Ifbyphone CEO Irv Shapiro's presentation at this spring's eComm 
conference gives some insight into how Ifbyphone's services can help SMBs convert clickers into callers. Here's Irv's March 12 presentation, "Phone Mashups, Integrating Telephony and the Web."
Slides for Irv's presentation:
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:
‘Deep Dialing’ and ‘Intelligent Call History’ Will Save Callers Time and Aggravation; Press 1 to Say Good-bye to Phone Menus Forever
MOUNTAIN VIEW–Calif., March 13, 2008—Fonolo today previewed ground-breaking services that make it faster and less frustrating to call large companies. For anyone tired of navigating lengthy phone menus—“Press 1 for service, press 2 for sales...”—Fonolo’s “Deep Dialing” feature will be a welcome relief. In addition, Fonolo’s “Intelligent Call History” feature automatically maintains a history of calls made to each company, along with notes and recordings, for easy reference.
Company co-founder and CEO Shai Berger announced and demonstrated Fonolo (Pr.: PHONE-uh-low) at the eComm2008 conference under way this week at the Computer History Museum here. Fonolo, formerly FōnCloud, also announced a private beta program today and forecasted a commercial launch later this year.
Fonolo’s “Deep Dialing” feature enables a caller to skip time-consuming touch-tone and IVR-driven menus and connect directly to a point inside a phone menu to reach the person or department he needs.
The process is simple. A user starts by finding the company he needs on the Fonolo Web site, then visually scans through the phone menu and clicks on the appropriate point. Fonolo will then dial the company, navigate the phone system and call the user’s phone. When the user answers, he will be connected to the desired point in the menu. Furthermore, the user can bookmark this point inside the menu so that in the future, it is only a click away. With Fonolo, users can navigate the call-path options visually, on a computer or mobile device, then click to be connected directly, rather than plodding through the menus step-by-step.
“No one should ever have to navigate a phone menu twice again,” Berger said. “We’re building Deep Dialing to respond to the growing frustration of navigating increasingly complex phone menus.
“Everyone hates hearing the same questions and dialing the same option keys when they call airlines, banks, utilities, insurance companies, and the like. It’s a universal complaint,” he said. “We know Fonolo will be useful to everyone who hates to waste their time and valuable cell phone minutes.”
Fonolo’s “Intelligent Call History” revolutionizes call recording and logging by:
• Automatically organizing all of a user’s calls to a given company, regardless of which phone was used to make the call.
• Storing call recordings that users can review at any time, play back to the company or forward by e-mail. (Call transcription will be offered later as a premium service.)
• Allowing users to write text notes during a call and store them along with the history; those notes can be searched and reviewed later.
“Our goal with Fonolo is to empower the user,” Berger said. “Consumers have been getting the short end of the stick for too long. Deep Dialing, combined with ‘Intelligent Call History’ and some exciting features that we will be announcing soon, all serve to shift the balance of power back to our side. We like to think of the service as a consumer equalizer.”
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About Fonolo
Fonolo is a service that helps consumers deal with large companies over the phone. Fonolo’s Deep Dialing feature allows you to skip the dreaded phone menus (a/k/a “IVR systems”) and get right to the point. With Fonolo, users can navigate the call path options visually, on a computer or mobile device, then click to be connected directly, rather than plodding through the menus step-by-step. Fonolo’s Intelligent Call History feature tracks all the calls a user makes to a particular company, no matter which phone he uses, and automatically organizes them along with notes and recordings.
Fonolo has developed proprietary technology that automatically “spiders” IVR systems, thus building and maintaining a database of the numbers that consumers typically call. This “map of phonespace,” a dataset that has never been built before, powers Deep Dialing and Fonolo’s other innovative features.
Fonolo is designed for anyone who has been frustrated dealing with large companies over the phone. In particular, it appeals to people who hate wasting time—and cell phone minutes—with automated phone systems, and to people who want a better way to keep track of their call history.
Fonolo is privately held and based in Toronto. The service is currently in closed beta.
