Web 2 Voice

I am living proof that writing mashups isn’t as hard as you might think.  I am not a developer.  I do not specialize in voice mashups.  And yet, I can write a mashup that can combine three separate APIs and do something somewhat useful.

As you may recall, I recently posted about a mashup a colleage had written using IfByPhone’s hosted IVR service with Yelp! Yelp is a business review site.  It has a vast number of reviews for bars, restaurants, stores, etc.  It also happens to have an easy to use API.  The original mashup asks for the phone number for a business and reads back information on the reviews.

I decided to add on to the new level, adding in a geo-location aspect to it.  The new mashup takes a 5 digit zip code as input.  It then uses the Yahoo Maps API to turn that into a latitude and longitude.  We then feed that to Yelp, and we get 3 random bars nearby to that area.   You’ll hear the names of the bars, where they are located, and have an option to transfer to them immediately.

You can check it out by calling 866.596.8333.   The menu will ask if you want to get reviews for a business (press 1) or to get bars by entering a zip code.

Again, the main point here is that writing mashups for actual developers (as opposed to those of us who merely play developers on the web) isnt’ hard.   The mashup is written in PHP using IfByPhone’s hosted IVR service to interact withe the voice.

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The company I work for, IfByPhone is trying to get nominated for a Tech Cruch Cruncie award.  If you’re familiar with us, I would seriously appreciate you giving us a nomination.  We’ve started to get a lot of press based on the fact that we have a very open platform for telephony as well as great off the shelf applications (conference calling, store locator, virtual call center).  If you have a moment, please click the link and give us a nomination.  Thanks!

Over on the IfByPhone blog, I posted a note on a mashup one of our guys did with Yelp.  With about 30 minutes of effort, and 20 lines of code, we opened up the entirety of the Yelp review database to anyone with a phone.

What the mashup does is ask you for the phone number of the business you’re looking for information on, and you get the total number of reviews for that business and the average review.  We’re working on phase 2 as we speak.

This is a little mashup that took almost no time, and yet has a good amount of utility (and we have ideas on on more features that will add more value to this service).  I published the mashup mainly to prove a point.  This simple and inexpensive mashup really provides great value to Yelp.  We’re opening up their database so that now it can be used be people with no access to a computer.

The value of a service like Yelp is not so much in the data.  It’s in the use of the data.  It’s great that they have a huge number of reviews on their site.  But it’s not until someone actually sees that data that it becomes useful.  By adding voice access to your database\applicaiton\network you can dramatically increase the usage of that data, and by definition the value of the service you are providing.

I encourage you to check out my post on IfByPhone’s blog.  But if you want to try out the mashup, just call 866.596.8333 and type in the number of the business you want reviewed (use 312.266.1616 for the place with the best ribs in Chicago).

I’m going to be sitting in a booth at Web 2.0 Expo, NY Wednesday and Thursday for IfByPhone.  If you are going to be around, stop by.  IfByPhone is announcing yet another application to go along with our ever expanding suite, so look for a press release soon.

I probably won’t be attending many of the talks, but the one I am hoping to see is Fred Wilson’s Keynote.  Today, Fred announced in his blog that his VC firm has invested in Zemanta.  You can check out related links provided by Zemanta below.  I think it’s a nice fit with their portfolio, and I like the service they provide.  Zemanta scans a post as you type, and suggests related articles and pictures to include in your post.  Pretty cool.

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My favorite VC blogger, Fred Wilson has a post today “The Lazy and Smarter Web.”

He talks about how great social media is because you can ask almost any question, and get great answers.  I commented that it’s great for Fred, because he has thousands of followers in his social net.  For regular people, not so much.  And thanks to Disqus, you can see the back and forth it generated here.

Anyway, his reply is that sooner or later, people will start following places (and presumably things and concepts).  So the limitaiton in followers (at least for Twitter) will go away.  This particular solution is limited to Twitter (I’d love to see something like dynamic rooms in FriendFeed).  But it’s a step in the right direction.

That’s yet another reason why Twitter is a big part of the future.  It’s really the best way to track the Internet Zeitgeist.  It’s a fast moving, reactionary, real time conversation.  We’re not quite there yet, but it’s getting closer.

Another reason Twitter is great is that someone now added voice to it.  Go check out Phweet.  It’s very cool – developed by Stuart Henshall and David Beckemeyer .

Saw the news first on Luca’s blog (OFFICIAL: BT acquires Ribbit for 105 Million).  The press release can be found here. I discussed this previously here, mainly agreeing with Thomas Howe’s take.  But in reading the press release, it sounds as if BT paid $105 million for easier access to developers.

Some snippets:

JP Rangaswami, managing director of service design at BT, said: ‘Silicon Valley is emerging as a hotbed of telecommunications innovation. With Ribbit, not only do we extend our presence in the Valley, but we also gain a groundbreaking platform, a growing community of developers and a world-class team that share a common vision. Buying Ribbit lets us accelerate that vision.’

