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eComm organizer Lee S. Dryburgh has named Fonolo "Best New Product" and posted CEO Shai Berger's eComm presentation online. As Lee says, "What Shai and his company debuted last month at eComm is 
what everyone has been wishing for over the past decade," namely a way around frustrating corporate phone menus.
Here's Shai's eComm presentation. Slides follow.
Slides for Shai's presentation:
“Phone-Me-Now” Uses Mashup API to Demonstrate Power of Ifbyphone Technology
CHICAGO, April 29, 2008—Ifbyphone, the telephone application platform company, today announced a new Facebook application called Phone-Me-Now that enables users to place free calls from their friends’ Facebook profile pages, without revealing either party’s caller ID.
Facebook users can register for a free Phone-Me-Now account within their Facebook profile. Their Facebook friends can then contact them by setting up a two-person conference call—with the click of a button.
To place a call, a friend visits the Facebook profile of the Phone-Me-Now user with whom he or she wishes to speak, provides the number of the phone they want to use during the call and hits “click to call.” Then Ifbyphone rings both telephones, blocks the caller IDs and conferences the two callers together.
The application enables Facebook members to have personal conversations with other members while still keeping their phone numbers private. Users are also able to review the Facebook names of the last 10 callers and block specific callers.
“Even In this age of online social networking, there are times when only a real-time personal phone call can convey the right message between two people,” said Irv Shapiro, Ifbyphone CEO. “Phone-Me-Now makes it easy to connect privately with a friend by phone, without automatically divulging personal contact details the way caller ID does, and without leaving Facebook to make the call.”
The Phone-Me-Now application widget is a phone mashup that takes advantage of powerful Ifbyphone technology to enable all types of phones—whether mobile, VoIP or even old rotary handsets—to connect via the Web. Ifbyphone mashups enable inbound, outbound and click-to-call telephone applications with integrated interactive voice response dialogs.
Phone-Me-Now is an extension of Ifbyphone’s "voice of the Web" services that give small and medium-sized businesses enterprise-level presence on the Web for a fraction of the cost, through click-to-call, toll-free number, voice mail and other communications tools.
The first 1,000 Facebook users who sign up will receive free Phone-Me-Now accounts and 100 minutes per month of calling time to U.S. phone numbers. These free accounts expire in six months. Standard Ifbyphone subscriptions start at $14.95 per month.
The widget is available under Applications at Facebook.com by searching under “Phone-Me-Now” or through the following link: http://apps.facebook.com/phonemenow/.
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About Ifbyphone
Ifbyphone is a telephone application platform (TAP) that provides small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) an easy means to develop innovative ways to talk directly with their customers—without the high cost and complexity typically associated with building voice-enabled solutions. Leveraging Ifbyphone's major advances in usability, Web developers, interactive marketers and customer service professionals can now quickly create everything from simple click-and-call buttons embedded into Web pages and e-mail to sophisticated call-routing and interactive-marketing solutions—transforming the SMB telephone into a powerful tool to increase lead generation, improve sales conversion and enhance customer experience. Based in Skokie, Ill., Ifbyphone offers hosted VAP services that are available directly at www.ifbyphone.com or through a network of value-added resellers for an affordable monthly fee, with no upfront costs. For more information click www.phone-me-now.com/8772955100 to speak to a sales professional or visit the company website at www.ifbyphone.com.
Contact:
Sue Huss, for Ifbyphone
sue.huss@comunicano.com
+1 619-379-4396
Firm Names Mark MacLeod as CFO, Rod Weir as VP of Sales, Business Development
MONTRÉAL, April 29, 2008—Tungle, an upstart Montréal-based Web 2.0 software company and DEMOgod award winner, today announced the appointments of Mark MacLeod as the company’s first chief financial officer and Rod Weir as vice president of sales and business development.
MacLeod, 37, is a veteran technology entrepreneur who has led corporate finance and operations in high-growth startup companies for more than nine years. Weir, 43, is a seasoned and successful sales leader with more than 20 years’ experience in high-tech and telecommunications. He joined Tungle after having worked with CEO and founder Marc Gingras at a previous successful start-up, Nimcat Networks, as its global sales director.
