Voxeo Talks

One of the questions I frequently get asked is:

“So what kind of applications do people create with your platform?“

The challenge in providing a simple answer is that over 34,000 developers have created over 73,000 applications on our hosted platform since 1999 and there have been over 30,000 downloads of our premise platform since 2006 – and each premise platform could support any number of different types of applications. So the answer really is:

Pretty much anything that you can do with the phone – someone has done it on our platform.

But that doesn’t usually go down really well… people are looking for more concrete answers. That answer is, though, the truth. We’ve seen people build everything from your basic IVR system / auto-attendant to Facebook conferencing applications to PBXs to bad weather school notification systems. We’ve seen anonymous dating services… and we’ve seen companies create large interviewing systems to screen potential job candidates through a voice application. Then there was the company that used our platform to create a very cool game where you called in via a phone and interacted with their website. And then there are a very large number of companies running their customer service toll-free numbers on our platform…

It’s an incredible range that is hard to simply categorize. Here’s a selection of the type of applications we’ve seen people build:

There are naturally many more than those listed. The fun part about providing free developer accounts on our hosted system or letting people download our software for free (without even requiring any questions to be answered) is that we have absolutely no idea what people will do with it. So it’s always inspiring (and sometimes entertaining) to find some blog post out there where someone is doing some kind of wacky mashup we would have never even remotely thought of.

In fact, I’ll be profiling one of those very cool mashups in the next little bit… (and if you have an app built on our platform that you’d like to have me write about, please do contact me as I’m glad to consider it).

Does this help explain a bit better “what kind of apps do people create?” Would you like to see more case studies? What would you find helpful?

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Technorati Tags: voxeo, voice, voip, applications

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Dear Friends,

Happy holidays! As we reflect on the joys of the past year, it’s impossible to look back without thanking our families, customers, partners and vendors for helping make 2008 great. Because of you, we’ve got lots to be thankful for this holiday season and even more to be excited about in 2009.

Like busy elves in Santa’s workshop, we completed construction on our Orlando headquarters — making room for additional Voxeons and an in-house café serving what we believe to be the best latte in all of Florida. And with the help of our highly caffeinated Human Resources manager, we welcomed new employees spanning the US, Europe and Asia. On the global front, we further expanded Voxeo’s footprint with the acquisitions of Beijing-based Micromethod and Cologne-based VoiceObjects, continued to invest in European infrastructure, and added our first Australian customer.

With great joy, we celebrated four weddings and the birth of the next generation of Voxeons – Madeline, Charles, Benjamin, Vincent, Alexander, and most recently Nathan. Six babies combined with the beta release of Prophecy 9 led to many sleep-deprived nights, but we’re not complaining. It’s all part of the fun (and the business case that made the Voxeo café possible).

We know it isn’t nice to brag, but how about Prophecy 9? It’s kind of a big deal if we may say so ourselves. In addition to a game-changing management console and a slew of enhanced features, we added support for Linux and Mac OS X. It’s available in beta right now and scheduled for a full release in the spring.

Speaking of Mac OS X, we made a big switch and traded in our BlackBerry cell phones for iPhones. In addition to being cool, the iPhone offers a top-notch platform for mobile developers. We’ve seen some Voxeo-powered offerings hit Apple’s App Store, but the innovation doesn’t stop there. We’re constantly amazed at the ways our customers are leveraging the Voxeo platform and look forward to hearing more success stories in 2009.

So, with a new year upon us, we commit to some resolutions. Most importantly, we’ll continue to make delivering the best support in the industry our top priority. We’ll stay true to the principles of open standards and strive to further lower the costs and remove the complexities that impede the delivery of value-adding communication applications. And more than ever, we’ll evolve the platform in exciting, groundbreaking ways.

With our sincere thanks, we wish you the gift of happiness this holiday season and prosperity in 2009.

Happy Holidays,
The Voxeo Team

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Technorati Tags: voxeo

If you have been watching our main Voxeo blog portal or are subscribed to our “All blogs” RSS feed or are following us on Twitter, you know by now that I launched a new video podcast a few weeks back called “Emerging Tech Talk” or “ETT” for short. Now that the show has been going for a bit and I have most of the kinks worked out of the production process, I thought I’d take a moment to formally introduce the show here and talk about what I’m doing with it.

