Archive for the ‘Platform’ Category

Ribbit Introduces Scalable, Next-Generation Voice-to-Text Application Services for Carriers and Enterprise Customers

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 | located in Platform | No Comments »

Today at The Messaging Industry Association event taking place in Tampa, FL we are announcing the launch of VTT-sa™, a next-generation service that lets network operators and enterprise customers integrate and deploy high quality voice-to-text services to the largest networks at competitive rates.

Available now for integration and testing for qualifying network operators and enterprise customers, VTT-sa is:

• A secure, cloud-based service that is an integral part of the award winning Ribbit platform.
• Converts voice to text for mobile and wireline voicemail systems, traditional and IP-based PBXs, and conference calling and other business critical applications.
• Can also be extended to a private cloud-based infrastructure for customers who prefer governance and control of their cloud environment.
• Ensures customers’ requirements for privacy, accuracy, language and conversion speeds can be set and adjusted on demand.
• Uses proprietary algorithms, advanced modeling and forecasting software to continuously monitor and analyze the voice-to-text performance of a qualified group of voice-to-text conversion providers and automatically selects in real-time, the one that has the highest performance and which most closely matches the requirements specified for each voice-to-text conversion

Enterprise customers working in government, finance, legal, healthcare and other sectors that routinely handle sensitive data can choose a service level that relies solely on voice recognition software and algorithms to convert voice to text. General business consumers with less stringent security requirements can choose service levels optimized for speed and accuracy.

Quote:

• Stephen Wu, general manager, Ribbit Voice-to-Text Services: “Network operators and enterprises understand the value of converting voice-to-text and making it searchable and actionable in a range of applications. With support for multiple speech recognition methods and providers, VTT-sa delivers unmatched flexibility, security, reliability and performance. Network operators and enterprises can finally have the best of both worlds – leading-edge voice-to-text application services backed by an experienced, global technology company and telephony provider.”

Available in both English and Spanish, VTT-sa supports a variety of interface options including TDM, SIP, REST APIs, SMTP, SMS/SMPP, IMS and legacy SS7. Extended interface options including advanced call completion features are also available via Ribbit/BT’s cloud-based, telco-class 4/5 infrastructure.

For more information, please visit us online.

Tags: Ribbit, ribbit vtt, ribbit vtt-sa, ribbit vttsa, voice to text

Ribbit’s Converged Communications Desktop for Windows 7 Helps Transform Provider Revenue Model

Thursday, February 11th, 2010 | located in Partners, Platform, Telephony | 1 Comment »

Ribbit for Windows 7 (code name: Meridia), will help carriers leverage their existing customer base and network assets to boost revenues and add more value to their subscribers. Co-developed with Microsoft, Magpie and Amadeus - this customizable desktop interface consolidates communications in a single place.

Built as a proof-of-concept, Ribbit for Windows 7 demonstrates how carriers can apply trends impacting the telecommunications industry to increase average revenue per user (ARPU). As a branded desktop application, Ribbit for Windows 7 brings the carrier brand to the forefront of the customer experience, and provides a revenue-generating vehicle through local advertising and international call termination. Using an opt-in model, the companies who own this data can market and advertise based on their understanding of their subscribers tastes, geographic location and social graph.

Ribbit for Windows 7 is compatible with Windows Live Contacts, and provides new ways to stay connected in a rich mobile desktop experience. It offers click-to-call/click-to-conference functionality, visual voicemail, SMS and instant messaging (IM) via an intuitive, customizable, drag and drop user interface using touch-screen features from Microsoft’s Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).

Carriers and service providers are struggling to maintain growth and relevancy in an increasingly mobile-dominated world. In fact, according to a March 2009 IBM Global CEO Survey, more than half of the telecom executives surveyed plan to open their networks to external application providers, and a third of them are considering ways to capitalize on existing customer relationships and mobile networks to help boost ARPU.

Voice as an Application Drives Increased Revenue and Decreases Subscriber Churn
As a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT, Ribbit understands how to help carriers improve subscriber productivity, sustain high value margins and reduce subscriber churn through bundled services. Ribbit’s open, cloud-based Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) model allows telecom companies to eliminate the tremendous cost associated with building out a network that would otherwise require 24 – 36 months to build, deploy and market.

