Silicon Valley Startup Ribbit Wants to Take On the Telcos
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Ribbit, a startup telecommunications company, is trying to take on the big telcos by offering something they can't: a telephone network that's easy for developers to use in creating a variety of devices and applications.
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Texas Instruments Inc. has begun  developing a chip that could bring television shows to mobile  phone screens in three years.
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A Silicon Valley start-up that  lets software programmers embed phone-like voice features in  everything from Web sites to computers, to phones themselves,  unveiled its first product for consumers on Monday.
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Niklas Zennstroem, the co-founder of Skype, explains  how the net will shape the emergence of new technologies.
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Australian telecoms giant Telstra hopes to woo customers with a super-fast mobile phone and broadband network.
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A startup has come up with a new way to make money from phone calls connected via the Internet: having software listen to the calls, then displaying ads on the callers' computer screens based on what's being talked about.
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Serial entrepreneur plans discount mobilephoneco
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A leading Silicon Valley venture capitalist sees gold in alternative energy.
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Company wants to create an OpenSolaris-based OS familiar to Linux and Solaris users in a long-term attempt to propagate the software.
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Chip maker will being testing the emerging, high-speed wireless technology.
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A startup called Ribbit is launching a platform designed to let developers create telephony applications they can embed in Web pages and Web-based services.
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Avi Shechter, co-founder and CEO of Fringland Ltd. (Fring), could be on to something big with the launch of a cheap Internet-based phone service that runs over mobile networks. But the Israeli entrepreneur could also be in for the fight of his life with mobile phone network operators determined to protect their cash-cow voice business from virtual service providers.
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Long chained to dial-up subscriptions, the company could open its doors wide to compete
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A Mountain View, California, company is launching a platform designed to let developers create telephony applications they can embed in Web pages and existing Web-based services.Ribbit&#39;s back-end technology includes a software switch that essentially connects Internet-based voice communication services with mobile phones, landline phones and text messages. On top of that connection is the Ribbit API (application programming interface) that lets developers build applications that unify the wide variety of communication methods.Developers can build applications that include functions such as recording, sending and receiving voicemail, and making and receiving calls. The applications can be built using Flash, embedded into any Web site, and integrated into existing Web-based services. The platform supports many existing Web-based calling services, such as Skype, GoogleTalk and MSN.Developers can charge end-users for the applications, and Ribbit can handle the billing for them. There are several ways developers can offer and charge for their products, and in some cases Ribbit will share revenue with developers.Ribbit showed off one application a developer has created that embeds phone capabilities into Salesforce.com. By keying a code into a mobile phone, users essentially replace their current voicemail with Ribbit for Salesforce. Then users can listen to or see text transcripts of their mobile voicemail messages within Salesforce. They can send the messages to colleagues and tag them for easy sorting later.Users can also make and receive phone calls through their Salesforce page. Such calls are automatically logged in their Salesforce application.Ribbit for Salesforce will cost $25 per user per month for end-users. It is currently in a private beta with more than 90 companies, and should be widely available in February, Ribbit said.Salute America&#39;s Heroes, a veterans&#39; association, has built essentially a call center application that lets veterans who work for the group make and receive phone calls while at home through a browser. The capability is integrated into a Web site that also hosts tools they use while making the calls. The capability allows the association to take on the cost of the calls rather than reimbursing workers for the use of their home phones.Ribbit designed its own softswitch, which runs on Linux blades and has been certified in an Alcatel-Lucent lab to meet the capabilities and reliability that telecommunications providers typically require, said Ted Griggs, CEO and co-founder of Ribbit. Ribbit&#39;s network operations center is hosted by a third party in Virginia, and the company is working on opening one on the West Coast to offer geographic redundancies. It can add capacity simply by adding more servers.Another, more consumer-oriented application is available to try on the Ribbit developers page. The AIR iPhone is essentially a software-based voice over IP phone that looks just like Apple&#39;s iPhone. Users can make and receive calls to mobile and fixed-line phones, including from the contact list in the phone, on their computers.Ribbit hasn&#39;t quite yet configured its offering in terms of pricing for such consumer applications, but expects to in the first quarter of next year. In the case of the AIR iPhone, Ribbit would share revenue from end-users with the developer.Ribbit says that more than 650 developers are working on new applications, although on Friday only two were listed on the developers site. &quot;Dozens&quot; are near release, a few additional applications should be available on Monday, and many more should be available in the early months of next year, Ribbit said.Ribbit opened its offering to developers in August but plans to officially launch the company, along with details about how its technology and business model work, on Monday.&#160;
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European telecom equipment maker looks to push into corporate switching, a market long dominated by Cisco.
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Entrepreneurs, coders and more from some of Silicon Valley's brightest startups converge at BarCampBlock in Palo Alto, California.
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An Israeli startup has convinced wireless carriers in three countries to try a new concept: a tiny cell phone that pops into interchangeable "jackets" to become a bigger, smarter phone Â or into other gadgets to connect them to the Internet.