Ribbit on Monday announced details of its Web-based telephony business, which includes a developer platform and plans for a voice service for consumers next year.
The company has built a telephony switch that can connect Web-based phone calls to a variety of phone networks, including voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, services like Skype.
Ribbit has already integrated it voice service with Salesforce.com.
(Credit: Ribbit)As previously reported, developers can access those voice services through Flex-based application programming interfaces (APIs) and with Adobe Systems' Flash browser plug-in.
Through the APIs, developers can add the ability to send and receive calls from a Web application and transcribe a voice message into text.
By having APIs available to others, the company hopes to create a rich set of features on top of its voice platform, according to company CEO Ted Griggs.
It also intends to make its own applications, including a consumer voice service, which it plans to introduce in the first quarter of 2008.
Ribbit has already integrated its service with Salesforce.com. It lets people keep a log of calls made to sales contacts, as well as view voice mail and e-mail messages.
The company intends to make money by charging directly for its voice service or sharing revenue with partners that use its platform to embed voice services, executives said.
In a demo, company executives showed how its voice component can be operate within a Web page. The phone pad appears as a small window that can be moved.
The company chose to build its platform using Adobe front-end Web technology, even though Adobe, too, is building peer-to-peer voice capabilities into Flash with a product code-named Pacifica.
Ribbit's Griggs said Ribbit has built on top of lower-level services with more traditional telephony services, including billing.
A company called Ribbit came out of stealth mode this week, showing off a "phone component" that will let developers embed Internet calling into Web applications.
"The Ribbit Phone Component will give rich Internet application developers the ability to make and receive calls, record/send and receive voice mail, as well as add and manage contacts," according to a description on the company blog.
A schedule posted on Ribbit's site indicates that a beta version of the product will be released in October.
The Ribbit Phone Component appears to be competing with the developer tools available for the popular voice over IP service Skype. On the consumer end of things is YackPack, which allows end users to drop embed code into Web sites for voice calls.
In the company blog, Ribbit said that its component will allow users to click on a phone number in a Web page to make a call.
There are other communications features as well, including the ability to integrate voice mail and contacts.
Last year, there were reports that Adobe was building voice-over-IP capability into its Flash Player.
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