Archive for the ‘Features’ Category

Because Some Days I’d Rather Talk than Type

Monday, November 23rd, 2009 | located in Features | No Comments »

As a writer, I spend hours every day typing. Tap, tap, tap – my hamster wheel is a keyboard. But alas, the muse doesn’t always arrive when I need her, and sometimes I get great ideas when I’m in my car, or standing in line, or taking a walk.

When I heard about Ribbit Mobile’s voice memo function, I was thrilled. Not only does it record my thoughts and ideas  - it also turns them into text and emails them to me! So I can get an email started, or begin a blog post, or record my latest brilliant concept for a novel.

Because sometimes – it really is so much nicer to talk than type.

Here’s how to create a voice memo:

• Dial into your Ribbit voicemail from any phone (I have mine on speed dial on my iPhone, which makes it a cinch.)
• Press “9” to get into the menu.
• Press “5” - the voice memo option.
• Start talking.
• Hang up when you’re done – then sit back and wait for the transcription!

Here are a few ways people around Ribbit use voice memos:

• To dictate a shopping list while in the car
• To get an email started away from the desk
• To create a to-do list for the day
• To send themselves reminders

Have you used voice memos? Let us know. We’d love to hear how it works for you.

Thank you. We’re working hard.

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 | located in Beta, Features, Success Stories | No Comments »

We launched two weeks ago, and I wanted to take a quick moment to say thank you for the kind words, and for your interest in Ribbit Mobile.  We’ve been hard at work on this service since I first joined the company back in 2007, and it’s great to see such a positive response.

The beta launch was covered by covered by 60+ media outlets, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Forbes.  And we’ve had requests from Australia, South Africa, and Canada asking us when we’re going to expand.

Here’s a customer story I really liked, thought I’d share it with you. It is from Nithin Rao, a long time Ribbit Mobile beta user who is throughly enjoying the voice to text transcription feature as it helps him keep the projects moving forward, even while 36,000 feet in the air:

While the beta has started well we have identified what needs more work.  We’re working hard to fix the Plaxo and CSV import issues.  And while the browser based calling voice quality has been good, we have a project underway to make it even better.  You’re going to love the results.

We continue to send invites out, and appreciate your patience as we work through the waiting list. We know it is never fun to wait.

Do let us know your ideas to improve the service.  You can post your ideas to the idea wall or contact us at support@ribbit.com.  If you want to reach me directly give me a call on my mobile. Thanks, we look forward to the advances ahead.

Dan, Ribbit
VP Product Management
650-776-7176 (mobile)

Visual Voicemail on the iPhone Rocks – But You STILL need Ribbit Mobile!

Friday, November 6th, 2009 | located in Features | 1 Comment »

Here’s a question that recently arrived in our email inbox: “I have visual voicemail on my iPhone, so I can already listen to my messages in whatever order I want. Why do I need Ribbit Mobile?”

Good question! First of all, we think visual voicemail on the iPhone is great. It enables you to selectively choose which messages to listen to, thus eliminating the need to dial into a voicemail box and listen sequentially to each message.

But. It still doesn’t solve a lot of the problems associated with voicemail, and it doesn’t come with all the other features that Ribbit Mobile offers.

Here’s why you still need Ribbit Mobile if you have an iPhone:

• Ribbit Mobile converts your voicemail messages to text so you can read them like email. No more trying to scribble down message notes – Ribbit does the work for you, so you can read them at your convenience.
• Ribbit Mobile gives you with an online message inbox (see image below). It offers unlimited storage, and provides full control over your messages – so you can save your messages as long as you want to. On your iPhone, your messages will be deleted after 21 days.
• Ribbit Mobile gives you a backup phone online. For those days when you accidentally leave your phone at home, or lose it, or don’t have mobile service – you’re covered. Just log in to your online account to stay connected.

Do you have an iPhone and use Ribbit Mobile? Tell us about it!

Ribbit Announces Free Communication Suite For Mobile Professionals

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 | located in Beta, Features | 6 Comments »

Big news for us today! Ribbit Mobile, our cloud-based service that provides a new way to manage calls, messages and phones is now available to the general public in an expanded beta release. Ribbit Mobile’s core set of features transforms the way people communicate by letting them decide how, when and where they want to stay in touch.

Features Include:

Ribbit Mobile lets users communicate in ways never before possible by enabling them to merge multiple phones, route mobile calls to other phones and even answer their mobile calls on the Internet. Ribbit Mobile users can stay connected on their own terms—wherever they are—so they never miss another important call.

