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dean,<br>
Great perspective.... you put it so nicely! :) <br>
daveC<br>
<br>
Dean Collins wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid3685A8FD247FA94C957C4304AB386A04046671@cognationsvr1.Cognation.local"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">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
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:dean@cognation.net">dean@cognation.net</a>
+1-212-203-4357
+61-2-9016-5642 (Sydney in-dial).
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">-----Original Message-----
From: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:asterisk-biz-bounces@lists.digium.com">asterisk-biz-bounces@lists.digium.com</a> [<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="mailto:asterisk-biz">mailto:asterisk-biz</a>-
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:bounces@lists.digium.com">bounces@lists.digium.com</a>] 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:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">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 $B"d(B
ribbit-small.pngIn case it isn$B!G(Bt 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 $B!H(BSilicon Valley$B!G(Bs first phone company,$B!I(B takes that
concept as its basic premise. It wants to be the platform company for
Voice 2.0 applications. If its plans succeed, there will be thousands
of new phone apps appearing soon, and they almost all will be Flash
apps. In other words, these won$B!G(Bt 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.
$B!H(BIf you were to invent a phone company today,$B!I(B asks CEO Ted Griggs,
$B!H(Bwhat would it look like?$B!I(B It wouldn$B!G(Bt 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 $3 million (the amount was
previously undisclosed) from Alsop Louie Partners in October, 2006.
ribbit-chalk-phone.pngToday$B!G(Bs 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$B!G(Bs Flex development
tools. (Ribbit does not support Ajax apps because Ajax does not let
you access the computer$B!G(Bs 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. $B!H(BThere is a
company a week that tries to avoid paying for the call. We are not
doing that,$B!I(B says Crick Waters, senior vice president of strategy. It
is free to play with the API$B!G(Bs 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 $1.50).
ribbit-diagram-2.png
At its core, Ribbit has built a telephone switch in software, known as
a soft switch. It works just like a switch made by Lucent or Nortel.
Except that it is software running on hosted Linux servers. Ribbit$B!G(Bs
$B!H(Bclass 5$B!m(B switch has been tested in Lucent$B!G(Bs labs and passed with
flying colors-meaning it is as reliable as any telco switch, Griggs
assures me. Ribbit$B!G(Bs 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$B!G(Bs XMPP). Through its APIs,
Ribbit will give developers access to all the functionality of its
phone switch. $B!H(BIn the old days,$B!I(B says Griggs, $B!H(Bit was a hardware box
Lucent built talking to a hardware box that Nortel built. Today, there
are a lot of clients people are using.$B!I(B 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$B!G(Bs Facebook FunWalls that then get turned into text comments. In
the future you might call a friend and hear, $B!H(BPress 1 to leave a
private message, Press 2 to leave a message on my FunWall.$B!I(B Ribbit has
big ambitions. If it can deliver on half of them, it just might become
Silicon Valley$B!G(Bs first phone company.
Here is a screen shot of the Salesforce app (click to enlarge):
Rehan Ahmed AllahWala
Msn/Yahoo/GoogleTalk/Email: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Rehan@Rehan.com">Rehan@Rehan.com</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.supertec.com/">http://www.supertec.com/</a> - Internet Telephony Solutions
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="Http://www.DIDX.net">Http://www.DIDX.net</a> - DID Number Market Place.
Don't Remember Me ? Visit <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.Rehan.com">http://www.Rehan.com</a>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you,
then you win."
By Gandhi.
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</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">--
(C) Matthew Rubenstein
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="132">--
My wife's sister is in California.
I should buy her a Videophone2008!
Truly, The Next Best Thing to Being There!
--
WorldWideVideoPhones.com
856.380.0894
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