Archive for May, 2008

InfoWorld Salutes Ribbit as a “Rising Star”

Monday, May 19th, 2008 | located in Ribbit CRM | No Comments »

Good news: InfoWorld honored Ribbit this morning by choosing us as one of the Hottest Tech Startups of 2008: part of an elite list highlighting “newbies whose technologies could make a huge difference to business IT.”

This recognition is especially meaningful to us given InfoWorld’s selection criteria. They award start-ups based on:

“…real technology innovation — what will drive technology forward in ways that could revolutionize some aspect of business IT…We seek at least one of three qualities: truly new technologies, innovative approaches within existing technology areas, and technologies applied in new ways to solve different problems.”

Ribbit’s founder and CEO Ted Griggs added his perspectives:
“We’re very happy to have stood out from an impressive pack of startups, and especially from some outstanding new mobile and telephony ventures that InfoWorld considered. We’re also pleased that InfoWorld really got it right in their grasp of vertical application integration and the real convergence of voice into business workflow and productivity.

“Voice automation is a game changer—a ‘new way to solve a problem,’ ” as InfoWorld says. It’s exciting to us to see how productivity changes when voice hits Web apps, and we’re really glad that InfoWorld saw the power of this transformation.”

InfoWorld reporter Bill Snyder dug deep to get an insightful grasp of Ribbit’s whole story—the technology, business model, and developer outlook—during the research that led up to the award. He definitely captured the vision when he said:

“Expect to see Ribbit go beyond sales force automation; integration with vertical applications in finance, real estate, medical, and others is on the way.”

Thank you, Bill, and InfoWorld. We are thrilled to be on this illustrious list.

Ribbit Voted Crowd Favorite at SF NewTech

Friday, May 16th, 2008 | located in Conferences/Events, Ribbit CRM | No Comments »

Tuesday’s NewTech Meetup (a much-acclaimed monthly event in the Bay Area tech community, featuring full-house events showcasing demos of hot new technologies) was a great success for Ribbit. We took to the stage as the the final presenter, and liked how NewTech honcho Myles Wessleder introduced us by saying he’d “saved the best for last.” When we asked Myles why he saw Ribbit as such a good fit for this event, here’s what he said.

“Since Ribbit is ‘Silicon Valley’s First Phone Company’ I was extremely excited when they agreed to the May NewTech event. We packed the house and featured a great line-up of leading local companies. I scheduled Ribbit as our last presenter because the Ribbit offering is so compelling that people would be waiting on the edge of their seats all night to hear about it. And they were. Chuck Freedman stole the stage and Ribbit made a great impression on the room. I’m glad they joined us and look forward to Ribbit’s ongoing work!”

Thank you, Myles. We loved the event and the crowd and the great reception your very impressive technical crowd gave us.

Breaking news: Ribbit was voted the crowd favorite among all presenters…winning 37% of the vote as “Favorite” among the five featured companies. Thanks, SF NewTech!

Here are photos from the event courtesy of Matthew Silvey:

Tags: Appexchange, Ribbit, ribbit for salesforce, SaaS

Tonight’s NewTech Meetup & Visual Voicemail with Ribbit & Skyfire

Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 | located in Conferences/Events, Ribbit Mobile | 1 Comment »

Tonight Ribbit is presenting in San Francisco at the NewTech Meetup, a great local showcase of cutting-edge tech innovation. It’s going to be fun. Chuck Freedman, our Director of Developer Platform, will take to the stage and—using the whole 5 minutes each presenter is allocated—use Ribbit Voice Components for Flash to drag-and-drop his way to a working application, right before the audience’s eyes.

Then he’s going to call a pizza parlor and place an order. We think the crowd will go wild.

We’ll show you what it looks like on Thursday, but in the meantime, here’s a little drag-and-drop just for you. Enjoy watching Chuck, filmed right here at Ribbit Headquarters, share some Ribbit magic on his mobile phone. Chuck, Skyfire and Ribbit equals visual voicemail!

Tags: Ribbit, Ribbit Mobile, visual voicemail

Ribbit for Salesforce: What it Also Means

Thursday, May 8th, 2008 | located in Platform, Ribbit CRM | No Comments »

We’re really happy with how the world has responded to our breakthrough Ribbit for Salesforce announcement this week. It’s clear that the industry “gets” the importance of voice automation for this leading CRM solution.