First, though, I should of course mention that you can follow “Emerging Tech Talk” and receive notification of new shows by doing any of the following:

• subscribing via iTunes
• subscribing to our YouTube account (if you are a YouTube user)
• subscribing to our RSS feed
• following us on Twitter

THE PREMISE

So what is “Emerging Tech Talk” about and what am I doing with the show?

Primarily the show is a way for me to use video to tell stories about new / emerging communications technologies that I find interesting. I thought about subtitling it “Chasing bright, shiny objects related to communication technology..” and while I may not use that sub-title, that’s basically what it is. A part of my role within Voxeo’s Office of the CTO is to look at the changes happening around us with regard to both the ways in which we communicate and the tools/technologies we use to communicate. I speak about those changes at conferences and write about those changes both here and on my external blogs – with Emerging Tech Talk I can also now speak about those changes in a video format.

Basically I want to share with you through video some of the exciting changes I see going on out there.

Note that this show is not necessarily about Voxeo. Sure, by nature of what I am doing on a daily basis, probably many if not most of the shows will have some bearing on what we do here at Voxeo, and certainly I’ll use ETT as a vehicle to talk about new Voxeo announcements (as I did with the VoiceObjects news) but in general my plan is for the show to cover a wide range of topics related to “emerging communication technologies” – the kind of topics you would see covered at a conference like eComm next March.

In fact, I expect to use conferences like eComm, VoiceCon, ITEXPO, etc. as places where I’ll be doing video interviews to run in the show. As you’ve seen with ETT already, I’ll undoubtedly do some shows from IETF standards meetings. Essentially I’ll just have my camera (or laptop) along with me as I travel to various conferences and see what video is interesting to record at those events.

I also expect to include some “screencasts” of various tools and services I find interesting. I’ll probably talk about some iPhone apps… social networking tools… new VoIP products… basically, again, whatever I find interesting and exciting.

Given that a secondary reason for doing the ETT show is simply to experiment with the video podcasting medium, I expect you’ll see some experiments along the way with different video tools and services. (And some may work well and others may not.)

THE DETAILS

Each show will be less than 10 minutes in length. I’m also uploading these shows to YouTube and the folks there restrict the length to roughly 10 minutes. (I know this all too well. Having successfully uploaded a show that was 10:56 long (ETT #011 on P2PSIP) I got a little cocky and tried to upload one over 11 minutes. Rejected.)

I’m not aiming to do much in the way of post-production / editing. The goal is to record shows that are less than 10 minutes (so I don’t have to do much cutting), pop them into iMovie on my MacBook Pro, do some very basic editing, add text overlays, adjust titles… and publish.

I’ll primarily be recording directly into iMovie using my Mac’s embedded webcam, recording with my small little JVC MG-330 hard disk camcorder or using ScreenFlow on the Mac to record the screen and also the video. (Which is actually how I did the Skype video recording I did with Michael Codini in ETT #010.) I’m sure I’ll use other tools as I come across them. Because of the different tools, I’m sure video quality may vary somewhat between shows.

As far as frequency of shows, I expect it to be highly variable. My goal is to have a new show up at least twice a month… right now I’ve had a couple up each week. I expect that when I go to conferences/events I’ll have more shows going up. I also expect that when I’m buried under some deadline I may not produce a show for some time. The net of it is that I can’t guarantee to you that it will be a weekly show, but you’ll see shows as often as I can create them.

THE INVITATION

So with all that said, I extend to you two invitations. First, as I noted at the beginning of this post, there are several ways that you can subscribe to the show and join in the journey. Please do! Let’s see what we can do with this medium to tell the story of the changes happening around us with regard to communication.

