Erik’s wonderful post today jogged my memory about Ribbit and the edge of the network. In Erik’s post, he’s asked to describe the difference between his service, Lypp, and Ribbit, and gives his honest appraisal of the environment in which edge applications live:

The edge of the network is a nasty place. Bandwidth issues, carrier packet shaping, lack of end user control and costly redundancy solutions make it nearly impossible to deliver a predictable and reliable telephony service.

Indeed, Erik’s right on, as you expect, given his experience. He’s a true authority on the subject. Not to disagree, but there are other differences as well that should be mentioned:

• Ribbit’s API is an Adobe Flex API, which at first gave me pause, but upon reflection, I like. Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) are the future of desktop applications, and although there are still many choices for which technology will win (Flex, Ajax, etc), there’s no doubt it’s going to be one of them. Given that, there’s lots of programmers who will know and understand this programming approach - good to see they now have an option. Lypp’s API boasts a beautiful REST interface, which a Ruby-ist like me appreciates, but is truly cross platform and scalable on any language. If you want to program a Ribbit application, start learning Flex. I’m giving this one to Lypp.
• I firmly believe that applications of the future have the network, and in particular the Internet, as the platform. Ribbit’s API is a good step towards that, and enables many web developers to blend voice into their applications. I think Lypp’s API is a better step towards that, as it doesn’t limit your application to a single technology and vendor. Lypp gets this one too.
• I’m going to get slammed for this, but since there are more Web script guys in the world, an easier to learn technology is beneficial in and of itself. Not that the Ribbit developers are less intelligent, but to make Lypp sing, you probably need to be a programmer. (Actually, I think that the Lypp API is so beautiful that you shouldn’t be allowed to use it unless you have the training appreciate it. Sort of like owning a BMW.) Ribbit is more appropriate to the general population of web developers, so they get that one.
• Erik is right about not trusting the voice quality at the edge of the network, but it stretches reason to say that we need to abandon all soft clients. I got one word for you: Skype. There are many, many reasons to have soft clients, and even though I think the computer makes a lousy phone, there are enough reasons to want to scream at your computer to make sure this technology will be required. Simply, Ribbit needs to exist, I just hope they drop that damnable “First Phone Company” slogan.

My real opinion? Most of the Ribbit applications STILL are putting voice onto your desktop, instead of using voice to improve other applications. It’s nice to see a soft client that looks like an iPhone, but it would be beautiful to see a soft client that increases the closing rates of my sales people. APIs are nice and all, but you only need an API to solve a real world problem you can monetize.

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 11:39 am | Filed Under Lead Stories | 1 Comment

This year’s Spring VON features an un-conference during the innovator’s track. To prepare for it, we’re having a conference call to get an agenda skeleton together and get the conversation going. Alec Saunders, Brough Turner, Bill Kelly and Carl Ford and I will be there, along with you - I hope. If you’d like to attend, sign up. We’re also putting some thoughts together on our wiki. The un-conference is open to all delegates and speakers; exhibit only attendees can attend for a small fee.

You might be asking yourself what the difference between a conference and an un-conference is…

• At a conference, conversations are typically one way : the speaker speaks and the audience listens. At an un-conference, audience members are expected to participate and help lead discussions.
• At a conference, the agenda is set before the event, and typically negotiated between show producers, sponsors and industry experts. At an un-confernece, the agenda is set by the audience the day of the event.
• At a conference, the focus is on the sponsors and vendors. At an un-conference, the focus is on the individual attending the event.

We’re making personal invitations (which are being accepted) to all of the speakers and dignitaries of the VON show to attend our un-conference. If you’re interested in spending a few hours with dozens of people who make me think for weeks after the verbal conversation ends, come on in - the water’s fine.

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 12:10 pm | Filed Under Lead Stories | Leave a Comment

One of the fun parts of our role as a professional services firm in this Mashup/CEBP industry is the conversations we get to have with interesting people and firms. By definition, as the CEBP market matures, firms like ours will be part of every CEBP service providers’ ecosystem. So, collaboration is our middle name. It also means we honestly do enjoy calls from companies with new ideas and offerings. Read more

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 3:56 pm | Filed Under Lead Stories | Leave a Comment

A few days ago, Pat became the proud owner of his brother-in-law’s iPhone. As Pat was complaining about how tough it was to get his old number ported to his new bundle of joy, I was thinking about how I wanted a better mail solution for mine. In general, I love how easy to use it is; how gorgeous it truly looks. As an e-mail solution, it’s lacking - so I’ve been looking.

Anyways, last night, Pat was able to get the iPhone in his name, but not the number. No problem, I offered… let’s just forward the number from the old phone to the iPhone while it all gets sorted out. I grabbed the Nokia E62, stared at the screen -looking for anything that said settings- and I spoke this sentence for the first time in a long time…

“How the hell do you use this thing?”