Quotes:

• Joe Black, Ribbit VP of Strategy and Business Development: “This emerging monetization model will enable providers to deliver bundled applications and services that will yield a higher margin and reduce subscriber churn. By leveraging Ribbit’s powerful platform based APIs, providers can enter markets they were once unable to reach due to regulation of the telecom industry and the cost-prohibitive nature of building out networks.”
• Joseph Hofstader, Telecommunications Industry Architect and Evangelist, Microsoft Communications Sector: “Over the last couple of years, we’ve watched a number of trends create an environment that is now revolutionizing the communications industry – among those is voice as an application and communications networks as programming platforms. Today, network carriers have an opportunity to increase their revenues by applying the economic model of the Web to the telecommunications industry. By offering value-added communications services, they can capitalize on technological advancements. The application of the still-evolving Internet business model to a century old industry may seem contradictory to many passive observers but a closer look reveals that the main revenue drivers in both industries are remarkably similar: subscriptions, transactions and advertising—and that is where the opportunity lies.”

Ribbit for Windows 7, will be demonstrated at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (taking place February 15-18, 2010) in the Microsoft booth #1D19. Ribbit is focused on helping carriers integrate rich communications into existing networks, build revenues and attract and retain customers and we feel Meridia is exactly the solution the telco industry has been looking for.

Tags: Ribbit, ribbit converged communications desktop, ribbit for windows 7, ribbit meridia, unified communications

JP Rangaswami and Kevin Marks talk open APIs and what is possible with voice at Le Web

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 | located in Conferences/Events, Platform | No Comments »

Last week at the Le Web conference, @charbax from the Tech Video Blog caught up to BT’s JP Rangaswami and Kevin Marks to discuss the Ribbit platform and how open APIs give independent developers, ISVs and global enterprises the tools and functionality to create new ways to communicate-with people, businesses, and software.

Summarizing JP, ‘our job is to show you the what is possible with the enabling technologies…your job is to do something with it’.

I like JP’s framing around telcos and how they should embrace technologies like Ribbit, VOIP, etc. He notes telcos core job is to help people connect with one another, and while there will always be some tension when new technologies surface that compete with your bottom line, telcos who are willing to embrace and add value to these technologies will not only see revenues incrase, but ensure they are doing the best job possible for their customers.

Tags: le web, leweb, open APIs, Ribbit, tech video blog, voice as a data object

Ribbit and Sprout Partner to Seed Online Engagement Campaigns With Voice

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 | located in Conferences/Events, Partners, Platform | 1 Comment »

We are pleased to announce a strategic partnership with Sprout, the premier platform for developing and managing creative engagement marketing campaigns, to offer easily integrated telephony features for any online social engagement campaign built on the Sprout platform.

The combination of Ribbit and Sprout offers a new realm of interaction opportunities through integrated voice, SMS, click-to-call, call transcriptions, and other Ribbit-enabled telephony functions. The innate richness of voice and telephony enables brands and agencies to easily build higher levels of engagement and social awareness with their target communities, resulting in enhanced value, brand “stickiness” and desired community action.

Online communities today have a growing expectation for a closer level of interaction with the brands and personalities they follow, which presents continued opportunities for creative agencies and innovative brands to develop exciting campaigns with the latest technologies. The Ribbit communications platform, a carrier-grade telephony-plus-software infrastructure, is enabling people and brands to completely rethink the way they communicate and interact. With Ribbit, voice or communications-enabled media provides closer, more personal engagement for online communities. Available directly through the Sprout platform, agencies and brands now can dramatically increase the reach and effectiveness of their campaigns with easily integrated and feature-rich voice and telephony capabilities.

Quotes:

Ray Lee, Director of Platform Strategy and Business Development at Ribbit: “Ribbit and Sprout provide a powerful combination for creative agencies and brands. Integrated voice and telephony fundamentally change the way organizations can now interact with their target online communities, and enhances the relationship for better value on both sides. The new telephony features in the Sprout platform give agencies and brands the cutting edge tools to quickly and easily develop highly engaging, rich media campaigns – a big advantage in the highly competitive online marketing world.”