Second, you are definitely invited to contact me with topics you think I should discuss on the show. If you have questions about subjects I cover on shows, areas you would love to have more details on, or just cool new services you’ve seen (or are involved with) that you think I should talk about, please feel to contact me and let me know. You can email me, contact me on Twitter or identi.ca, contact me through Facebook or LinkedIn, or IM or call me on Skype (danyork). I can’t necessarily promise that I’ll fit everything in, but if I find it interesting and it relates in some manner to communication technology, I very well may.

[NOTE to PR people: Before you pitch me, please read the blogs on this site as well as my Disruptive Telephony and Disruptive Conversations sites to see if your clients' new whiz-bang product/service is even remotely along the lines of the things that I write about. Thank you. (Can you tell I'm really sick of being pitched by people who don't even bother to take 30 seconds to look over my sites to see if it is even appropriate to pitch me?)]

Now, let the journey begin…

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Technorati Tags: emerging tech talk, emerging technology, emergingtechtalk, ett, technology, video, videopodcasting, voice, voip, voxeo

So we’re pregnant, eh? At least, according to industry analyst Nancy Jamison…

I have to admit that of all the great coverage we’ve been reading over the past few days about Voxeo’s acquisition of VoiceObjects, the one post that definitely made me laugh the most was Nancy’s. I mean, when she titles her post “Voxeo Unified Communications Pregnancy Confirmed – no Due Date Announced” and starts her announcement coverage with this:

However, today, Voxeo announced a further acquisition, that when you dig down into it only confirms that Voxeo is heavily pregnant with a UC child, but just won’t admit the due date yet.

… well, it’s hard for me not to chuckle!

Thanks, Nancy, for the kind words… and yes, between our own Prophecy product, the SIP-based presence/IM products of Micromethod and now the development tools and multi-channel support of VoiceObjects, we have indeed assembled a wonderful communications toolkit… and more is on the way…

Stay tuned…

P.S. If you’d like to throw a baby shower for us, I’m sure we can come up with a wish list…

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Thank you.

Technorati Tags: voxeo, voiceobjects, unified communications

As I mentioned previously, we’re big fans (and a sponsor) of the Emerging Communications (eComm) conference coming up March 3-5, 2009, out in San Francisco. We’re delighted to note today that registration for eComm is now open.

In fact, if you use our super-secret discount code you can get 20% off of the conference registration fee… AND… if you register before December 22nd, the fee minus the 20% discount will take your registration cost down below $1000. Which, for 3 days of the best possible information about emerging communication technology, is awfully hard to beat!

What is that super-secret discount code? Wellll…. if you go into your browser and do “View Source” or “View Page Source”, you’ll be sure to find it…

Look here ->

If you look at the list of eComm speakers and the (still evolving) eComm schedule, it’s really shaping up to be an amazing show… we look forward to seeing you all out there!

P.S. There’s really nothing “super-secret” about the discount code, so once you know it feel free to share it with all of your friends and colleagues. And yes, I could just state the code here… but what fun is that?

Technorati Tags: ecomm, voxeo, conferences

As you are probably aware by now, at 6am US Eastern this morning / 12noon in Germany, we announced our acquisition of VoiceObjects, the world’s leading provider of self-service application development and analytics solutions. Given that over the course of the past several hours, we’ve been posting various articles and podcasts about the acquisition, I thought it was time for a summary of what we’ve talked about today. Here are some of the viewpoints we’ve shared:

• Our news release announcing the acquisition

• What the VoiceObjects acquisition by Voxeo means for voice application developers… on our Voxeo Developer’s Corner blog
• Voxeo’s VoiceObjects acquisition further promotes the open standard of VoiceXML on our Speaking of Standards blog
• Emerging Tech Talk #010 – Voxeo acquires VoiceObjects and brings developers new voice application tools on our Emerging Tech Talk video podcast

I think it goes without saying that we’re all extremely thrilled on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean by the combined potential of the two companies. In fact, we’re already seeing that potential be realized in some very huge opportunities that have come our way as a result of people within some large enterprises learning of the impending merger from one of the parties over the last few weeks. We’re looking forward to seeing what kind of even more amazing voice applications our customers will now create as we talk about and promote how well the tools of both companies work together.