Since its launch, Ribbit has attracted thousands of developers, launched an innovative solution for the enterprise software market, and has begun testing a consumer application scheduled for general release later this year. The acquisition of the Ribbit platform will complement BT’s existing capability in the software platform space with its award-winning Software Development Kit (SDK) initiative. BT’s SDKs enable developers to integrate new applications with BT’s services using a single line of code.

I’m in the Voice 2.0 industry.  This is great news for me, my employer, and the industry as a whole.  BT would seem to ‘get it’ so to speak.  When I translate this deal, I think that BT understand the value of CEBP (Communications Enabled Business Processing), and apparently Ribbit’s relationship with developers (presumably mainly Flex developers).

So at this point, it’s not important whether they’re going to build a ‘Grand Central’ competitor or Skype competitor.  It seems like BT just wants to stay a step ahead of the game.  Just think if there was a company that had actual off the shelf applications, an API that didn’t force you to use any particular language and a low price point.  I wonder what that would be worth?  Just asking.

EDIT: You should go check out Thomas’ take here.

IfByPhone (my employer if you’re new here) released it’s Voice Broadcast application into the iTunes store.  It’s pretty simple actually.

You choose some contacts, record a message (IfByPhone will call either your iPhone or any other phone you’d like).  Then the message gets sent out when you want it delivered.
I spend a lot of time driving in the car – without the ability to safely send emails or SMS messages.  And I tend to forget to do things.  Like pick up the milk.  I’ve tried using Jott with Sandy.  The idea being that I could call Jott, have them interface with Sandy (a reminder service).  But it doesn’t really work.  Generally, the transcription of my voice isn’t relaiable enough to pick up both the task and the time.   But that’s a convoluted solution for a reminder call.  So I plan on using this app for that just as soon as I get an iPhone.

You can read my post at IfByPhone on the application here.

Today was a slightly confusing. Phone Boy wrote a post on GigaOM about Voice APIs, asking “is there money in Voice APIs?” His premise:

But is simply providing an API to your telephony infrastructure enough to prompt the world to beat a path to your door? Don’t count on it.

Before I get to his post, a personal nit to pick. Every Voice 2.0 post outside of this blog (and possibly Thomas Howe’s) mention VOIP. VOIP <> Voice 2.0. So it doesn’t need to be brought up as if Voice 2.0 and everything associated with it (namely Voice APIs and CEBPs) is the same thing as or inevitably intertwined with VOIP.

Moving on…I think I get what Phone Boy is saying here. Just having an API is not enough, there have to be applications that will drive volume. And simply providing an API isn’t a business model for growth. Fair enough. But I think it’s not fair to pick on APIs.

When you get right down to it, call centers run on APIs. Outbound notification programs run on APIs. What the revolution that is going on right now is based on is that the APIs are now exposed. Yesterday, if you wanted an intelligent call program, you had two choices. You could do it yourself, which would carry with it a very high cost of entry as well as a high cost of maintenance.

Your other choice is to go to a company that does this type of thing, and have them build it for you. There are several downsides to this as well. For example, if you want to change the program, you have to have your partner do it for you.

Today, companies can have complete control over the behavior of their programs. At least with IfByPhone, developers can add intelligent phone calls into their applications and business processes using whatever programming language that they already know. And that is why this is just taking off.

In summary, I don’t think I can say it better than Thomas Howe:

Here’s the thing (and you imply it in your comment): the question isn’t about the existence of money in Voice APIs. All the money is in APIs. The real question is who gets it and why, and how your company can get its share of it.

Also, I highly recommend you check out Thomas’ post on the subject.

Today, the news hit that Voice 2.0 platform player Ribbit is being bought out for $55 million by British Telecom.  Great work by the Ribbit team. Full disclosure: My employer is IfByPhone, which – roughly speaking – plays in the same space as Ribbit.

It’s not particularly clear why BT is making this move, particularly for such a premium.  TechCruch thinks it’s about building a competitor to GrandCentral.  GrandCentral was bought by Google, and has been languishing on the sidelines since. Thomas Howe things that is hogwash, and I agree with him.  An excerpt:

It doesn’t pass Occam’s razor: there’s a simpler reason why BT would buy Ribbit. If BT recognizes that their Enterprise customers will deploy communications enabled business process applications, and Ribbit has some 3,000 developers already, and it looks like Adobe Flash has more traction than (ick) SOAP… you get the picture.

I definitely agree that BT buying Ribbit to build a GrandCentral competitor makes little sense.  The consumer end of things, which really is where GrandCentral is right now, is going to be higher cost of entry, higher risk (because the market of paying customers simply doesn’t exist yet).  The real reason, and Thomas hits it on the head here, is that businesses are coming on board with the idea that they can add voice to their existing business processes.  And one of the limitations of Ribbit (the idea that you have to use Adobe Flex) goes away.  BT can just build a team of developers that will build these processes for their customers.

This is similar to what many bigger Telco companies (like a former employer of mine, West Corporation) is doing.  So it shouldn’t shock anyone that  a Telco is interested in a company that will make it easier for them to integrate further with their existing companies.  They’ve been losing out on a great deal of business in this area, and buying Ribbit is a pretty neat and clean solution to get in the game quickly.

Also Read: VoipSupply on the Ribbit deal.