Carnet Williams, CEO of Sprout: “Agencies and brands are always looking for ways to make their campaigns stickier and more engaging. Our technology platform allows them to launch the most creative online campaigns and by adding voice with Ribbit, brands will experience an unprecedented level of value, awareness, and engagement. We are excited to see how this will be used in the next generation of online social engagement campaigns.”

TELEPHONY IN THE ONLINE CAMPAIGN
The creative possibilities of telephony integration with Sprout are limited only by the creator’s imagination, and can easily turn interested customers into live leads or transactions.  For example, an innovative auto brand could develop a dream car-building application on their main website or other social media property, allowing user customization with all of the bells and whistles available. To continue the potential customer interaction, a stylish Ribbit-enabled “click-to-call” button could instantly connect the customer to a live operator to answer questions, schedule a test drive, or initiate a sale.

The movie industry is another example where voice and telephony integrated with online marketing campaigns can create better community engagement. Leveraging the interest of movie fans for frequent updates on cast news and movie progress, studios can integrate movie-themed widgets into any online campaign to distribute information and dynamic voice content. For example, a cast member or director could privately call a Ribbit number to send real-time, voice updates to all widget users. With Sprout functionality, fans could then forward the voice updates or transcriptions to their social network profile, and even leave their own comment for all of their friends to hear. News from the set, reaction to personal developments, updates from the red carpet – these are all personal, engaging updates that will keep fans coming back to the widget and brand for more information.  The integration of voice and interactive communication dramatically increases the widget value to the user, and can significantly increase brand visibility, reach and stickiness.

TELEPHONY AT CREATIVITY AND TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE (CaT)
Catch Ribbit on June 3rd in the Metropolitan Pavilion Gallery at the Creativity and Technology conference, in New York. Featured demonstrations will include Sprout, Ribbit Labs, communications-enabled ad banners, and Ribbit augmented-reality calling. Hope to see you there!

We are also hosting a Ribbit Bayou on Tuesday, June 2rd at the Maritime Hotel, and invite you to join us for a drink on the roof deck with the Ribbit team.

Tags: Ribbit

CenterNetworks Interviews Ribbit’s Ray Lee

Monday, April 20th, 2009 | located in Articles and Media Mentions, Platform | No Comments »

CenterNetworks‘ Jolie O’Dell caught up with Ray Lee during SxSW last month and had a little chat about the shift to bring interactivity into websites and applications, and the future of brain chips. Yes, you heard right.  Brain chips.

Tags: centernetworks, interactivity, interview, Ribbit, sxsw, Telephony

Killer App Challenge Winner: SimplePhone

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 | located in Applications, Developers, Platform | No Comments »

Alain Mowad caught up with Joseph Farrar, the Ribbit Killer App Challenge Winner in the Carrier/Network/ISP Integration category at the CTIA conference in Las Vegas this past week, and asked Joe to share his experiences developing his application on the Ribbit platform:

Joe’s application, SimplePhone integrates the Ribbit platform and Broadsoft’s BroadWorks API, and is skinned and deployed on SimpleSignal. It can function as a stand-alone Flash phone and can also be linked with BroadWorks XSP accounts to access BroadWorks user profile feature set. For example, the user has set his DND (Do-Not-Disturb) notification on his Broadsoft account which is supported on the Ribbit Flash Phone.

For more information on SimplePhone, please visit us online. If you would like to learn more about extending communications within your website or application, be sure to check out our Developer Portal.

Tags: API, broadsoft, broadworks API, challenge winner, developer portal, Flash, joe developer, killer app, Killer App Challenge, profile feature, Ribbit, simplephone

Ribbit Sparks Global Commuication Innovation with Killer App Challenge

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 | located in Contests, Platform, Ribbit Mobile | Comments Off

Winners Demonstrate Innovation, Creativity in Key Business and Consumer Voiceware Categories

Today we announced the winning voiceware applications in our $100,000 Killer App Challenge that offered developers around the world the chance to create the next leading edge applications on the Ribbit open communications platform for integrating voice communications into applications, web sites, and communities.

