…and “yes,” both the name “2600Hz Project” and “Whistle” are references to the first “phone hacks” (back in the 1960s), which used a plastic whistle that came as prize in boxes of Cap’n Crunch cereal in order to generate audible tones (2600Hz) that spoofed the network into providing free long-distance service. Today, as co-founder Darren Schreiber explained to the Meet-up attendees, the company has found that today’s developers appreciate the availability of freely circulated software that can control the popular open source call processing resources, specifically FreeSwitch, but also including the Asterisk and YATE libraries.

Instead of a plastic whistle, the Whistle suite uses other tools of the trade. OpenSIPS, an open source rendition of a SIP Server, provides for basic call control. Flexibility and scalability are ensured by the use of computer languages and database schema that are relatively new to the telephony domain. The system employs the document-oriented CouchDB. As an open source product from Erlang Ltd, its scripts and programs are written in Erlang, which is described in company-provided documentation as “a general-purpose concurrent programming language and runtime system.”

Then there’s Chef, “an open source systems integration framework” from OpsCode. It is process automation software that allows developers to write source code that describes how they want each part of the infrastructure to be built, then it applies apply those descriptions to the servers. Thus it creates a fully automated way to add or take away servers.

I’m told by the folks who anticipate using Whistle for some heavy-duty call processing that direct access to AMQP (the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol) is also the secret to scaling, right-sizing and load-balancing. As Zhao Lu, organizer of the SFTelephony Meetup explains in his evaluation of the meeting, “Direct access to AMQP will be extremely useful for some of my use cases.” Presumably, granular control of message queuing is especially interesting when the call volumes (need to establish and tear down calls) are hard-to-predict or highly variable.

All in all, I was amazed at how quickly things are changing in the world of telco app development and multi-modal mashups. Whistle, which is designed to run in a highly-distributed way can be instantiated locally (or on premises) or in any number of hosted platforms (for example Voxeo’s Tropo, Twilio or Amazon Web Services EC2). With its JSON-based API’s it can make easy access to highly-reliable, open source call processing and voice processing resources a reality.

The video showcases a number of ways that a speech-enabled IVR (interactive voice response) system can be integrated into a positive user experience. The rapid identification of a caller, coupled with quick discovery of the purpose of a call, is just the beginning. The initial triage (problem diagnosis and remediation) was all done without the assistance of live agents. Later, when “Kurt” called back for follow up, he was transferred to a customer service rep who obviously had access to his personal information and details of the current trouble ticket.

This type of use case – indeed the introduction of RightNow’s Voice Experience Manager – marks an important development for enterprise customers who struggle to strike a balance between the reality that a large percentage of customer care interactions are still carried out over the telephone and the equally valid reality that “the customer is always on!” (meaning that the next interaction may take place over email, text message, online chat or blog post).

The Voice Experience Management Suite ultimately takes advantage of RightNow’s cloud-based architecture which, according to RightNow, houses over 6,000 pre-fabricated voice applications. The infrastructure is built on a VoiceObjects management platform (now part of Voxeo). These core capabilities are packaged by RightNow as its “Personalization Engine.” It is driven by RightNow’s foundational CX (customer experience) platform and is the mechanism that enables the voice response system to provide dynamically generated information for each caller.

The automated system feels very responsive because it keys off of previous inputs (through a variety of channels) as well as indicated preferences and interaction history.
The “intelligent transfer” is an illustration of RightNow’s newly released “Dynamic Agent Desktop.” It is the product of a partnership with SimpliCTI Inc and integrates with the Cisco UCCE and Avaya Elite call center solutions.

Following Prywes’ vision, NetXentury launched its flagship product, WebForPhone, in 2001 with the anticipation that people would find it more natural to use their voices to interact with Web sites than to keep pounding away at terminals. Nine years on, WebForPhone been successful at building a roster of speech enabled services for its targeted business demographic in a multiplicity of vertical industries. Its Web site (now dubbed “A Service of Voxeo Corporation) has pre-coded apps for ticket vendors and sports teams, healthcare providers, financial service providers and fund managers, and retailers. All of the customers have engaged WebForPhone to “duplicate” their Web sites while adding voice.

In NetXentry, Voxeo has acquired a company with both an established product line and customer base and a “set of technical people with deep knowledge in delivering speech solutions,” per John Amein Voxeo’s senior vice president of mergers and acquisitions. To that end, Voxeo will be deploying NetXentry personnel to do tech support in the greater Philadelphia area.