From my own point-of-view, I look forward to joining with others within both companies in telling the story of how VoiceObjects application server and tools can be combined with Voxeo’s media server and application platform to solve real customer problems and more easily and simply build even more powerful voice applications. You can be sure that over the weeks and months ahead I and others will be writing more here (as well as on the VoiceObjects blog). It should be a very fun ride!

Meanwhile, if you haven’t watched our video introduction over on Emerging Tech Talk, let me make it even simpler for you by embedding the YouTube video here:

Keep watching for more… In the meantime, we’re celebrating a good bit both here in Orlando and over in Cologne, Germany! (As well as in our Beijing and London offices and wherever our other remote employees are…)

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Thank you.

Technorati Tags: voxeo, voiceobjects, voicexml

As I mentioned previously, I (Dan York) participated in a webinar sponsored by Speech Technology Magazine back on November 13th where several of us from different vendors participated in a roundtable discussion of hosted speech solutions. The archive of that webinar is now available for viewing. Here’s the abstract:

BUSINESS VIEWPOINT: HOSTED SPEECH SOLUTIONS Join Speech Technology magazine as we deliver our first live round-table Web event, featuring four hosted speech solution providers. Executives from Angel.com, Convergys, Tellme, and Voxeo will share their views on different hosted models, benefits to customers, value-added services, and much more. This Web event is one that should not be missed!

It was a fun event to do and I think you’ll find some of the questions and answers quite interesting and informative. I look forward to doing some more of these events in the future.

If you have any questions coming out of what you hear there, please feel free to leave them as comments to this blog post – or email me directly.

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider:

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Thank you.

Technorati Tags: speech, speech tech magazine, voxeo, angel, tellme, convergys, hosted ivr, ivr, voicexml

In truly strange bit of coincidence, all the members of Voxeo’s Office of the CTO (OCTO) are winding up down in Orlando next week. RJ and Chris Maxwell are there normally, of course, and both are in town next week. Dan Burnett (Atlanta) is traveling down for some meetings. Wei Chen (San Jose) is coming in for some SIPMethod work and to introduce a couple of our developers from China to the Orlando staff. And then I (Dan York) have a number of meetings – and I haven’t been down to Orlando recently so it made sense to be there in person. (Hmmm… sunny warmth of Orlando or cold, grey, December days of New Hampshire? You pick… )

Ironically, this wasn’t really any great plan… we just all separately approached RJ interested in going down next week. However, the end result is that it will be great to have us all in one place for the first time ever. Some good things will definitely come out of that…

And needless to say, my video podcasts for next week will have a very different backdrop!

Where are you planning to be March 3-5, 2009? As eComm conference organizer Lee Dryburgh recently announced in an email to fans of the conference, we here at Voxeo recently joined in with Voxbone, Skype, GIPS and MetaSwitch as a sponsor of the Emerging Communications Conference (eComm) coming up March 3-5 in San Franciso. We were further delighted to see Ribbit and Jaduka sign on as sponsors as well. We look forward to seeing a few more sponsors signing on as well.

As readers of this blog know, we travel around a good bit and speak at pretty much all the major industry conferences. eComm is a bit different from most all the other conferences, though. For starters, it’s a smaller conference… and it’s just that… purely a “conference”. No massive exhibit floor. No multiple different tracks of presentations. Just one large room with one stage and lots of 15-minute presentations from people who are out on the bleeding edge of communication. It’s a great opportunity to meet and socialize with the people who are truly defining what our future communication infrastructure will look like. The tools we use… the networks we use… and also the ways in which we communicate.

As a member of the eComm 2009 Program Advisory Board, I can personally tell you that the lineup of eComm 2009 speakers is fantastic. The quality of the proposals was excellent… and we’ve got a really good mix coming together in the schedule (still under development). If you are interested in what is going on out on the “bleeding edge” of communication, I’d strongly encourage you to attend eComm. It should be an excellent event. You will be able to register soon (and can sign up to be notified of when registration will open).

We are glad to join with others in the industry in sponsoring eComm and we look forward to joining into the event in March. Hope to see some of you there!

Technorati Tags: voxeo, ecomm