Unlike platforms such as Apple or Google, applications built on Ribbit are not confined to a “walled garden” - a single carrier, device or operating system – and can bridge the mobile/web experience for consumer and enterprise use. Through the Ribbit-BT partnership, developers gain unprecedented access to a global telecom infrastructure, and can quickly and easily build new voiceware applications, without being locked to a specific carrier, network or device – an industry first.

Nearly 500 developers from over 30 countries participated in the Killer App Challenge. Selected from nearly 150 applications, the winners of the Ribbit Killer App Challenge are:

Lucid Viewer (Grand Prize winner) – Media, Advertising & Entertainment Category: Lucid Viewer (photo above) is an authoring tool designed to empower artists and entrepreneurs with the ability to explore and create immersive experiences, and creating a new level of engagement between consumers and businesses. Lucid Viewer is royalty free and requires only a one-time license fee. For more information, please visit http://killerappchallenge.ribbit.com/news/?page_id=576/

Save a Life – Social Networking & Communication Category: Save a Life creates contact-on-demand access to an entire social networking community. With Save a Life, a community member with an urgent need to reach the entire membership or a segment of the community by phone can eliminate the need to look up phone numbers. Mashing up Ribbit, Yahoo Maps, and Google Calendar, Save a Life can be used for such applications as an emergency donation campaign or an emergency dispatch service. For information on Save a Life, please visit http://killerappchallenge.ribbit.com/news/?page_id=712

Sugared Frog – Business & Productivity Category: Sugared Frog integrates Ribbit with SugarCRM to integrate voice into the SugarCRM workflow. With Sugared Frog, salespeople can dictate notes and memos using their mobile phones and have them automatically flow into SugarCRM and their email inboxes. They can store and organize voicemail as email in SugarCRM, with messages mapped to leads, contacts, and in-progress deals. And all voice messages are delivered as SMS or email so salespeople can respond or forward immediately without dialing into voicemail. To view the demo, please go to http://killerappchallenge.ribbit.com/news/?page_id=899 and use the Sugar login ‘jim’ with the password ‘jim’.

SimplePhone – Carrier, Network, or ISP Integration Category: SimplePhone is a desktop-based Adobe Air phone application that allows callers to place voice calls using a computer microphone. It integrates with the Broadsoft Xtended platform and in partnership with SimpleSignal to configure various services. You may get a closer look at SimplePhone by visiting http://killerappchallenge.ribbit.com/news/?page_id=868

Control Your Home, Anywhere, Anytime (‘CYHAA’) – Breakthrough Category: Currently still a prototype, Control Your Home, Anywhere, Anytime, will allow users to “phone home” to access and control thermostats, appliances, security systems and more through voice commands. It will create a foundation for other voice-controlled applications for both consumers and enterprises. For more information on CYHAA, please visit http://killerappchallenge.ribbit.com/news/?page_id=571

Ribbit developers retain full ownership of their applications, including those participating in the Killer App Challenge. Although non-winning, many of the submitted applications demonstrated key business and consumer values, and are expected to come market in the near future with support from Ribbit.

The Ribbit communications platform – a carrier-grade telephony-plus-software infrastructure with a global community of 12,000-plus application developers – is enabling people and businesses to completely rethink the way they communicate. By treating voice as a data object, Ribbit lets developers add feature-rich voice capabilities to any application, on any device – capabilities such as updating records by phone, integrating voice and messages into a single workflow, and initiating many automated processes via voice command. For more information on becoming a Ribbit developer, visit the Ribbit Developer Community at developer.ribbit.com.