Unlike other Internet voice services, Ribbit Mobile doesn’t require a new phone number, a new phone or a software download—and the service can be made active on any mobile phone in less than five minutes.  Ribbit Mobile converts voicemail to text and sends it to users via SMS and email, eliminating the need to dial into voicemail and listen to messages. It provides an online message inbox where messages can be managed and stored forever (see below).

Ribbit Mobile also offers users a back-up phone online for those times when a users’ device is lost, stolen, broken or mobile service is unavailable.  The Web-based version of the mobile device enables Ribbit users to continue to make and take “mobile” phone calls via an Internet connection, regardless of their location or device accessibility.

Open Platform Drives Telephony Innovation
Ribbit Mobile is built on the Ribbit Platform – a robust, extensible platform with open APIs that lets developers add features to Ribbit Mobile. As more developers create applications, the service will become increasingly powerful and innovative.

We are also announcing the “Developer Rewards” program, which will compensate developers based on how much their applications are used, even if their applications are offered for free to end users. Unlike traditional app stores, Ribbit developers are rewarded on creating the most useful and popular applications that drive platform and network usage. We’ll have more on this program in the coming days.

It’s Free!
During the introductory beta period, we are offering the “Professional” package free for everyone on a trial basis. Reserve your account now and watch your inbox. It is on a first-come, first-served basis and we will be releasing a batch of beta invites every day.

Quotes:

• Ribbit CEO Ted Griggs - “With voice and data networks merging, consumers, businesses, software developers and even traditional telecommunications carriers are exploring new ways to communicate and evaluating how to successfully manage multiple communication streams. The challenge is that up until now the ways in which we most commonly communicate—voice, text, email, IM—exist in largely separate online and offline worlds.  Ribbit Mobile is changing all of that.”
• Jerry McClain, a Mortgage Loan Officer and a Ribbit Mobile user: “Ribbit Mobile gives me a competitive advantage and helps me close deals faster. I receive over 30 voicemail messages a day, and Ribbit Mobile gives me instant visibility into which ones are important so I can focus on what matters most.”
• Jeff Weintraub, a contractor specializing in remodeling, and a Ribbit Mobile user: “Every contractor knows that clients often change their minds during a project, and keeping the details straight can be a big job. Ribbit Mobile lets me keep an unlimited voicemail archive of all of my client communications so that I can easily reference old messages that provide instructions or requests. I don’t lose important voicemails after 21 days like I did with my phone carrier—and if a client ever says ‘I didn’t ask for that,’ I can find the related voicemail and we can review it together.”

Additional Links:

• How It Works
• Ribbit Support

Phone booths are relics of the past, but what if you need to make a call?

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 | located in Features | No Comments »

I was once late for a meeting with a business colleague in San Francisco, and I’d forgotten to charge my cell phone. I needed to call my colleague to let him know I was running late and suggest an alternate meeting place, but by the time I emerged from the Powell Street BART station downtown, my cell phone was completely dead.

I thought about asking a sympathetic stranger if I could borrow their phone to make a quick local call, but I realized I didn’t know my colleague’s number—that info was stored in my now unresponsive cell phone. Then I spotted the Apple store on the corner at Stockton and Ellis. Bingo. I went in, logged into my Ribbit Mobile account from one of Apple’s display laptops, and called my colleague using my Ribbit Web phone. No one in the store batted an eye as I conducted my quick conversation in a subdued, casual voice.

The experience got me thinking about other public places I might be able to make a call online, should the need arise. Wifi cafes are an obvious choice, but only those that actually have computers available for public use. And wifi cafes can be noisy, as can computer stores. But what about public libraries and hotel business centers? Not only are those places potentially quiet, pleasant places to jump online and make a quick Web call, they’re usually free. In fact some hotels, like the Good Hotel in San Francisco’s SOMA district, host free Internet stations [pictured] right in the lobby. Shhh. Might want to keep that one under your hat.

Ribbit Voicemail, Your Way.

Monday, June 22nd, 2009 | located in Features | No Comments »

I don’t think I’ll get much argument here when I say that managing voice mail can be a royal pain.  First, most carriers only keep voicemail messages in their system for 21-30 days. If you didn’t capture the information at the time of the call and those days pass, you’re out of luck - your messages are lost forever. Second, the very act of checking voicemail is incredibly frustrating. You have to listen through seven messages just to get to the one you want. Talk about a total waste of time.

Well, my friend - welcome to a new era, where YOU are in control of your messages. Welcome to the world of Ribbit voicemail, a better way to store and access the information that matters to you.

