Archive for June, 2008

Voice Peering and the Telephony (R)Evolution

Friday, June 27th, 2008 | located in Platform, Telephony | 2 Comments »

I enjoyed being part of Tuesday’s Voice Peering Forum and joining a panel exploring Service Delivery Platforms and the intersection of Web 2.0 and telecom with an outstanding lineup of telephony innovators:

Thomas Howe (moderator), CEO of The Thomas Howe Company
Garry Galinsky, Director, Product Innovation for Call Genie
Shai Berger, CEO & Co-Founder, Fonolo
Pankaj Shroff, Chief Applications Architect, Sonus Network

Ribbit’s content on this panel garnered some great attention, including a post positioning Ribbit as “the phone company of the future” by voice peering expert Rich Tehrani. We also like moderator Thomas Howe’s comments on this video interview fresh from the Voice Peering show.

The audience at Voice Peering was as interesting as the presenters tuned in professionals representing carriers, Homeland Security, Web properties, new-age Voice 2.0 companies and more and everyone came to exchange thoughts on the whole new dynamic of interconnected voice services using this emerging peering fabric.

An “aha moment” came as I considered the visionary work that voice peering is generating, and the impact of this work on the established telephony landscape.

I associate this with natural selection. What’s happening now resembles what we see when a new species entering an ecosystem with certain inherent evolutionary advantages over the incumbent species. The species will co-exist for a while, but after a time the more efficient species, with advantages that better suit it to the environment, will become dominant.

We all felt the rumblings of this coming change on Tuesday’s panel. The technologies being deployed and relationships being formed right now will create global connectivity that transcends the legacy economic and infrastructure barriers that are a by-product of the last 60 years of telecomm history.

The way it was done is not the way it will be. It’s exciting to be part of the change and perhaps, to reference Rich Tehrani, to be a pivotal part of the phone experience of the future.

-Crick

Tags: call genie, Platform, sonus networks, Telephony, thomas howe, voice 2.0, voice peering, web 2.0

AppExchange and CRM Community Showcasing Ribbit for Salesforce

Thursday, June 19th, 2008 | located in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Ribbit enjoyed a landmark day on Tuesday as the AppExchange and CRM Community showcased the news that 250 enterprise customers had adopted Ribbit for Salesforce since we released the application this month.

But it got even better. One of our customers—Greg Voisen (pictured left), founder of Compassionate Communications, which provides cards of support to people with critical illnesses—was so impressed with Ribbit for Salesforce that he sent the following message to 1,800 business contacts: I have recently come across the most amazing technology, and thought that I would share it with you. I normally do not bother to share information like this, but I believe that this is so user friendly and easy to use that you will want to know more. The best way to explain how Silicon Valley’s first telephone company works is to go to their website and watch the video demo. You will be glad you did. I am currently using Ribbit everyday in conjunction with my Salesforce client management system. It has made my job of making contact with customers and prospects simple, easy and fun. Please do take the time to check out this amazing voice to text technology, you will be pleased you did. And don’t forget to ask for Lorene Andrews if you have any questions. Call Lorene Andrews at (650) 440-2500 or email: lorene.andrews@ribbit.com for more information.For more information go to: www.ribbit.com/salesforce/ Sincerely, L. Greg Voisen Founder, Compassionate Communications, LLC

We love the evangelism…thanks, Greg.

Greg’s experience with Ribbit has also inspired innovative thinking on his core business. “We are in the process of evaluating Ribbit as a means to connect individuals who come to our site wanting to send a healing card to critically ill patients, and providing them with the service as a mechanism of connection with SMS text and voice mail to our patients. I believe that this feature added to our website would be a big plus for both the patient and our supporters.”

One more thing: Crick Waters, Ribbit Co-Founder and SVP Strategy & Business Development, will speak on “The Intersect of Web 2.0 and Telecom” at the Voice Peering Forum, right here in Silicon Valley, on June 24. Planning to be there? Drop us a line and we’ll make sure that Crick says hello.

Tags: Appexchange, Ribbit, ribbit for salesforce, SaaS

Big Week for Ribbit for Salesforce

Monday, June 9th, 2008 | located in Conferences/Events, Ribbit CRM | No Comments »

Team Ribbit hit the demo floor at Salesforce SuccessTour L.A. last week, welcoming a stream of visitors through our green-ballooned booth to show how Ribbit and mobile phones boost productivity for Salesforce users.