“Mark adds a wealth of corporate finance, operation and strategy experience to our management team. In Rod, we have a dynamic and resourceful sales leader with experience in business development, channel relations and go-to-market programs who knows how to ramp up top-line growth. We’re honored to have them join Tungle at a time when we’re poised for explosive growth,” said Gingras.
Tungle, now in its open beta phase, is a free service that eliminates the time drain and frustration of e-mailing back and forth and phone tag to schedule meetings among many busy people. The service dynamically allows users to see and share schedule availability without exposing the specific details of their existing appointments.
Before joining Tungle, MacLeod was CFO at VoIP player Mobivox. He was previously vice president–finance for networked storage vendor Terrascale Technologies Inc., acquired by Rackable Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: RACK). He was also CFO at IP-networking vendor Hexago Inc., and he led finance and corporate development for electronic-signature-software vendor Silanis Technology Inc AIM: SNS).
MacLeod is a Chartered Accountant and holds an MBA from McGill University.
Prior to Tungle, Weir was responsible for international OEM sales and business development efforts for Nimcat’s Peer To Peer software telephony offer, securing a multi-million dollar OEM software deal that helped close and elevate the acquisition by Avaya Inc. He remained at Avaya as global sales director–peer to peer, until joining Tungle.
Weir’s previous management and sales roles at Cisco Canada and other ventures allow him to apply proven successful and compelling approaches to user adoption, channel development and partner alliances toward Tungle’s success.
Weir holds MBA and undergraduate degrees from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario and also his Chartered Financial Analyst designation.
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About Tungle
Founded in 2006, Tungle makes meeting coordination fast and easy. Tungle is the first meeting coordinator to work across organizations, independent of the calendar or groupware system(s) used. Its speed, privacy and native communication with groupware clients makes it an ideal, free alternative for small offices that don’t have the desire or resources to invest in an Exchange or Domino server. Headquartered in Montreal, Tungle is funded by leading Canadian investors. For more information, visit www.tungle.com.
Ben Lilienthal, CEO of Vapps, talks about the future of High-Definition Conferencing with Jim Courtney, editor of Skype Journal. The audio quality of the conferencing service is captured in the recording of the phone interview: http://skypejournal.com/blog/images/VAPPS.SkypeJournal.BenL.2008-04-22.mp3
On the heels of this week's successful launch of SightSpeed Light on MySpace (see presss release), SightSpeed's VP-Marketing Eric Quanstrom gives Alec Saunders the inside story on Squawk Box: http://saunderslog.com/2008/04/24/squawk-box-april-24-guest-eric-quanstrom/.
Telephone Numbers Now Instantly Available to Give Singaporean, Greek Markets Local Access to Carriers and Businesses
BRUSSELS, Belgium, April 23, 2008 -- Voxbone, a leading provider of local telephone numbers and VoIP transport to communications service providers and businesses worldwide, today announced that it has been awarded licenses and numbering resources to operate telecommunications services in Singapore and Greece.
The new licenses, awarded by Singapore’s IDA (Infocomm Development Authority) and Greece’s EETT (National Telecommunications and Post Commission), bring the total number of Voxbone-accessible countries to 43.
Voxbone’s DID (direct-inward dial) and toll-free numbers give its carrier, call center and major enterprise customers a way to establish a “local” presence in other countries, by being reachable through a local phone call. Seeing an advertised telephone number that costs little or nothing to dial, end customers and prospects will call an overseas businesses as soon as any business physically located nearby or in-country. Voxbone delivers these incoming calls to the number holder/subscriber through its global VoIP network.
Customers can instantly lease and provision numbers through Voxbone’s self-care Web portal, turning the acquisition process from months to minutes.
“Voxbone is our source for local access numbers whenever we extend the reach of our free- and low-cost international calling service,” says Darren Yaphe, director of marketing at MOBIVOX, a Voxbone customer. “We rely on those local access numbers, as they enable our customers in over 40 countries to reach our dial-by-name IVR every time.”
