Ribbit coming soon
I’ve been keeping an eye on Ribbit ever since reading about BT buying them and meeting the CEO at FOWA London last year. I’m getting excited about the use of the web with your mobile phone. Ribbit, Skydeck and Google Voice are all services which promise this, but Ribbit looks like the nicest UI by far at the moment. None of these are available in the Uk yet which is very dissapointing, so get your finger out guys!
As a teaser, here is Ribbit Mobile’s Called ID screenshot: just amazing that you can see someone’s latest flickr pics, blog posts etc when they ring. Love it! 
FOWA08
Open Talk at FOWA08, originally uploaded by JonnyMoss.
It’s been a hectic but excellent week, and still a day to go!
I’m attending the Future of Web Apps in London, at Excel, Docklands, and it has been an excellent first day. The week started coming down to London on good old Hull trains which was manageable and then headed into the city to meet with a good friend who has an amazing place just round the corner from Leicester Square. We managed to get to the Monmouth Street Coffee Shop and had a good catch up.
From there it was up to North London to stay with Anand, and we had some amazing Indian food, all home cooked by his wonderful wife. (I always look forward to the food!).
Tuesday morning compounded my view that London is great to visit but not to live in. A sweaty, crowded tube journey into Tottenham Court Road from North London, was more akin to a third world country. Awful. Anyone commuting on the tube every day, I truly pity you.
Tuesday day was an all day client meeting, and this was a bit of an eye opener. Old school DM, PR and agency strategy is alive and well, believe me. Had to bite my tongue on a number of occasions and was dismayed at some truly dreadful push, push, push tactics. It was then a private car down to Docklands to the Britannia International Hotel, which provides sedatives for when you enter your room and are greeted by a rainbow of bad colours and decor. Poor old Ian didn’t get down to London to late, so we did a midnight run the West End to his offices and had a late dinner in the excellent Wagamammas and then a hot choccy from Bar Italia.
After a somewhat awful sleep (Ian is a snoring world record holder), we headed to Excel to check out the exhibition build of FOWA. Having made the mistake of following a shocking night’s sleep with zero breakfast, we collapsed into All Bar One on Regent Street for a full English, juice and coffee. Ian scooted back to Docklands and I managed to have some most excellent relaxation at Libertys, where I found Murdocks. A traditional men’s barber, Murdocks, was just superb and I had a haircut and a wet shave. The last time I had a proper wet shave was over 14 years ago at the Harrods Barber shop.
From here, it was to the shrine for some worshiping and a small purchase. Then home, another run to the West End, dinner in South Kensington and a late return. Sum of all of this? Shattered!
Then today it was the first full day of FOWA, kicked off my the big Keynote from Digg’s Kevin Rose. This was hugely dissapointing to be honest. Short, and rather basic. Sorry Kevin, I was expecting so much more! The rest of the day’s speakers were ok, nothing brilliant, and I am now back at the hotel using the lobby WiFi. (I got the train from Excel to Canary Wharf and went to the Canada Squre shopping place for some dinner).
I did get to talk to Ted and Crick from Ribbit today which was great. I blogged about them a while ago and they then featured me on their blog. I am expecting great things of them!
Night all, time for some sleep! (and dreaming about a 10″ MacBook Air!).
Featured on the Ribbit Blog
Well I never! I’ve been featured on the Ribbit Blog. They did actually let me know I was going to get a mention, and to be fair, there communication has been excellent, and through twitter
Now I am really looking forward to using amphibian! Just to clarify, developers can get started now, but no live apps yet.
Amphibian
I’ve blogged about a couple of things before, when I’ve actually said wow and it has made me think, “man, I need that!”.
Well today is another one of those days, and funnily enough, it is not npower who is doing this to me 
It is ‘Silicon Valley’s First Phone Company”, Ribbit, which has just been bought by our very own BT. Techcrunch have a good post here on the acquisition which has cost BT a cool $105 Million, but I honestly think it is money well spent.
So what is Ribbit?
Our platform enables developers to bring together the richness of voice calling and Web 2.0 experiences. With Ribbit, voice can become a rich feature that can be added to any application, on any device. Free from a traditional handset or the latest mobile phone, voice can now be delivered and received on multiple devices in multiple locations, across any network. It can be integrated, monetized and personalized using the Ribbit platform.
The best way to understand how powerful Ribbit is, is to check out the first application which is called amphibian.
amphibian looks amazing! I’m pretty staggered with how useful and intelligent it is. You know that feeling when you think, whoa! How an earth do they do that? It feeds my fascination with all things web!
With amphibian you can finally:
Manage your mobile voicemail like email on your computer and on your mobile phone.
Turn your voicemail into text to make voice messages sharable, searchable, and most importantly actionable.
Take and make mobile calls from any browser or web page – such as iGoogle, Facebook, and many more.
Experience Caller ID 2.0 – dip into the social web and know not just who is calling but what the caller has been doing.
I urge you to check out the amphibian page here and watch the demo movie – it shows how your mobile phone becomes completely integrated with the amphibian web app. What really impressed me is the fact that when someone calls (get this), it show up their caller details but will also show their latest flickr photos, blog posts, movies etc. Now THAT is impressive.
I’ve registered my interest and am now really looking forward to getting going with this. One of the coolest webapps I ever seen – I hope it launches soon, and well done BT!