People really “got it.” We enjoyed hearing insights on the time savings, improved responsiveness, and the upside of letting people use their phones (which they’re already near) rather than their keyboards (which they never have enough time for) to keep sales records, notes, and input up-to-date.

Exciting to share Ribbit with the crowd; we’ll do so again at the Dallas SuccessTour on June 10 (let us know if you’ll be there).

Amplifying these thoughts, Denis Pombriant, the voice of CRM Buyer, said this about Ribbit in his blog yesterday:

“I love disruption…an opportunity to roll the dice and start over…Ribbit made an important contribution to changing the user interface from something that is only written and silent to something more…[to] kick off workflows that make things happen — send a letter, invoice, schedule follow-up, whatever.”

Read the whole post—we think you’ll like it.

Know someone who might want to try Ribbit for Salesforce? Let them know: we’re adding some fun to the mix with a chance at a “dream” getaway in Napa Valley for folks who give it a try. Our 3-day, 2-night, 5-star prize would be a winning combination with Dreamforce 2008 (Salesforce.com’s global user and developer conference, 11/08, San Francisco).

Tags: Appexchange, dreamforce, dreamforce conference, mobile, mobile voice communication, Ribbit, ribbit for salesforce, SaaS, Salesforce, salesforce.com, visual voicemail, Voice, voice automation

Big Thoughts on “Big Things Next”

Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 | located in Telephony | No Comments »

As all in the Ribbit community work hard, join forces and drive forward to build “the phone company of the future,” it’s so refreshing to hear a voice other than the ones around us describe the vision of what’s possible in new telephony. Read what telco thought leader (and fellow eComm speaker) Martin Geddes recently wrote in his outstanding blog, Telepocalypse.net:

“Integration of Web and Telco is probably the Next Big Thing. The phone experience (address book, call logs, presence, voicemail, etc.) comes with you into the web sites you visit, and vice versa. Why can’t someone leave me a ‘Skype’ voicemail, but I collect it on my T-Mobile handset’s voicemail system? Bags of cash in getting this to work together…”

It’s worth reading this whole post, and clicking through on the “2-sided markets” link if you like what Martin says. We do…he expresses some high points in the evolving Ribbit story. Want more? Martin’s eComm keynote shares a clear vision for what’s coming in communications. Enjoy.

Thanks to Lee Dryburgh for sharing this post with us.

Tags: Ribbit, Telephony, telephony 2.0

What’s Happening with Amphibian

Monday, June 2nd, 2008 | located in Ribbit Mobile | 1 Comment »

I’m taking a moment to look up from all of great things happening here at Ribbit—Flash Components, Salesforce integration, active development internally and with third parties—to bring the Ribbit community up to date on what’s happening with Amphibian. I’ll explain what Amphibian means to users and developers, and will try to briefly answer the question, “What is Amphibian?”

Amphibian is a service that takes everything your phone already does and makes it better by bringing new levels of phone functionality online. We all can probably agree that if the phone system were designed today, many things would be different, and more aligned with the online world. Amphibian delivers that rethink of telephony.

Amphibian delivers an online home for information that moves through your phones: your incoming and outgoing calls, your voicemails, and data related to how you use your phone.

By registering your phone into Amphibian, you can centralize phone activity, messages, and anything else you do with your phone, and decide how and where you want to manage this activity. Amphibian stores, tracks and organizes messages for you, letting you forward, search, save and work with them as text, email messages, or in other ways that you choose.

Because Amphibian is an open API, these features—to skim the surface—can be integrated into the Web environments that people use as part of their daily life. Social networks like Facebook and MySpace, blog pages—really, any open Web destination becomes a place where Amphibian can live, delivering phone network functionality wherever people already spend time online.

There’s much more to say, so stay tuned. Amphibian is about to enter formal beta, and it’s exciting to see it ready to leave the pond, so to speak, and starting to walk on land. Thanks for being part of our first steps. We can’t wait to see where you help us go.

Don Thorson
VP Marketing - Ribbit
http://www.ribbit.com

Tags: Ribbit, Ribbit Mobile