First, there was Google Voice. And all was good, and not so good. But it showed that there is a better way to manage voicemails than to listen to 15 in a row just to get to the one you care about.
Now, there is an alternative to Google Voice called Ribbit Mobile. And it too is very good. Ribbit Mobile is in private beta, but the first 500 people to sign up with the invite code “techcrunch” will jump to the front of the line.
Ribbit Mobile starts out by taking over your cell phone’s voicemail. You give it permission to do this by entering some codes it presents to you during the sign-up process. So Ribbit Mobile lets you use your existing number, something Google Voice also recently added as an option. Once you set up your voicemail, and record a new greeting message, you can get started.
All voicemails will now get routed to Ribbit Mobile and stored there. Every time you get a voicemail, it appears in your Ribbit inbox, where it can be played on your computer. It is also transcribed (using Phonetag/Simulscribe’s speech-to-text engine). And it is pretty accurate. It was even able to understand and transcribe a message left by my three-year-old son. Every transcribed voicemail also gets sent to you as an email.
So there is really no need to listen to a voicemail again. But you can retrieve them the normal way, by calling an assigned number you can save to your phone. The one drawback I found is that I no longer see the notification on my phone showing how many voicemails I have.
Ribbit also lets you route calls to any number, including Skype and Ribbit’s own Java phone which rings in your browser so you can take calls on your computer. It does not yet, however, let you assign different actions to different callers (put my wife through to my cell, put anyone not in my contacts through to voicemail).
When you are online, you can also sign into various social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr) and see recent Tweets, status messages, and photos from the person who is calling. It’s very Xobni-like in that way.
Soon there will be an iPhone app, and the ability to send “shouts” to Ribbit Mobile members. A shout is a voicemail that doesn’t actually ring the person’s phone, it just goes straight to voicemail, where it is then transcribed and sent along as a regular text message. Why talk, when you can shout?
Ribbit Mobile will launch with a free basic package, and then start charging between $10 and $30 a month for more services, such as human transcription. Ribbit was acquired by British Telecom last year for $105 million, so it’s not going anywhere.
One day, we’ll get a service like Ribbit Mobile or Google Voice that actually is built into our phones.
Not open to Australia, as always
Not open to the Netherlands, as always xD
Comm’n, get used to it… and be happy that one day the USA will go (officially) bankrupt and you’ll be save compared to them
:P:P (Be happy about being save… not about them already being bankrupt for ages and not acknowledging it.)
Then who will save you from Hitler, part 2?
Well, it’s good that you got us invite codes. Can’t wait to try this out.
If apple lets the this app before the gvoice app, it’ll clearly show apple’s motives for rejecting gvoice, the didn’t want the iphone to become a google phone with so many google apps.
I don’t see another explanation, since both services are almost the same.
Thank you kindly… I entered it immediately. Looks like they are manually doing the account activation.
I look forward to comparing with Google Voice, which I love.
tw
Why don’t carriers like Sprint and T-Mobile get a clue and offer services like this themselves?
Why can’t this be native to the iPhone or Android?
Um, Google Voice support is almost native level on Android right now.
Youmail.com has offered this service for a while and the transcription function is actually far better than google voice, but I still have to stay with google because well…it’s free…and it’s going to eventually integrate with everything google (android, wave, gmail, etc.)
Someone would have to offer some pretty amazing features for me to pay for a service that google offers for free.
Thumbs up on YouMail.com – the free version is excellent and packed with features. Hard to tell how Ribbit is any better or even different. Just more new, I guess.
I’m with Andy… If you’ve got an Android phone, the integration with GV is just plain… well… slick!
Gonna be hard to beat.
YouMail.com has great transcription AND great you callers by name!
Voicemail is all but deal, who leaves voicemails anymore???? It’s txt msgs and emails.
my thoughts exactly. I get maybe… 2-3 voicemails a month on my cell. Heck I rarely even use the phone capabilities of my iPhone anymore. I think I use like <100 minutes a month!
Google Voice has been good to me. We’ll see how Ribbit compares. Way to step up with the hook up TechCrunch.
Really!? Uhm, flex developers were playing with this a long time ago. I am slowly losing faith in TechCrunch. Their transcription service was people listening and typing, has that really changed? Ribbit was cool for their flex promo, but that was a year ago. My opinion… going no where. Game set match.
More than a year ago, Ribbit posts have been on TC since 2007, they’ve been “Coming Soon” since then.
BTW – iPhone is a kick butt platform, but that isn’t all the people, nor is it all the business’s. Another attempt to gain interest, over and done.
I put my name on things, for better or worse.
Ribbit Voice is already on iPhone. Well …. on virtual iphone http://mirpod.com/mirphone
If I could get my voice mails transcribed AND still have the iPhone visual voice mail functionality I would most definitely would pay for the service – but not more then about $5-$10 a month. I would want the voicemail transcriptions to be sent to me via sms. I so hope they will do this (if it is technology possible). This sounds very cool.
Careful what you ask for… I got a long-winded voice mail the other day, which then sent me a about a dozen SMS messages (had to break it up, obviously.) Immediately went and turned that feature OFF!
YouMail has an iPhone visual voicemail and does basically perfect transcriptions that show up in the app or by e-mail. Love it. Not free for the transcriptions but worth it because they’re damn good.
Spinvox and Phonetag came well before Google Voice and Ribbit. No doubt there’s also others. Those latter 2 are not a new category, but are merely newer points in an evolution of existing functions and technology. To consider the bigger picture we should include the real history here and stop claiming that Google invented something entirely new. The intro on this story seems hyperbolic and left me wanting, sadly.