Contact:
Sue Huss, for Fonolo
sue.huss@comunicano.com
+1 619-379-4396
Promotion Aims To Get Developers Designing Applications for SMB Market
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., March 13, 2008—Ifbyphone, the Chicago-area voice application platform company, announced today it is offering up to 1 million minutes in free phone time per month and a new Facebook phone application to demonstrate to developers the power of phone mashups to connect the Web to voice applications.
“We’re funding this initiative because we believe so strongly in helping small businesses turn Web traffic into ringing telephones via mashups,” said Ifbyphone founder and CEO Irv Shapiro. “Interactive Voice Response systems and phone mashups should not be limited to large enterprises. By partnering with hundreds of independent developers this initiative will deliver this exciting new technology to businesses of any size.”
“Phone mashups” are Web applications that combine data from more than one source into a single integrated tool accessed from any phone.
Speaking at the eComm2008 Conference being held at the Computer History Museum here this week, Shapiro said: “Phone mashups unleash the power of all phones, from your mobile phone to your landline to your VOIP phone, even old-fashioned rotary-dial phones. That means owners of small- and medium-sized businesses with no knowledge of computers can have their phones ring from the Web. Ifbyphone launches conversation starters that lead to sales.”
There are three ways to take advantage of Ifbyphone’s offer:
• Phone-Me-Now. This calling technology makes it possible to dial phones from a wide variety of locations, including Web sites, e-mail messages, Microsoft Word documents, PDF documents, PowerPoint presentations and more. Free Phone-Me-Now accounts are limited to 100 minutes of U.S. phone calls per month and expire in six months. At the end of six months, the subscriber may upgrade to a traditional Ifbyphone subscription beginning at $14.95 per month. To try out this service, go to http://public.ifbyphone.com/services/phone-me-now.
• Free Ifbyphone Facebook Widget. Facebook users will be able to make anonymous phone calls to people on their Friends list. A friend visiting your Facebook profile enters a phone number and rings your phone. The first 1,000 Facebook users who sign up will receive free Ifbyphone’s Facebook Phone-Me-Now accounts. Users receive up to 100 minutes calling time per month for six months and then can upgrade to a traditional Ifbyphone account for $14.95. This widget was developed using the standard Ifbyphone Phone Mashup API. The widget is available under Applications at Facebook.com.
• Developments for developers. Ifbyphone has established www.phonemashup.com to encourage developers to build phone mashups. It includes discussion forums and blogs to get developers talking, along with the tools to create mashups and a repository for distribution of phone mashups. Ifbyphone also is offering developers free phone mashup accounts with full access to the Ifbyphone Phone Mashup API, including Interactive Voice Response capabilities typically only available to major corporations. Free Phone Mashup accounts are limited to 100 minutes of U.S. phone calls per month and expire in 6 months. At the end of six months, subscribers may upgrade to a traditional Ifbyphone subscription beginning at $39.95 per month. All Ifbyphone services also include complete Interactive Voice Response (IVR) capabilities traditionally only available to major corporations. These IVR capabilities include interactive voice dialogs (Voice Forms), automated speech recognition and text to speech capabilities.
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About Ifbyphone
Ifbyphone is a voice application platform (VAP) 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
Advanced Voice Recognition Lets Mobivox Users Add Contacts By Simply Speaking Their Names
MONTRÉAL–March 13, 2008—MOBIVOX, the international calling service that connects family and friends around the world for free from any phone, announced today the launch of a new feature that makes calling by voice even easier. Create a Contact enables MOBIVOX users to add contacts to their online contact book in their own voice, by simply speaking the information over any telephone.
Nitzan Shaer, COO of MOBIVOX, said, "MOBIVOX already simplifies international calling, by enabling users to dial by voice and place free calls to anywhere in the world. Today, we are excited to take this service a step further, making it even easier to add to the list of people you can call—simply by speaking their names.”
