Archive for January, 2008

Ribbit at DEMO ‘08

Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 | located in Conferences/Events, Ribbit Mobile | No Comments »

Yesterday was our big day at DEMO ‘08. Crick Waters, one of our co-founders, took the stage mid-morning to give the world a six minute glimpse of Amphibian, the first consumer application written on the Ribbit API.

The DEMO show is unique in that each company is allowed exactly six minutes to give a live presentation of their product or service. And if that’s not intense enough, the first 3 rows of the audience are filled with about 100 global technology journalists, some of whom are reporting in real time. And if that’s not intense enough, it’s also being streamed on the web.

Here is how our presentation went:
Note the length of our presentation - 5:58 seconds. (Good job Crick!)

The response to the Amphibian service has been nothing less than fantastic. The reporters are giving us glowing accolades and keeping us very busy by coming by the DEMO Pavilion for more detailed presentations than the six minutes can allow. In short, we are having a very good time telling the world what we’ve been up to. Our thanks to everyone who has helped us spread the word and our special thanks to Chris Shipley and the entire DEMO Team. This is truly an exceptional event that provides young companies like Ribbit the perfect venue to launch products like Amphibian. While it’s a lot of work to get here, it’s so worth it.

Introducing Amphibian

Monday, January 28th, 2008 | located in Ribbit Mobile | 1 Comment »

Today we are pleased to be announcing Amphibian, the first consumer service built on the Ribbit API. This has been in the works for some time, so it’s great to finally be able to tell the world about it.

Amphibian is the code name we’ve come up with to help describe what it is and what it does. In essence, Amphibian brings your mobile phone world together with your on-line world and is comfortable in both ecosystems. if you have a mobile phone and you use the internet, you’re going to want Amphibian.

Here are a few of things it does:

• It lets you manage your mobile voicemail like email on your computer and on your mobile phone.
• It can turn your voicemail into text to make voice messages sharable, searchable, and most importantly actionable.
• It lets you take and make mobile calls from any browser or web page - such as iGoogle, Facebook, and many more.
• It has what we call Caller ID 2.0 - that dips into the social web and tells you, not just who is calling, but what the caller has been doing, posting, blogging..

And, since Amphibian was built using the Ribbit API, most of the features you’ll see can be also be built into new voiceware apps that developers can create on their own.

We’ve just put up a refreshed site, that has an intro video and more product information - so check it out. We hope you like what you see. Amphibian is just entering Beta, so please sign-up (it’s free) and we’ll keep you updated as we move towards general availability. Also, consider subscribing to this blog to stay informed about general Ribbit news as well.

We’re at DEMO in Palm Desert, California this week, The official public debut of Amphibian is tomorrow morning to the live DEMO audience, so wish us luck.

DEMO 2008

Sunday, January 27th, 2008 | located in Conferences/Events, Ribbit Mobile | No Comments »

Ribbit is going to DEMO 2008 which starts on Monday and runs to Wednesday night. For any of you out there who don’t know about DEMO, it’s the “Best of Class” product introduction venue, happening this year in Palm Desert, California.

It looks like 73 companies have been selected to give their product and company pitch, in a very short, very intense 6 minute stage demo. Then you have a couple of days to give deeper presentations in an attached exhibit space.

Ribbit is announcing a new service, the first consumer service built on the Ribbit open API. People who have had a sneak preview have liked what they’ve seen, so we’re optimistic you will to. if you’re a person who is on the web a lot and uses your mobile phone as your main communication tool, you’re going to want to check it out. If you’re a developer and are interested in adding voice components into your own websites or applications, you’ll want to check it out because many of the features you’ll see, you’ll also be able to add into your own projects - and remarkably, the service we are announcing next week is also ” extensible” so you’ll be able extend that as well.

We are totally slammed, getting ready for the show. If you want to catch of glimpse of what it looks like “inside the sausage factory” - that is, what it looks like for a company ramping for DEMO, go here.

In the meantime, wish us luck at the show and we’ll check in Monday with details.

Ribbit at CES

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 | located in Conferences/Events, Ribbit Mobile | 1 Comment »

We’ve been spending our time at the CES show in Las Vegas this week. Everybody’s interested in Ribbit, even if it doesn’t fit into the classic description of a a consumer product just yet. We’ve been rubbing shoulders with our press and blogger friends - hanging out in the Bloghaus and keeping our ears to the ground on anything new, especially anything new that has anything to do with anything mobile.

This place doesn’t get any less crazy year to year. CES is mostly a hardware show with devices of all kinds - None of the bloggers are too excited about mobile announcements this year. A few new handsets, but nothing that’s lighting the world on-fire.

Yahoo just announced what appears to be an answer to Google Android and focuses on making it easier bringing the internet / content to your mobile phone.

We’re not seeing anything like Ribbit at CES. Where Yahoo is helping you bring your internet to you mobile phone, Ribbit brings your mobile phone to your on-line life. We’ll explain this in more detail in a couple of weeks.

The Crunchies

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 | located in Awards, Ribbit Mobile | No Comments »

We got word just before Christmas that we’d been nominated for two TechCrunch Crunchie Awards for 2007. Awesome! If you don’t know about the Crunchies, it’s a new technology award “competition” being pulled together by TechCruch, with help from Om Malik, VentureBeat and Read/WriteWeb. While the Ribbit team has been cranking for some time on our technology and infrastructure, we just pulled the covers back for the public about 4 weeks ago, so we’re delighted with the quick-turn recognition given to us by our tech fans.

The first nomination is for “Best Enterprise Start-Up” which is huge because it acknowledges the hard work the team has been putting into Ribbit for Salesforce. Ribbit for Salesforce continues to gather momentum. Expect more news soon on this front.

The second nomination is for “Best New Start-Up of 2007″, with the other nominations being; Hulu, iMedix, Joost, and Tumblr. This is great company for sure and it’s a huge honor to be included.

The Crunchies “contestants” are nominated and selected by you guys, anyone can vote, and you can vote once a day until the voting ends Jan 10, so we are asking for your help (being nominated is cool, but we wouldn’t mind winning)