Voxbone has partnered with local Singaporean and Greek telephone companies who are given their numbers by national regulators –- a purchase as close to the physical source as possible and in compliance with all national standards and regulations. This assures number holders of service as reliable as that of a local incumbent carrier.
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About Voxbone
Headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, Voxbone provides worldwide DID numbers and toll-free phone numbers over its own private intercontinental VoIP network. The all-IP architecture of the Voxbone core network enables customers to rapidly deploy new communications services with local presence, while simultaneously reducing costs. Voxbone leases international DID numbers and toll-free numbers via VoIP to organizations in North and South America, Europe and Asia/Pacific regions. It delivers high-quality call origination and provides the global infrastructure that enables its customers to expand to international markets quickly and efficiently. Using these numbers, Voxbone customers may receive inexpensive, locally dialed phone calls from 43 countries. Founded in 2002, the company is privately held.
Contact:
Sue Huss, for Voxbone
sue.huss@comunicano.com
+1-619-379-4396
Alec Saunders invited Thomas Howe of The Thomas Howe Company to Squawk Box for a debriefing on Telco 2.0, which took place in London last week. More a brainstorming session than a typical "booth" conference, Telco 2.0 employed interactive wireless technology to enable particpants to submit anonymous feedback and questions--making for some lively discussions on the gulf between carriers and innovators/disruptors. Hear Tom's chat with Alec here: http://saunderslog.com/2008/04/21/squawk-box-april-21-telco-20/.
With Skype’s Contact List, a Click and a New Multilingual Interface, Users Create Audioconferences in Which Two to 500 Sound Live and In-person
HOBOKEN, N.J.–April 22, 2008—Vapps, Inc., provider of affordable, flat-rate audioconferencing services with in-the-room sound quality, today announced an update of its Skype Extra, a plug-in that launches the full feature set of its High-Definition Conferencing (HD-C) service from within the globally adopted Skype™ Internet communications application.
Vapps’ added HD-C to Skype’s Extras Gallery in October 2007, uniquely conferencing together public switched telephone network (PSTN) and Skype users for a value-priced flat monthly fee ranging from $25 for as many as 10 users to $200 for as many as 500. The convenience of Vapps’ Skype plug-in—with 100,000 registered users to date—encourages frequent, ad-hoc use, and along with the flat-rate pricing makes it easier for growing companies with remote teleworkers to manage costs.
Those on Skype may click on the “Tools/Do More” menu option to open the HD-C plug-in, which will now appear and operate in Mandarin Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish and Polish, in addition to English. From that interface, they can start meetings on the spot, inviting fellow Skype users by sending automated chat messages. (Should Skype contacts be caught with their headphones unplugged, the chat invite offers a telephone phone number for joining the conference as well.) They can also click on the interface’s “schedule” button, auto-logging into the HD-C site, to schedule meetings of as many as 500 attendees and send e-mail invitations to others, as well as their Skype contacts.
Better-than-phone sound quality
Skype-connected participants enjoy unprecedented sound quality through the Vapps platform’s wideband connectivity. The traditional phone system, with its century-old copper wiring, transmits a frequency range of only 3.5 kHz out of the 20 kHz or so the human ear can hear. With a range so clipped, “f” and “s” are indistinguishable, singing is tinny and people feel distant. Through the wideband data lines used by Skype and other VoIP providers, HD-C can fit a voice frequency range of 16KHz. Result: Attendees hear four times better, feel more “present” with more true-to-life sound and can better detect who is speaking. And as with any IP-to-IP voice call, they avoid local and international calling charges, a particular benefit to international phone conferences.
The expanded audio range also helps listeners understand speakers who have accents, and non-native speakers understand the conference language. In any language, it promotes comprehension and retention by alleviating the ear fatigue of long phone conferences, and transmits more of the speaker’s inflection, nuance, attitude and even physical motion at a table or around the room.
Vapps’ Skype Extra plug-in allows meeting coordinators to see who has joined or left, to mute and unmute participants and to record the conference. Attendees have their own HD-C browser-based controls with which to raise their hands, mute themselves and see who is on the conference.