For one this seems a little too sales pitchy by TechCrunch to just be a standalone article and not have any specific business interest in this company. The article’s about as greasy as a 3AM infomercial.
Also, maybe I’m missing something, but this is not only already being done, but what’s wrong with just listening to your voicemails? Do I really need a voicemail and a text version? Seems overkill to me. Plus, on the iPhone you can already listen to your voicemails in any order you want.
Again maybe I’m missing some awesome feature, but on the surface this seems like a total bust. How they got acquired for $105 million is beyond me, but then again idiots will throw tons of money at tech companies even though they have no idea if there’s actually any real value. Just look back at the late 90’s when Yahoo paid billions for Mark Cuban’s Broadcast.com. Then they let it die just a couple years later.
I totally agree with you. Actually, why would some one send the voice mail as text after converting it to text using not-so-comprehensible text-to-speech conversion while the voice mail itself can be attached in the email as WAV file ?
All latest high end phones are capable of receiving email along with attachments and can play WAV files!
I prefer seeing my VMs as text…I have this one dunce friend who will leave 3 minute voicemails if he needs something as simple as borrowing a drill. If I have it as text I can just scan his ramblings and see the point: dan needs the drill.
How come it not open to any of the asian countries. wow man i would have save a lot.
Can rabbit do something about it and if they are doing, When with that be?
How come it not open to any of the asian countries. wow man i would have save a lot.
Can ribbit do something about it and if they are doing, When with that be?
So Ribbit mobile will not be free service, hello Techcrunch do not say bad things about Google voice. Google Voice is and will be free service.
I’ve used YouMail for a while now – works great with a good feature set for free – you pay extra if you want the messages transcribed. No need to pay for something like this.
Chiming in to clarify a few things:
(1) There will be a free ‘plan’ for Ribbit Mobile. There will be a paid ‘plan’ for Ribbit Mobile (RM). You will have a choice, as we agree, baseline service should be free. The paid plans are geared to folks who need all the bells and whistles as they cannot afford to miss a call (think doctors, consultants, realtors, etc).
(2) Voice to text *has* been around for a while and I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t find it in your corner market eventually. Several companies offer it, including carriers. It is a solid feature in RM, but not the only feature. There are absolutely similarities to Google Voice (GV), and if you are using GV and love it – you won’t need RM. Sure, give it a try as there are invites available, but think it an either/or, you would not use both.
(3) Ribbit Mobile was built on our Platform – the platform supporting open APIs and with direct access to the phone switch (thanks to BT). It makes for a great developer environment if you wish to communications enable your application (in fact, we are having a hackathon styled event today at Mission Bay Conference Center if you want to come over and kick our tires).
It is the same platform we developed the Ribbit Wave conference gadget on, and there will be more apps…the goal is to show through apps like the conference gadget and Ribbit Mobile that *anyone* can take our API and build their own ‘phone company’. If you want to. BT uses it. AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, etc can use it. So can you. Build your own Wave gadget. Build your own Google Voice. Or let other developers do this and just use what they produce.
We are not just building a mobile application, we are trying to change the entire telecom industry.
Kristie,
there are a lot of people out there who really like experimenting with voip services so i do not think it will be all GV or RM. a lot of people will use both. expecially since you hook into skype, msn, and gtalk you will attract the ‘use everything VOIP’ crowd.
initially during the free trial i believe there will be a lot of people using GV for inbound public number since they can pick the area code and RM for most outbound since you have SIP device support and allow to spoof caller ID. and they continue to find other ways to mix the services.
i do like what i see so far i have to say. i hope that you open more in terms of SIP. for example to allow inbound SIP calls for use of third party DID’s and other integration beyond your current VoIM and skype links. this would really give you and edge versus GV.
Tom, lots going on under our hood and more to tell for sure…but mums the word on the next bits we are working on as my engineers would kill me if I said more.
Had not considered folks using GV for inbound public number and RM for most outbound. Interesting thought for sure and will try it out on my own RM and GV accounts. Ha.
But hear you loud and clear on the wish list.
ribbit supports SIP devices which also makes this a solid replacement for a POTS or phoneline replacement service like vonage or cable company phone. although they seem to be limited to numbers in new york and California right now.
lets see if GV start to support SIP devices now as a reaction.
one thing i do wish ribbit would change is that caller get ‘the person is being located’ message in place of a ring tone. i really do not like advertising to my caller the phone service i use and would therefore really prefer that they got a traditional ring tone.
whats the point of a “shout”? Just send the person a text or email
Michael, if I want to leave someone a message, but do not want it to ring their phone and disturb them (maybe it is 3am and I had a new feature I want to let my CTO know about), I can call his phone using Shout and it will leave a message for him that he will get when he wakes up.
What about HulloMail http://www.hullomail.com/? It’s not in beta and it works beautifully.
I’m sensing a trend with these grassy field background menus:
http://www.ribbit.com
http://www.mint.com
http://www.piknik.com
First time I’ve actually gotten one of the invites. this is rather exciting.
do they just manage voice messages or we can manage SMS too ?
i want give mobile number to everybody and if they call me or SMS me my second numbers receive them
i think its possible easily, i hope google add it
Just a quick update on the invites, looks like we blew through the 500 offered to TC readers in the wee hours this AM, but do continue to sign up if you want a beta account to Ribbit Mobile. I just ordered more hamsters, and we will continue to release invites as the wheels spin.
Cheers.
I am waiting for my invite.
I think I will stick with Skype. Cheaper and easy to use. Plus Skype has every feature you could ever want.
more competition = better for us…:)
pls try to send me an invite..
Thanks
Percy
I have some Ribbit Mobile invites available at http://bit.ly/QGGWZ.
I’d love an invite. ThX