The Joy of Flex

Wednesday 4 pm. History is they were founded in 2005, funded by Alsop Louie in 2006, and launching in October 2007. RibbitPhone is a fully functional Flex-based phone, make and receive calls, runs on top of Flash Player 9, for the user there is nothing to download and install other than the Flash Player. Most importantly it is a component that you can develop with and insert into your own applications.

Chuck demoed the RibbitPhone component running in a browser. It has visual voicemail and looks like the iPhone in other ways too. There were a few false starts but eventually it actually worked — he called someone in the audience, then someone else called him. Cooooool.

Why a component? enables phone calls, adds calling contacts and voicemail into any Flex app. You could put a phone widget into the sidebar of your blog. You could add it to an ecommerce site like 1-800-Flowers so you could call in to place the order from your browser.

API: makeCall(), answerCall(), getMessage(), playMessage(), lookupUser(), addContact(), findContact(), getAllFolders(). Events: callConnected, callHungup, incomingCall, foldersLoaded, messageLoaded, contactAdded, contactLoaded, userFound. Distributed as a SWC with all the libraries you need. Dropping the SWC into your Flex project will include all classes you need to work with.

Ribbit is SIP-compatible, SIP proxy is at sip://sip.ribbitphone.com, Ribbit handles signal and media conversion, and firewalls and NAT issues. See developer site at developer.ribbitphone.com.

The component will be available on Sept. 3. Submit your request for an appID starting today. There will be a limited pre-release of about two dozen developers. Want to make sure that those participating will get as much attention as possible from them. Public beta release will be October 3.

Demo of RibbitPhone component integrated into TileUI.

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