With Ribbit, you can keep your messages forever and access them at any time. You can log in to your account from any web browser and ’see’ a list of your messages, just as if you were looking at your email inbox. You can read the voicemail messages that Ribbit has transcribed into text for you, or you can listen to them - selectively, of course, without the need to listen in succession. You can also track down a specific voicemail using the search tool - enter a name or keyword, and all matching messages will be displayed. You can treat your voicemail like email and forward messages on to someone else. And you never have to worry about losing an important message - your Ribbit account comes with unlimited storage.

Or go crazy and delete a message if you don’t need it. It is YOUR data, after all. You decide what happens to it.

Never miss a phone call…unless you want to.

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 | located in Features | No Comments »

I used to hate not being able to leave the office as the client needed to call me back in five minutes. Or missing the call from my parents as they only have my house number in their speed dial.  Or heading to the mountains for the weekend knowing there is no cell coverage.

Those days are long gone.

With Ribbit Mobile, I use the FindMe First feature in the ‘Settings’ section under ‘Call Routing’. Once I click the checkbox next to the FindMe First section, I input all the numbers I would like to be contacted at, and Ribbit finds me…where ever I am.

My cell phone is my main ‘IN’ number. I then set up my house number and added in my Skype account for good measure since I sit in front of my computer so darn much of the day.  If I had an office number, I would have added that in as well (I use my cell for 99% of all work calls). When we head up to the mountains for the weekend, I can enter in the number of the house we rented. There is no limit to how many numbers you enter into Ribbit, it just comes down to how many ways YOU wish to be reached.

The house number, Skype and any other number I wish to be reached at are considered ‘OUT’ numbers (as in, calls come INto my cell phone - and then are redirected OUT to another number).

I also added in my email address so I receive notification for the rare times when I do, in fact, miss a call. Ribbit lets me know and then I can handle accordingly.

And for those of you who wish to not be tracked down where ever you are - you can uncheck the ‘FindMe First’ feature and click the ‘Voicemail’ box instead. This will set up your calls to route straight to voice mail if you do not answer, which can be just as nice a feature on certain days.

One Ribbit feature saved me 2.5 hours a week

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 | located in Beta, Features | 2 Comments »

Always trying to squeeze more time out of my work week, I recently calculated the number of minutes I spend calling into my voice mail box to retrieve messages from missed calls (for the record, it is fair to say I get quite a few calls *and* I miss quite a few calls).

I averaged out the results over a two week period and was floored.  I was investing almost three hours a week on dialing into my mailbox, listening to the messages, then [sometimes] having to call or email someone else to pass the verbal message on as they were the person who should have received the call in the first place.  That was three hours a week I could have spent doing something else. Three hours!!!

This little ‘experiment’ confirmed I needed to rethink the way I interacted with my phone, and how I processed my messages. I had to find a way to free up those three hours a week so I could invest them in other ways (whether personally or professionally).

Enter Ribbit. You should know I am a fairly new addition to the staff here. I am also a big believer of the ‘eat our own dogfood‘ way of thought.  The order for my business cards had not even been processed yet when I dove in and set up my new account.

It is interesting to note the change in my behavior began immediately upon receipt of my first voicemail funneling through the Ribbit service. As a recent example shows (see below) I am sent an email that had a transcription of the voicemail, an option to listen to the voice mail by using a standard call in number *and* an .mp3 of the voice mail I could click and listen to from within the email.  A service that gives me options in how I interact with it. Nice.

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The best part of getting this message was being able to email this contact back (I knew his email address) to set an interview time. This took me less than 15 seconds from start to finish, including confirming his response (in email form). Calling him back and having a discussion or calling him back and missing him so I would have to leave him a voicemail would have taken twice that amount of time…if not more.

Don’t get me wrong. I love human interaction, but some things should be done quickly and without much effort. This message was a perfect example of that, especially as my phone was ringing again with more items to address. Yes, I think it is time to change my number…but I digress.

I spent two weeks interacting with my voicemail via Ribbit and found it produced an average time savings of 2.5 hours per week.  That is 2.5 hours I got back in my week to invest elsewhere, say…maybe for a trip (or three) to the gym. Just think, I can become a healthier Kristie and I have Ribbit to thank for it. Ha. Might seem silly to some, but it is these ‘little’ things that make a difference.

Bonus: Having my voicemails come to me in an email means I now have an easily searchable archive of my messages. Woot.

Disclosure: Individual results may differ based on your personal voicemail activity. As I mentioned, I get a few calls. Ok, I get a lot of calls. While the number of calls has not subsided, the amount of time I spend processing them has significantly been reduced. You may not save 2.5 hours in a week - but what if you could save 1/2 hour? That is still awesome…right?