started.
>> > >
>> > >> They wanted a substantial up front licensing fee to get going.
> OTOH,
>> > >>
>> > > if
>> > >
>> > >> you turned out to be successful, it was a good deal because it
> was a
>> > >>
>> > > one
>> > >
>> > >> time fee.
>> > >>
>> > >> Ribbit has a totally different model as they are a full blown
> ITSP and
>> > >> have provided a Flex/Actionscript API to their Flash phone
> component
>> > >>
>> > > at
>> > >
>> > >> no charge to developers. I have an app ready to roll as soon as
> they
>> > >>
>> > > are
>> > >
>> > >> completely live.
>> > >>
>> > >> I would love to see a similar type API to a Flash SIP or IAX2
>> > >>
>> > > component
>> > >
>> > >> where I could access my own Asterisk or Freeswitch server.
>> > >>
>> > >> Mike Clark
>> --
>>
>> (C) Matthew Rubenstein
>>
>>
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