Ribbit app brings Iphone to desktop

DESCRIBED BY one analyst as "A new type of phone company," Silicon Valley's Ribbit officially opens its doors today. And one of the first apps to use it is the AIR Iphone from Knoware.

Ribbit might like to think of itself as radical but it isn't. Basically, developers – and there are already 600 of them – have to build using either Adobe's Flex (for browser apps) or Adobe's AIR (formerly Apollo) for Mac or PC desktops.

The AIR Iphone is just as it seems. It a desktop application built with AIR which integrates Rabbit's VoIP technology so that users can make internet or regular fixed and mobile voice calls.

The only clever part about the AIR Iphone is that it mimics exactly the look, feel and UI of Apple's infamous fartphone. What Apple's lawyers will have to say about this is anybody's guess.

Ovum analyst, Brett Azuma, claims that Ribbit's openness to outside developers and its plan to offer new types of services could help it stand out from the likes of Vonage.

The AIR Iphone does incorporate one of Ribbit's more unusual facilities – known as Shout. This enables the user to record a voice message and then forward it as an audio attachment to an email. It's possible to then use speech to text conversion to avoid listening to the voice message entirely.

Another possible application touted by Ribbit is putting a phone facility inside a Facebook page. Sorry guys, Truphone has already done that.

All third party developer have to pay a subscription fee to Ribbit based on the number of users of their service. One aimed at Salesforce users cost about £12 ($25) per month per person. µ

See Also
Truphone offers free calls from Facebook