To demonstrate high-definition voice quality to a conferencing public that has only known the phone, Vapps is offering a free, 10-day trial of its 25-user package. This provides unlimited conference calls for as many as 25 people on Skype and on the telephone. After ten days, users may sign up via credit card. Without sign-up, any further use of HD-C will be charged on a pay-as-you-go plan in cooperation with Skype, which will deduct four cents per minute of use from users’ Skype Credits on Vapps’ behalf.
“Millions of people have come to use and keep Skype running all day, every day,” said Ben Lilienthal, Vapps CEO. “The update of our plug-in in the Skype Extras Gallery encourages more people to use High-Definition Conferencing to the fullest extent and as often as possible, for the same monthly price. It attaches in-person-quality, crystal-clear audioconferencing, scalability, recording and playback capability, and professional moderation controls to the Skype contact list at a time when more and more business people are using Skype.”
About Vapps, Inc.
Vapps, Inc., based in Hoboken, N.J., provides managed audioconferencing solutions to the SMB, enterprise and service provider markets using its patent-pending, wide-band audioconferencing technology. Founded in 2003 by Ben Lilienthal and Jerry Norton, Vapps' flagship service is its High-Definition Conferencing (HD-C, www.highspeedconferencing.com), the first and only high-definition, flat-rate audioconference offering that can conference together a mixed participant group of PSTN phone and Skype users.
For Skype-using participants, HD-C transmits a much richer, more “in-the-room” voice quality than can be achieved with traditional phones, dramatically improving the productivity of team collaboration. Vapps’ fees for an unlimited number of conferences and conference minutes start at a fixed $25 per month for 10 attendees and scale with the number of participants. For more information, please visit Vapps at www.vapps.com.
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SightSpeed Offers First and Only V-Mail and V-Chat Widget on MySpace With Easy-to-Use, No-Download Video Conversation Application
BERKELEY, Calif.–April 22, 2008—SightSpeed Inc., the leading provider of Internet video communications, has announced that a new easy-to-use, no-download version of its video application, “SightSpeed Light,” is now available to MySpace users.
SightSpeed is now the first company to offer integrated video mail, public video posting and free video chat between members of MySpace. SightSpeed Light works on any computer (PC or Mac) through any standards-based Web browser (e.g., Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari), with no downloads or installation required.
SightSpeed Light makes video conversations with MySpace friends livelier, whether they’re real-time, face-to-face chats or threaded posts created by friends recording and posting video messages.
SightSpeed Light captures and creates video messages as posts, creating extended video conversations that are face-to-face, but not necessarily in real time. These threaded conversations start with someone creating and posting a SightSpeed video of him- or herself about any topic. From there, anyone in that person’s MySpace friends group can respond and add his or her thoughts. SightSpeed Light organizes the thread automatically, thus creating a video conversation, all without leaving MySpace.
“As a result, MySpace users now have communications functionality currently not available in any other form on MySpace,” said Eric Quanstrom, SightSpeed VP–marketing. “SightSpeed Light allows MySpacers—especially those Gen Y-ers who grew up texting—to use video just as easily as they use text.”
SightSpeed Light also lets those video conversations happen spontaneously. Because MySpace users can see whom among their friends is also online, they can use SightSpeed Light to call them immediately, without download, installation, setup—or cost. These calls are free of charge to users.
When a MySpacer adds SightSpeed Light, all their friends are notified. Once their friends have added SightSpeed Light (by clicking “Add this App” from their MySpace profile), they can immediately see when their friends are online to call, video mail or post.
SightSpeed Light works best with a Web camera to provide the full effect of video chatting, conversations and messaging, although audio-only chats and voice mails are possible.
MySpace members can access SightSpeed Light here: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=359330835.