Quotes:

• Jason Villmer, creator of Killer App Challenge grand prize-winning application, Lucid Viewer: “Working with the Ribbit platform, and integrating voice into Lucid Viewer was really a very straightforward process, and it was accomplished in a very short timeframe when you consider what it’s capable of. With Ribbit, I finally have a bridge between the virtual and real worlds. The marrying of the Ribbit and Lucid Platforms will change the way people think, create and communicate.”
• Romin K. Irani, creator of Save a Life: “Life-saving blood donations and supplies are a complicated issue. Winning the Ribbit Killer App Challenge will allow me to further develop Save a Life — pairing the “need” location with the communication and life-saving supply-side efforts of numerous dislocated agencies — initially in India, where we know the key organizations, and then globally. The Ribbit platform not only helps streamline the supply and dynamic notification processes, but empowers individuals to more easily get involved in making these life-saving interactions.”
• Chuck Freedman, Director of Developer Platform at Ribbit: “With a developer community over 12,000 strong, so many of the amazing applications built using Ribbit’s rich communications service remain un-exposed to the public. The Killer App Challenge hasn’t just exposed what’s actually built on the platform, but showcases the incredible talent of many developers in our community. Our goal has always been to put out an innovative platform which allows developers to enhance their applications with Ribbit in the most logical and efficient way,” said Freedman. “Hearing that the winning developers were up and running, and in some cases, fully integrated with Ribbit in under 20 minutes, really validates what we set out to do. We’ll take great pride seeing these applications deployed by the winning developers as revenue generating and community improving applications.”
• Raymond Lee, Director of Strategy and Business Development for Ribbit: “Ribbit is drawing elite developers from around the world who understand they can now quickly enhance applications and optimize business processes with rich, integrated communication features. By directly integrating voice and communication, developers are now able to bring new levels of innovation, efficiency and value to their customers. We couldn’t be more pleased by the range of creative applications our developer community has presented.”

Please visit the Killer App Challenge page where you will find screenshots and other bits of interesting data on both the developer and the winning application.

Congrats to all our winners and thank you to everyone who participated in the challenge. We saw some really creative and innovative applications, and know this is only the beginning based on what we have coming down the pipeline next.  <end shameless teaser>

Tags: API, contest, contest winners, development, Killer App Challenge, open API, Ribbit, Ribbit API

Ribbit Rocks at SXSW Interactive Festival

Friday, March 20th, 2009 | located in Awards, Conferences/Events, Platform, Ribbit CRM | No Comments »

I am very proud to announce Ribbit took top honors in the Innovative Web Technologies category in Microsoft’s BizSpark Accelerator at SXSW, beating out over 200 company entries. The Accelerator event highlighted the web’s most exciting new innovations through demonstrations in front of a live audience of industry professionals and technology trendsetters.

Ray Lee, Director of Strategy and Business Development for Ribbit, discussed the innovation of Ribbit’s Communication Platform which opens the previously walled off telephony industry to developers worldwide — enabling new forms of innovation, communications, and services.  The judges were pleased and at the end of the day, gave us a nice little glass trophy to take home to our boss.

Ray, beaming with pride, shared this little nugget:

“Winning the Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator is a great validation of Ribbit’s platform strategy. The judges really responded to the fact that innovative, high-value applications are being built using Ribbit’s voice and data integration capabilities. And, by highlighting the success of our Ribbit for Salesforce application, we were able to demonstrate a proven business model for enabling our 12,000+ developer community, and carrier partners to innovate and deploy on the Ribbit platform.”

The Ribbit Communications Platform also got rave reviews during the panel discussion “What Does Awesome Sound Like?,” on the impact of voice integration on user interaction, led by Chuck Freedman and Brendan Lee of Ribbit. A highlight of the panel was a demonstration by Ryan Stewart, Adobe Platform Evangelist, showing the first augmented reality telephone call – showcasing the flexibility and power of Ribbit functionality. We shot some video from this session and will be posting online in the next couple of days.

Douglas MacMillan from BusinessWeek had this to say when he wrote up a little piece on Ribbit:

“The tool can be used to dial up a land line or mobile phone, much like VOIP services like Skype. But unlike Skype, it can be molded to perform neat little tricks like transcribing phone calls and instantly analyzing what’s being said. One of Ribbit’s most popular third-party developers is Salesforce.com, which now lets workers dial up clients straight from the web-based CRM software.”

Doug also captured Ray and Chuck in this little video interview:

Ribbit from Doug MacMillan on Vimeo.

We shot some photos while there, and I was able to do a few video interviews as well that will be posted over the next couple of days (thinking I need to hone my video editing skills as it takes me way too long to do this).