Previously, after MOBIVOX members registered for free at www.mobivox.com, they uploaded or typed in their contacts names and numbers. While they can continue to use that method, the new voice-driven process makes it easy to add new contacts, from any phone, anywhere.
MOBIVOX’s advanced speech-recognition technology hears the spoken name of a contact and instantly connects the caller to contacts anywhere in the world.
According to Shaer, “This new feature will dramatically improve the speech recognition accuracy, and is especially useful for those with multi-cultural backgrounds and non-English contact names. These are precisely the people who use MOBIVOX the most to keep in touch with their home country and loved ones far away.”
MOBIVOX has also built intelligence into its voice-recognition system that identifies a frequently dialed number that does not exist in the contact list. The automated attendant then prompts the caller to create a contact. This is especially helpful to users who travel extensively and don’t have their address books readily accessible.
Shaer will discuss these and other methods used by his company to optimize speech recognition accuracy at the Emerging Communications (eComm) Conference 2008 in Mountain View, Calif., on Wed., March 12.
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About Mobivox
MOBIVOX is an international calling service that makes it possible to call friends and family around the world for free from any phone. Calls between members are free to more than 40 destinations. For all other calls, MOBIVOX offers extremely low rates starting at 1.9 cents per minute.
CONTACT:
Sue Huss
Comunicano, Inc.
Sue.huss@comunicano.com
+1 619-379-4396
Conversation With Skype’s Jonathan Christensen Offers Preview of Dialogue on Future of Communications Industry
Event at Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., March 12-14
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.–March 4, 2008—One look at the speaker roster for the Emerging Communications (eComm) Conference 2008 being held here March 12-14 and it’s clear participants can expect an intense three days of idea sharing and policy discussion on the future of the communications industry.
“It’s what we’re calling ‘The Trillion Dollar Industry Rethink,’” said conference organizer and chair Lee S. Dryburgh. “The speakers participating in eComm are just the kind of forward-thinking people who will spark debate about the future of the industry. What I’m hearing during my preliminary conversations with them is a prelude, I believe, to the thought-provoking, high-energy dialogue that will be taking place at eComm.”
One of those pre-event conversations, Dryburgh noted, was with Jonathan Christensen, general manager, audio and video, at Skype. Christensen will kick off Day 1 of eComm with the keynote address, Moving Up & Down The IP Telephony Stack: Ten Years of Internet Communications.
“What I heard from Jonathan during our chat,” said Dryburgh, “makes me very excited about the direction Skype intends to take and the messages he will deliver at the conference.”
Among the points Christensen made during the interview, which is posted on the eComm blog (http://ecommmedia.com/blog/2008/02/jonathan-christensen-skype.html), are:
• About Skype: We want to continue to make the whole [communications] experience as seamless, as natural and as life-like as possible. And I think there will be a trend toward the higher fidelity, better performance in devices as well. So we need the help of the device manufacturers at this stage to realize that voice is not just about this old-fashioned PSTN-style voice…. Video is a major initiative for us and making life-like video available in the mass market is a big goal for us as well.
• About the future of communications: It's going to be messy for a while but it is going to happen, and the Internet will survive as the one open platform. You are going to see a trend towards extreme innovation at the edges—on the devices, in the PC platform, in software, all around the edge of the Internet.
• About eComm: eComm is focused exactly in the right spot [to explore] where there is going to be an explosion of new rich communication services on the Internet platform.
Other speakers at eComm will include Ribbit CEO Ted Griggs; Rich Miner, group manager, mobile platforms at Google; Brough Turner, chief technical officer and senior vice president at NMS Communications; Christopher Allen, founder of the largest iPhone developer-support community; ex-Google employee turned angel investor Chris Sacca; and Benoit Schillings, chief technical officer at Trolltech (Nokia).
Dryburgh noted that eComm2008 continues to attract sponsors and speakers. With the addition of more speakers in the last two weeks, eComm2008 now has three full days of sessions. Sponsors so far include Voxbone, Ribbit, Six Apart, NMS Communications, IfByPhone, MIR3, Voxeo, Wireless Grids Corporation and VAPPS.