But we’re also gratified by the industry’s take on the role of voice in improving the user experience in Web and SaaS applications—and in Ribbit’s leadership in delivering it. As industry maven and blogger Alec Saunders says:

“The product looks very good, including the ability to dictate, transcribe and automate various sales processes. For instance, with Ribbit for Salesforce, sales people could dictate meeting notes from the car, making productive use of transit time between meetings. For that reason alone, it deserves a look.”

You all know that Ribbit is an open platform—we say for “telephony innovation,” but what we really mean is for bringing the power of mobile voice into applications in a way that increases value for users, and for the applications themselves. Voice is data, after all; Ribbit lets it come in very much like text does from a keyboard and integrate with the application, either as recorded voice or as text.

Ribbit for Salesforce gives us a living, breathing example of voice automation in a business app, in a way that showcases the value of multi-modal input in business productivity. Take a look at Ribbit for Salesforce (you can try it for free, including pre-loaded Salesforce, for 30 days) and consider of the implications. For the Salesforce users already benefiting from Ribbit, for the industry at large, and for anyone using mobile devices and the web, this is the first step to something much bigger. It’s exciting to share it with you here.

Don Thorson
VP of Marketing

Tags: Appexchange, Ribbit, ribbit for salesforce, SaaS

Announcing Ribbit for Salesforce

Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 | located in Platform, Ribbit CRM | 1 Comment »

Today’s announcement of Ribbit for Salesforce ushers in a new wave of voice automation in Web applications and a true milestone in business productivity.

Ribbit for Salesforce solves a big problem for busy salespeople by taking a tool they already rely on—their mobile phones—and empowering it to directly access their Salesforce accounts, letting them leave voice updates, memos, follow-up items and other customer details as easily as making a phone call.

What’s more, Ribbit can convert voice messages to text, allowing you to edit, search and forward voicemail, just like you can with email.

It’s a big breakthrough, one that has folks at Salesforce saying things like this:

“Mobile voice in Salesforce.com workflow is a combination that’s sure to bring productivity breakthroughs to many Salesforce customers.”
—Clarence So, Chief Marketing Officer, salesforce.com

Salespeople love it, too. We tested Ribbit for Salesforce with 70 power users, and received glowing feedback from salespeople, Admins, and team leaders as they reported gaining hours of work time each week simply by talking, rather than typing, to keep their Salesforce accounts up to date.

Ribbit for Salesforce is just the first step in addressing a huge opportunity: the integration of voice into everyday productivity. And since Ribbit is a platform company, we offer the same opportunity to other CRM and business application providers as Salesforce delivers with this new app.

If you’re a Salesforce user, or know anyone who is, watch and share the below video showing how Ribbit for Salesforce works. They’ll thank you for the hours you save them every day.

Tags: Appexchange, Ribbit, ribbit for salesforce, SaaS

Ribbit in May

Sunday, May 4th, 2008 | located in Developers, Platform, Ribbit CRM, Ribbit Mobile | No Comments »

We’ve been waiting for May for a long time. This month we are officially rolling out a new product and we can’t wait to get Ribbit in the hands of customers to see their response. We’re holding our breath a little, but at the same time we think we know what’s going to happen and we’re very excited.

Also in May, we’ll be speaking at a whole new type of forum when we showcase Ribbit at the San Francisco New Tech Meetup a lively gathering of developers, entrepreneurs, investors and cool companies with new ideas to share. If you’re in the Bay Area on May 13, don’t miss it. Chuck Freedman and other Ribbit folks will be on hand; be sure to say hi.

Here are a few other things on the agenda:

• Telling you more about Amphibian, which we are already using here at Ribbit, and which is getting ready to move…well, out of the pond.
• Delivering the Ribbit Voice Components for Flash pre-release to 50 revved-up developers.
• Meeting with tech innovators in Silicon Valley to talk about Amphibian and hear their thoughts about development and more (let us know if you’re in the area and want to be involved).
• Seeing how close we can get to adding our 5000th developer (we added #4000 last week!).

Stay tuned!

Don Thorson

Tags: Appexchange, Ribbit, ribbit for salesforce, SaaS