Chuck also shared some some tid bits on his panel, some folks he met and talked about our ‘Your Call’ initiative over on the Developer blog, which round out our week there nicely.  It was a good time for the Ribbit team and I am expecting a few more of those in the near future.

Tags: innovative web techology award, Ribbit, sxsw, sxswi, sxswspark

Ribbit and Best Buy Debut First Social Mobile App at SxSW

Friday, March 13th, 2009 | located in Partners, Platform | 1 Comment »

I am a fan of beating our own drum now and then, and the release of the Consumers Price application seems like the perfect opportunity to do so.

A Ribbit developer created the application that represents an exciting new category of retail solutions: social mobile commerce. Built using the Ribbit Communications Platform and the Best Buy Remix API, Consumers Price enables consumers to tap into social conversations to get the best prices on the best products at Best Buy, and is the first voice-enabled big-box retailer social shopping experience.

The application integrates key Ribbit communication capabilities with Best Buy’s comprehensive online product pricing and availability data, as well as social tools including Google Maps, Twitter and Flickr. Consumers can save money by setting a target price for a product and receiving SMS or email updates when a product is available and in stock at a local store. Shoppers can use the integrated social conversation capabilities to create and obtain friend recommendations via SMS, email and Twitter, and create and listen to voice reviews of the products. For products such as cameras, users can even view Flickr photos shot by a specific camera model.

Whether they are shopping for a gaming console or a new camera, consumers can access voice reviews and friend recommendations, check store availability, set the price they are willing to pay, receive SMS updates when the product is locally available at the target price, and complete their purchase.

We will be demonstrating the Consumers Price application in the Circus Mashimus Mashery Lounge at this year’s SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas, March 14-17 (meeting room 2 on the first floor of the Austin Convention Center). Come on by and check it out live.

Quotes:

• Chuck Freedman, Ribbit’s director of developer platform - “Consumers Price demonstrates the ability of Ribbit to let developers generate revenue by quickly building a robust application and creating a viable business using just a few easily accessible APIs.  Consumers Price was built by combining Ribbit with APIs from Best Buy, Google Maps, Twitter and Flickr, but the possibilities for developers are endless.”
• Dan Seyer, vice president of product management for Ribbit - “Just as Priceline changed the travel industry, social mobile commerce is set to change the way consumers and retailers communicate, interact, and even negotiate. Consumers Price is just one example of the power of Ribbit to transform the retail experience, providing consumers with more options for finding the product they want at the best possible price, offering communities the opportunity to influence product inventories and pricing, and giving retailers such as Best Buy an important new way to engage consumers and move product in a down economy.”

And thank you to Kristin Niciole for the nice writeup on the announcement as well.

Exciting times ahead for sure as this is just the beginning of the cool things we’ve got up our sleeve.

Tags: API, best buy, Ribbit, social mobile commerce

Ribbit honored in eWeek’s “Top Web Products, Services of 2008″

Friday, December 12th, 2008 | located in Articles and Media Mentions, Awards, Platform, Ribbit Mobile | No Comments »

This has been a phenomenal year for the Ribbit community and today’s inclusion in eWeek’s “Top Web Products, Services of 2008″ just made our day.

eWeek’s annual list honors new Web products or services released in 2008 that have truly made an impact in the IT industry. The list includes some well known heavyweights like Google and Yahoo, but also startups like blist, Poweset and Ribbit whose innovations have proven to be crucial to the consumers and workers who depend on them. We couldn’t have asked for a better Christmas present:

Some of the other innovators in this category are:

• blist, an easy to create sharable web list
• Google App Engine
• Powerset, acquired by Microsoft earlier this year
• Yahoo! Developer Network
• Google Health
• Google Chrome
• Google Android
• Yahoo! YOS 1.0
• Voice and video chat for Google Gmail

A big Thank You to our developer community for helping us build a truly innovative platform. Here is to a great 2009.

Tags: Android, Awards, blist, eweek, Google, Google Chrome, Powerset, Ribbit, Services of 2008, Top Web Products, Yahoo!