Attendees may register online at http://www.eCommMedia.com, where full details of the conference—including the roster of speakers—are available.
The Advisory Board assisting Dryburgh in selecting content and speakers for eComm includes:
• Imran Ali, founding partner in Carbon Imagineering;
• Dean Bubley, founder of Disruptive Analysis;
• Michel Bauwens, founder of the Foundation for Peer to Peer Alternatives;
• Martin Geddes, chief analyst at technology consultancy STL Partners;
• Norman Lewis, chief strategy officer at Wireless Grids Corporation;
• Sheldon Renan, principal in technology consultancy Vision & Strategy, LLC;
• Brough Turner, senior VP, chief technology officer and co-founder of NMS Communications; and
• Phil Wolff, CEO of Reef9 Media and managing editor of Skype Journal.
# # #
About eComm™ 2008
eComm 2008—the inaugural Emerging Communications Conference—was born of the ashes of O'Reilly's ETel Conference to track and help drive the major disruption beginning to transform the multi-trillion dollar telecommunications industry. From industry visionaries to bleeding-edge technologies, cutting-edge academic projects to incumbent telecom players and garage-based hackers, eComm is designed as the only telecommunication forum to embrace and promote radical change. eComm is poised to make history on March 12-14, 2008, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. For more information and conference registration, please visit www.ecommmedia.com.
Jon Arnold spent some time this week with eComm 2008 chair and organizer Lee Dryburgh to talk about “where voice is going.” With eComm taking place March 12-14, this is a good opportunity to get a preview of some of the discussion you can expect there. Read/listen to Jon’s interview with Lee in this IP Convergence TV post.
IPCTV uses Odiogo’s text-to-speech system, which, as good as it is, doesn’t quite capture Lee’s charming Scottish brogue. For that, you’ll just have to go to eComm!
Event at Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., March 12-14
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.–Feb. 20, 2008—Discussions at the Emerging Communications (eComm) Conference 2008 here March 12-14 may leave the world’s established telecommunications carriers feeling left behind. That’s because conference organizers aim to help unleash a “gold rush” of innovation and democratization in the global telecom industry.
With a growing roster of speakers from among the world’s leading thinkers and innovators in telecoms, eComm2008—dubbed “The Trillion Dollar Industry Rethink”—promises to be an event promoting ideas that plant seeds to revolutionize the industry.
For example, the theme of eComm2008’s premier session, a panel discussion including Google and Skype, is “What will drive wireless innovation?”—leaving no doubt innovators are prospecting for users with wireless applications that go far beyond the artificial boundaries erected by established mobile carriers.
“The wireless market is the world’s largest market and that is accelerating; every second the global population expands by one, and in the same second, 38 wireless devices are sold,” said Lee S. Dryburgh, conference organizer and chair. “The message of eComm2008 is that there is a seismic shift in power and money ahead, and it looks like the end user is coming out the winner. It's the gold rush and the conference signals the gold rush is on.
“Mobile carriers have tightly reined or even hobbled Internet innovation from blossoming on handsets; they’re perceived as a bottleneck,” said Dryburgh. “But many of the applications developers and handset manufacturers speaking at eComm2008 will describe new power they are putting into the hands of users. The carriers’ lock on innovation will be cracked.
“Think about it,” he added. “Already there are three times as many wireless handsets in the world as PCs, and handsets ‘know’ more about users because they are with them all the time. They ‘know’ users’ locations and relationships, and increasingly they’re becoming the largest hub of users’ communications. There is clearly more potential around handsets than the PC.”
Speakers at eComm will include Rich Miner, group manager, mobile platforms at Google; Jonathan Christensen, general manager, audio and video at Skype; Brough Turner, chief technical officer and senior vice president at NMS Communications; and Christopher Allen, founder of the largest iPhone developer-support community.