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 1:46 pm | Filed Under Lead Stories | Leave a Comment

Hard to believe it’s only a few months away, but this year’s EComm 2008 Conference is looking to be a scorching affair. I had the pleasure of sitting down (over a Skype connection) with one of my favorite speakers from last year’s conference : Lee Dryburgh. Apparently, we seemed to go over our allotted time.

In this podcast, we talk about one of my favorite CEBP topics: Voice Is a Spice. Essentially, I propose that we have done the world a disservice by working so hard making voice applications like PBXs and Unified Communications so feature rich, when we should have been working hard at making it easier for other applications to use voice more easily. In other words, instead of thinking about voice as the star of the main ingredient, we should be thinking of it as something which makes the real main ingredient taste better. Still confused? Listen in.

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 5:24 pm | Filed Under Lead Stories | Leave a Comment

A natural disadvantage of voice is that it’s hard to store, search and retreive. This same quality can be turned on it’s head to keep data secure as it leaves the firewall. In this month’s issue of VON Magazine, in the “It’s All About the Apps” section, we’ve got an article describing how voice is an excellent way of conveying enterprise data across a firewall. In it, we talk about how some mobile enterprise applications can provide higher levels of data security when the data never leaves the walls, and instead is retrieved remotely and delivered with voice. Like I tell all my Karate students, the best sort of block is to not be there. The best way for corporate data to remain un-stolen is for it to stay behind the firewall where it’s safe. Read more….

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 11:34 am | Filed Under Lead Stories | Leave a Comment

Jon Arnold’s recent announcement that he is a new regular columnist for TMC brings smiles to the staff over here on Cape Cod. Jon is an excellent writer, analyst and friend of ours, and we’re very happy for his success. I got to work with Jon when we was an analyst for Frost and Sullivan and I was the CTO of Versatel, and we’ve been fast friends ever since. His first column “What is a Service Provider” kicks off his regular column, and we’re sure to be regular readers. It’s good to see that the larger industry will have wider access to Jon’s ideas and thoughtful analysis, and we hope he doesn’t blame us for skipping the TMC show this year as we are way too focused in on VON. Congratulations, Jon!

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 1:41 pm | Filed Under Lead Stories | Leave a Comment

With all due respect, of which I have a metric ton, I don’t share Russell’s tepid reaction to the latest update of the iPhone software.

Yesterday, Apple provided a new update to the handset software, adding in the ability to add icons to the home page that represent web sites, geo-location and the ability to send a text to message to multiple people at once. From my perspective, I think this update is groundbreaking and provides engineers like me an opportunity to develop rich mobile applications that can be developed for a major platform for next to nothing.

In particular, the new feature that allows users to add icons that link to Web sites on home page of the iPhone is the enabler for simple to develop, deploy and support applications on a mobile phone. With this simple feature, it is now possible for the average web developer to add an application to a mobile phone from a major carrier. Web developers, all umpteen million of them, can now develop these applications without special tools like hardware emulators, languages like Java or frameworks like Android. Since these are essentially web applications, they work well at Internet scale, and since they are centrally managed, friendly for deployments. Since they exist outside the carrier networks, they can connect to any publicly available web service, therefore providing an outstanding functionality set at little to no cost to the developer. And it doesn’t end there, as the application will have excellent coverage in the United States and high speed coverage inside WiFI hotspots, without requiring permission from the carrier, with complete phone calling functionality and freedom to pursue whatever business and payment model makes sense for them. This new feature allows any web developer to become a mobile phone developer in a way that makes technical, financial and, perhaps most importantly, technical-cultural sense.

This last point bears repeating: application development for the iPhone makes sense not only technically for web developers, but culturally. These guys know how to put a website together. They have no idea who Qualcomm is, never mind Brew. Android is interesting, but most of them don’t want to worry about the details of a handset. Web centered development is something they are comfortable with, and for good reason. Sure, equivalent approaches exist for other hansets, but because of form factor and packaging, they just aren’t used in this sort of way. There is no new tool that web developers need, and this will make them feel comfortable in ways that no other approach will provide.

Will these simple web applications be limited in their functionality relative to applications written for the handset? Yes. Does this matter? Yes, for the thousand or so applications that require this deep integration. For the other say, million or so applications left over, they’ll get along just fine without it. Aren’t these applications limited to areas where there’s a WiFI hotspot or Edge network? Yes, as is your basic mobile phone, but you haven’t thrown that away, have you?

The bottom line is simple: if you can make a website, and you can link that site to other functionality using web services (in other words, mashup), you can write applications for the iPhone. To me, it’s groundbreaking.

