Ifbyphone Blog

Voice Mashups are everywhere. I came across this very interesting post today. I have the same experience as the author. I can’t go a day without seeing a mention of Voice Mashups in a press release or a blog post. It’s easy to understand why this concept is gaining popularity. Everyone has a phone; everyone understands how to use a phone.

My grandmother will never read an email or fill in information on a web form. But she’ll be ecstatic when her prescription company calls her to remind her it’s time to refill. So the demographic for voice applications is much larger than web applications. And when you consider voice as an alternative to Email, the developer has much better control over the delivery of the message to the end user. In addition to Spam issues, there are issues in including images in emails that limit the developer’s ability to control the experience.

Voice applications don’t have those problems. Certainly it’s not a panacea, but it certainly has advantages over other delivery mechanisms.

The recent bump in activity around Voice Mashups is really based on companies like IfByPhone, VoodooVox and others making it easier for developers to voice enable their applications. It is a fairly recent development that voice enabling applications has become easily accessible. Developers don’t know how to use VXML to program a voice application anymore, and they don’t have to worry about a physical delivery mechanism. Using IfByPhone, VoodooVox or any of the other companies out there make it easy.

In our case, we are focused on bringing web and voice technology together to make it easier for the SMB market to have more conversations with their customers.

VoodooVox is allowing people to monetize their calls, and also offers an API. Since their services are ad supported, they can offer their service for free.

There are other companies focused on things like bringing voice applications to user centric websites.

And the wheels are really just starting to get rolling with voice applications too.

click here to talk to me

As much as I’d like to attend the eComm conference, I can’t be there in person because of a schedule conflict; if you can, try to make it to the conference, which promises to be very interesting. Ifbyhnone is one of the sponsors, by the way.

And Ifbyphone helped sponsor one of the more interesting demos, written by yours truly. To help you find the way… here’s something new. Call +1 312 252 1758 to get directions to the conference location. And you don’t have to enter an starting address — instead, you enter a phone number.

This demo is based on a very simple principle: if I know a phone number, there’s a good possibility I know the location of that phone number.

Here’s a simple example. I’m driving along in an unfamiliar city on my way from the airport to a meeting. I get a bit lost. I don’t really know what street I’m on, and often I might not even be certain what town I’m actually in. As a result, most conventional map services won’t help me — I need to enter an address for them to work. Besides, map services require keyboards and that’s not useful (or safe) when I am trying to drive.

A GPS system would work, but I’d still have to enter my destination, which isn’t fun while driving. The same for cell phones that locate (approximately) where you are based on proximity to cell phone towers. Even worse, that requires that I download the cell-phone-tower-finding software to my cell phone in advance. And what if I’m using a plain old telephone inside a gas station to get the directions?

The easiest way to find a location is to do something the telephone is designed to do: enter a telephone number. Telephone numbers are everywhere: on doors of businesses, on signs, in people’s homes, at the desks of hotel lobbies. If you’re driving along and you see a telephone number, you can use the “Phone 2 Directions” service to get directions.

The basic idea is quite simple. By performing reverse directory lookup, Phone 2 Directions finds the starting location and the destination; it gets the route from a driving-directions service; it reads the results back. It’s a great solution for this problem> I call this idea “Telephone Accessible Geotags,” using telephone numbers as a way to find and mark physical locations, and there are many more services that quickly come to mind.

You can just contact me if you’d like to use a hosted version of this software. I can set you up with a turnkey version.

If you want to roll your own version of if you’re interested in technical details, here they are. The demonstration is hosted at Ifbyphone, which provides the telephony, speech recognition, and text-to-speech services. The interface to Ifbyphone uses the familiar web services pattern, and Phone 2 Directions is one of the first “phone mashups” available. Ifbyphone gives away one million minutes (yes — that’s 1,000,000 minutes) of phone connection time to developers each month. If you want an account with them to try your own phone mashup, just sign up.

The source code for a demonstration version of this software is available in open-source.

In a recent NY Times article we learn that Microsoft, whose philosophy for the last 25 years has been to build “shrink-wrapped software,” is slowly moving towards the Web 2.0 side of the Net and introducing MashUps into its development plan. While it’s hardly a trend at the company, it does show a transition from Microsoft, who has often been reluctant to stray from its lucrative mold, towards the Web-based applications popular at Google and in the rest of Silicon Valley.  Add this to Microsoft’s bid (rejected this morning) of Yahoo! and we see a stark difference in the way this company is beginning to do business.

The technology is there. Combining different modes of communication across the Net has never been easier. And now we see the Emerald City Superstar slowly moving towards the future. Have you looked into how MashUps can improve your company’s infrastructure and bottom line?

You’ve seen this message in this space before, but it is definitely worth repeating. More phone calls means more leads. Here is an interesting discussion from SEORoundtable on whether or not you should put phone numbers on landing pages (a page intended to capture a lead).

Read the comments and the forum discussion for yourself. But the bottom line is that when you put a Click-to-call link on your site, you’ll generate more phone calls. With the rates being charged for Click-to-call service, a small business only has to generate a few calls a month for this to be a money-making endeavor.

What it comes down to is catering to your client base. Some people actually like talking on the phone. Do some people prefer Email? A call back? Sure. But putting a Click-to-call will stop some of those surfers from moving on to your competitors site.

Click here to call me.