Dryburgh noted that eComm2008 continues to attract sponsors and speakers. With the addition of more speakers in the last two weeks, eComm2008 now has three full days of sessions. Sponsors so far include Voxbone, Ribbit, Six Apart, NMS Communications, IfByPhone, MIR3, Voxeo, Wireless Grids Corporation and VAPPS.
Attendees may register online at http://www.eCommMedia.com, where full details of the conference—including the roster of speakers—are available.
The Advisory Board assisting Dryburgh in selecting content and speakers for eComm includes:
• Imran Ali, founding partner in Carbon Imagineering;
• Dean Bubley, founder of Disruptive Analysis;
• Michel Bauwens, founder of the Foundation for Peer to Peer Alternatives;
• Martin Geddes, chief analyst at technology consultancy STL Partners;
• Norman Lewis, chief strategy officer at Wireless Grids Corporation;
• Sheldon Renan, principal in technology consultancy Vision & Strategy, LLC;
• Brough Turner, senior VP, chief technology officer and co-founder of NMS Communications; and
• Phil Wolff, CEO of Reef9 Media and managing editor of Skype Journal.
# # #
About eComm™ 2008
eComm 2008—the inaugural Emerging Communications Conference—was born from the ashes of O'Reilly's ETel Conference to track and help drive the major disruption beginning to transform the multi-trillion dollar telecommunications industry. From industry visionaries to bleeding-edge technologies, cutting-edge academic projects to incumbent telecom players and garage-based hackers, eComm is designed as the only telecommunication forum to embrace and promote radical change. eComm is poised to make history on March 12-14, 2008, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. For more information and conference registration, please visit www.ecommmedia.com.
Contact:
Sue Huss
Comunicano, Inc.
sue.huss@comunicano.com
619-379-4396
Event is March 12-14 at Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.–Feb. 5, 2008—When some of the world’s leading thinkers in telecommunication and wireless technology innovation gather at the Emerging Communications (eComm) Conference 2008 here next month, conferees can expect to witness telecommunications history in the making. The iPhone developer movement, Google’s support for the new Android mobile operating system and FCC-mandated open spectrum have created the perfect storm to change the face of the mobile industry.
With a roster of speakers that includes Rich Miner, group manager, mobile platforms at Google; Jonathan Christensen, general manager, audio and video at Skype; Brough Turner, chief technical officer and senior vice president at NMS Communications; ex-Google employee turned angel investor Chris Sacca; Benoit Schillings, chief technical officer at Trolltech (Nokia), and Christopher Allen, founder of the largest iPhone developer-support community, attendees are guaranteed exposure to the best opportunity space in global telecoms as mobile becomes the new platform for innovation.
“I wouldn’t be surprised to see an iPhone SDK, J2ME, Skype and Android battling to take center stage,” said Lee S. Dryburgh, conference organizer and chair. “It’s for certain that eComm 2008 is the first telecom conference focusing on the democratization of telecoms innovation and we’ve attracted the best people on the planet.
“In the context of the perfect storm that arose toward the end of last year, eComm2008 at the Computer History Museum on March 12–14 is definitely the place to be if you’re concerned at all about the future of the telecommunications industry,” Dryburgh added. “The tsunami of change heading for the wireless communications industry is so strong we’ve dubbed the event ‘The Trillion Dollar Industry Rethink.’”
eComm 2008 sponsors so far include Voxbone, Ribbit, Six Apart, NMS Communications, IfByPhone, MIR3, Voxeo, Wireless Grids Corporation, and VAPPS.
Attendees may register online at http://www.eCommMedia.com, where full details about the conference—including the roster of speakers—are available.
The Advisory Board assisting Dryburgh in selecting content and speakers for eComm includes:
• Imran Ali, founding partner in Carbon Imagineering;
• Dean Bubley, founder of Disruptive Analysis;
• Michel Bauwens, founder of the Foundation for Peer to Peer Alternatives;
• Martin Geddes, chief analyst at technology consultancy STL Partners;
• Norman Lewis, chief strategy officer at Wireless Grids Corporation;
• Sheldon Renan, principal in technology consultancy Vision & Strategy, LLC;
• Brough Turner, senior VP, chief technology officer and co-founder of NMS Communications; and
• Phil Wolff, CEO of Reef9 Media and managing editor of Skype Journal.