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 10:39 pm | Filed Under Lead Stories | Leave a Comment

We have exactly two months to go until Spring VON, and the Thomas Howe leprechauns are working hard to fill up pots of gold for the wee boys and girls. For this spring VON, Thomas McCarthy (Howe) and Patrick Murphy will be wearing the green and running the VON show’s first communication enabled business process (CEBP) workshop on St. Patrick’s Day, Monday, March 17th. After the workshop it’s off to the pub, where the first round of Guinness is on us.

As an industry, we’ve been working to make voice inexpensive, now it’s time to learn how to use voice to increase profits and lower costs. This vendor neutral workshop is targeted towards enterprise managers and technical staff interested in extending their business using real time communications such as VoIP and SMS.

From the brochure:

Save money, improve productivity, and make your clients happier with Communications Enabled Business Processes. This full day seminar provides the CIO department with a practical, vendor neutral tutorial on how to use real time IP technology to reduce costs, increase worker productivity, and make clients happier by improving the business process.

This business and technology oriented day of education starts with a summary on VoIP and its network elements, and then continues with how to extend and improve your business process using voice APIs and IP PBX strategies. As the sessions progress, we will show added value to the VoIP network, application layer options and integration, and will take some time on maintaining, debugging, and troubleshooting your converged network. At the end of the day, you’ll go through an overview of voice-based Mashup applications with business use cases to benefit any industry.

The Enterprise executive should expect to leave this training session with defined CEBP project concepts that will have quantifiable ROI and lasting benefit to their company.

If you haven’t signed up yet, now might be a good time to do it, or else Lucky the Lepruchaun might break into your kitchen, turn the chairs over and the milk green. But, if you do, maybe Seamus might stop by and drop a few gold coins in your pocket.

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 10:02 am | Filed Under Lead Stories | Leave a Comment

Voxbone, a leading provider of international VoIP origination services to carriers, ITSPs , calling card operators, call centers and other businesses around the world, today announced that The Thomas Howe Company has become the third member of Voxbone’s Certified Developer Program, which certifies firms that developmashups through Voxbone’s API (called VoxAPI).

 

VoxAPI is a free SOAP-based Web Service that allows developers to transparently resell Voxbone direct inbound dial numbers ( DIDs) in real time. Using VoxAPI, developers can integrate Voxbone’s coverage into their website or application, manage DIDs, etc.

 

The purpose of Voxbone’s Certified Developer Program is to certify key companies to answer the need from customers to implement Voxbone’s VoxAPI into their service or application. Certification is given on a case-by-case basis, following several API implementations and positive customer feedback regarding the developer. Thomas Howe joins existing developer program members VDE Projects and Communicatii Libere.

 

Interest in Voxbone’s API has been soaring. Third-party orders through Voxbone’s VoxAPI rocketed last year, increasing some 500% in December 2007 vs. the same period in 2006.

 

The Thomas Howe Company’s Mashup Project With Poverty-Action.org

Thomas Howe was invited to join Voxbone’s developer program following several successful mashup projects, including the latest one with Poverty-Action.org. Micro-lending institutions and rural banks located in many of the world’s developing countries are in need of inexpensive, reliable ways to communicate with their highly mobile, mostly rural based staff and customers. The ability to send and receive voice or text messages to provide instantaneous updates on interest rates, credit policy updates, or new customer programs needed to be done inexpensively and in a highly scaleable manner. Using Voxbone’s API, Thomas Howe was able to build an innovative communications application for international use.

 

According to Patrick Murphy, COO of The Thomas Howe Company, “For voice to become a service, it needs to be easily integrated into applications. Voxbone’s worldwide virtual numbers allowed us to quickly build a powerful communications mashup with global requirements for Povery-Action.org. We are excited about joining Voxbone’s program and look forward to working with other clients using VoxAPI.”

 

“Thomas Howe has gained a leadership position in designing and implementing mashups,” said Rodrigue Ullens, co-founder of Voxbone. “We are excited to have this organization join our development program. The development program enables us to remain focused on our core business, while providing numerous opportunities for top-notch developers like Thomas Howe to undertake these innovative mashup implementations.”

 

Voxbone leases international VoIP virtual phone numbers and worldwide origination services via VoIP to organizations in North and South America, Europe and Asia/Pacific regions. It delivers high-quality call origination and provides the global infrastructure that enables its customers to expand to international markets quickly and efficiently. Using DIDs (also called virtual numbers) from Voxbone, customers may receive inexpensive, locally dialed phone calls. Using standard VoIP hardware, customers utilize the Voxbone API or web portal for the configuration of the acquired DIDs and to choose to which IP appliance the calls are diverted.

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 10:09 am | Filed Under Lead Stories | Leave a Comment

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