About SightSpeed
SightSpeed Inc. is the award-winning provider of Internet video communications for both the consumer and business user. The company offers the broadest portfolio of industry-leading Internet video communications services, including SightSpeed Light, SightSpeed Free and SightSpeed PLUS, the most widely praised consumer-focused video chat services, which turn a PC or Mac into an easy-to-use video phone to communicate with friends and family around the world; and SightSpeed Business, the world’s first high-quality, cost-effective and hardware-free videoconferencing service for all businesses (including SMBs). SightSpeed's services are SIP-based and standards-compliant. The company’s revolutionary human perception-based technology is patented and based on more than ten years of research and development originating out of Cornell University.
Founded in 2001 and based in Berkeley, Calif., SightSpeed is a privately held company funded by The Roda Group, best known for launching Ask Jeeves and PolyServe. For more information about SightSpeed, visit www.sightspeed.com.
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Contact:
Sue Huss
Comunicano, Inc.
sue.huss@comunicano.com
619-379-4396
Quotes about SightSpeed Light from SightSpeed CEO Peter Csathy:
“SightSpeed Light is unlike anything yet available on MySpace. For the first time, MySpace users can have a spontaneous real-time video chat with their friends while remaining within MySpace. But for this demographic that grew up in the not-always-real-time world of texting, we believe SightSpeed Light’s threaded video conversation capability will be even more appealing—enabling friends to maintain an ongoing conversation about their favorite topic of the moment.”
“In my opinion, video mail and video chat will be the next big movement in communications over the Internet. Why do I say this? Because webcams are embedded in nearly every device now, and social networkers are looking for the next best way to reach out to one another. That’s what puts SightSpeed Light ahead of the curve.”
Background
SightSpeed announced in January 2008 that it was developing SightSpeed Light to run on a variety of online social networks, including those based on Google’s forthcoming OpenSocial platform. SightSpeed chose MySpace as the first of these networks for which to develop its SightSpeed Light widget.
SightSpeed Light is currently in beta version, as are all approved applications available through MySpace.
SightSpeed Light enables both synchronous communications (e.g., face-to-face, real-time chat) as well as asynchronous communications that are face-to-face, but not necessarily in real time (e.g., threaded conversations).
Application Development
SightSpeed developers created the application using Adobe Flash, one of the most widely adopted multimedia viewing and creation tools, making SightSpeed Light simple to integrate on a variety of platforms and enhancing its accessibility and usability.
SightSpeed has offered an ActiveX plug-in that works with Internet Explorer since version 1.0 dating back to 2003, making SightSpeed the first clientless video conferencing application.
Now, SightSpeed developers have taken that same core technology and approach in developing SightSpeed Light. In this case, they are using Flash to enable SightSpeed to work easily inside a social community like MySpace. That’s because MySpace’s application programming interfaces (APIs) have been developed to work with Flash in such a way as to rapidly develop and deploy services like SightSpeed Light.
Safety and Security
No other plug-in for MySpace brings people together visually as easily and as safely as SightSpeed Light, enabling younger MySpace users to get face-to-face in a secure yet personal manner.
Video mail messages are kept securely within a thread on MySpace, on SightSpeed servers, and the owner (creator) of the thread can delete any message within, as they choose.
Future Developments
Although the application is currently limited to MySpace users, future developments will enable them to also connect with the rest of the SightSpeed community (e.g., those using SightSpeed Free, PLUS or Business).
In addition, SightSpeed has plans in the works for versions of SightSpeed Light for other social network sites.
Other SightSpeed Services
SightSpeed Light joins the full range of video communication services from industry leader SightSpeed. Offering additional capabilities, the full-featured SightSpeed PLUS and SightSpeed Free deliver best-in-class, 30-frames-per-second video calling and high-quality video mail with a virtual inbox. Also available are VoIP-based phone service with phone-in and phone-out capability, custom click-to-call-me buttons, video community access with privacy features, unlimited text messaging and up to four-party video conferencing.
For the business user, SightSpeed now offers SightSpeed Business—the company’s first business-focused videoconferencing service, providing a full suite of administrative and call-management options and collaboration tools that are essential for the business user. SightSpeed Business is the first high-quality, cost-effective and hardware-free videoconferencing solution accessible to every business.
All SightSpeed’s award-winning services are fully SIP-based and standards-compliant, which is essential for interoperability, security, stability and overall user flexibility and utility.
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