The Computer History Museum is located at 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd. in Mountain View.
Established in 1996, the museum is a public benefit organization dedicated to preserving and celebrating computing history. It houses one of the largest collections of computing artifacts in the world, a collection of more than 13,000 objects, 20,000 images, 5,000 moving images, 4,000 linear feet of cataloged documentation and 5,000 titles or several hundred gigabytes of software. The mission of the Computer History Museum is to preserve and present for posterity the artifacts and stories of the information age.
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Contact:
Sue Huss
Comunicano, Inc.
sue.huss@comunicano.com
619-379-4396
Global Industry Visionaries, Entrepreneurs, Investors and Digerati Expected to Attend
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.–Jan. 23, 2008—The Emerging Communications (eComm) Conference 2008, to be held in the Computer History Museum here from March 12 to March 14, promises to be the “must attend” event of the year for the leading thinkers, entrepreneurs and developers in global communications and convergence.
“eComm is the venue for those interested in the radical transformation of the trillion dollar telecommunications industry,” said Lee S. Dryburgh, conference organizer and chair. “The industry has already started down the path that the homebrew computer took three decades ago. eComm is tracking, highlighting and promoting the people and technologies driving this new wave of democratization of telecommunications.
“eComm brings out the visionaries, emergent technologies, real-world startups, cutting-edge academic projects and the VC’s funding these companies, along with views offered by the incumbent telecom players and garage-based hacks to stir the required policy debates and create the ultimate three-day conversation.
“On a personal level, we’re extremely pleased to see the enterprising spirit, enthusiasm and passion that filled last year’s Emerging Telephony (eTel) conference being carried into this year’s Emerging Communications Conference,” Dryburgh said. “We wanted that same energy and enthusiasm to continue, so I’m very pleased that the best people in this space have agreed to speak.”
Speakers for eComm 2008 represent widely diverse points along the spectrum of communications transformation, from household names such as Google, Yahoo!, BT, Twitter, Vodafone, Orange-FT, Intel, Motorola and Skype, to small new entrants such as Thomas Howe Company, Truphone, Vringo, Mobivox, Fonolo and Embarq.
Sponsors include Voxbone, Ribbit, Six Apart, Wireless Grids Corporation, MIR3, NMS Communications and Voxeo.
Attendees may register online at http://www.eCommMedia.com/, where full details about the conference are available.
“eComm is shaping up to be three days of high-energy, jam-packed content from the people who are setting the course to transform the trillion dollar telecommunications industry,” Dryburgh said. “Attendees can expect to participate in the most exciting, groundbreaking communications event this year.”
The Advisory Board assisting Dryburgh in selecting content and speakers for eComm includes:
• Imran Ali, founding partner in Carbon Imagineering;
• Dean Bubley, founder of Disruptive Analysis;
• Michel Bauwens, founder of the Foundation for Peer to Peer Alternatives;
• Martin Geddes, chief analyst at technology consultancy STL Partners;
• Norman Lewis, chief strategy officer at Wireless Grids Corporation;
• Sheldon Renan, principal in technology consultancy Vision & Strategy, LLC;
• Brough Turner, senior VP, chief technology officer and co-founder of NMS Communications; and
• Phil Wolff, CEO of Reef9 Media and managing editor of Skype Journal.
The Computer History Museum is located at 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd. in Mountain View.
Established in 1996, the museum is a public benefit organization dedicated to preserving and celebrating computing history. It houses one of the largest collections of computing artifacts in the world, a collection of more than 13,000 objects, 20,000 images, 5,000 moving images, 4,000 linear feet of cataloged documentation and 5,000 titles or several hundred gigabytes of software. The mission of the Computer History Museum is to preserve and present for posterity the artifacts and stories of the information age.
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