This means that the lawyers (and investors led by Silver Lake) are prevailing and the prospect Skype operating a “cloud-based” platform for application developers and go-to-market partners is becoming slim. Meanwhile, we can look forward to a Skype handset and a few locked-down relationships with network operators like Verizon.

As Jason explains, “You can now run just about any Asterisk AGI application on Tropo.”

I like the name: “Tropo AGItate”. It refers to merger of Tropo with the Asterisk Gateway Interface (AGI). It is a key enabler for existing Tropo users to incorporate the multi-channel (voice, SMS, IM) aspects of Tropo with several instantiations of Asterisk. Have fun!

The OnStar service turns fifteen years old this month and is already available on more than 40 2011 model year vehicles from GM. In regulatory filings, the company claims 5.7 million subscribers (though many are taking advantage of the the fact that the company offers the service free-of-charge for the first year of ownership.

GM’s competitive spirit was sparked when Ford (largely with Microsoft promotional dollars) began aggressively marketing Sync in 2008. Together, the companies adding new features and functions as the driving public looks for hands-free, eyes-forward options for navigation, entertainment and communications. Earlier this year, through a partnership with Google, OnStar began offering “eNav”, which enabled subscribers to upload turn-by-turn navigation instructions to their vehicles based on a look-up on Google Maps.

Yesterday, GM execs announced that they the transformation from safety to social networking would continue with the introduction of new services that enable drivers to dictate and text messages or update their status on Facebook. They can also listen to posts from facebook thanks to text-to-speech synthesis.

As described in this article by Christina Rogers in the Detroit News, GM will aggressively promote the social and mobile aspects of owning a GM car. It appears to be part of the Verizon Wireless/Google camp when determining how to mashup of navigation, communications and vehicle control. Verizon has been serving as the core wireless network provider since the service “went digital” four years ago the links between smartphones and OnStar is the product of a partnership with Google. Few details were provided on the Facebook/OnStar mashup, but we will be monitoring the development closely. Today, after the “first year free” offer expires, GM offers OnStar on a subscription basis with prices varying from $299 to $399 per year.

As for Ford, it makes Sync available as a $395 option for selected models, but it is offered as a free feature for high-end automobiles. According to an article in Bloomberg, Ford said in January it plans to bring social networking, Web browsing and thumb controls similar to those on Apple Inc.’s iPod into 80 percent of its models by 2015.

Instead, eight months and a Skype IPO later, the “Call Phone” feature dramatizes the truly disruptive nature of Google’s telephony strategy. It’s no surprise at all that the service reached the million call milestone in less than 24 hours. That is just a fraction of the overall call volume on public networks and we all know how quickly people discover “free” ways to carry out communications that cost a nominal fee from alternative service providers (Directory Assistance served as the crash test dummy for the fee-to-free migration pattern).

If Gmail, Google Voice and Google Chat users stay true to form on the Google’s information freeway, we will see steady migration from alternative services like Skype Out and the numerous calling card services that charge pennies per minute. The steady improvement of the “Google App” on mobile phones and integration of Google’s library of applications with Android, Chrome and HTML5 program environments will further lower the barriers for users to stay inside Google while originating (within the confines of North America, at least).

Meanwhile, the steady improvement of voice control carries on, It makes the notion of free, mobile, speech-based search, find and communicate exclusively from Google (perhaps with an assist from Verizon Wireless) a formidable reality.

VUI Cloud (as the name implies) has brought a cloud-based or “on demand” engagement model into a domain that has historically been nearly 100% professional services. The home page features a “Try For Free” button which provides a way for visitors to gain access to the company’s White Papers and an ROI calculator for addressing the value of improving speech-based customer care.

But the real innovation between VUI Cloud is the use of a “Web API” as the connection to a cloud based resource that can monitor an existing IVR implementation in order to prescribe specific improvements based on analytics of “interaction points”, according to is database of successful implementations.

Of course there’s a human side to the VUI Cloud. The people behind VUI Cloud include Bruce Balentine and David Attwater, speech scientists from EIG; usability expert, Susan Hura; and Deborah Dahl, who has been very active in the W3C’s efforts to build standards around both voice and multimodal user interfaces. The CEO of VUI Cloud is Daniel O’Sullivan, an ex-Bell Labs speech scientist, who also founded Interactive Digital, which applies “Adaptive Technology” for use in self-service telephone calls.

We see VUI Cloud and its “Optimization as a Service” as a test-case for enterprise acceptance of a growing list of “cloud based” offers. By clicking-through a number of the “Performance Based Pricing” links, you find that VUI Cloud offers do-it-yourselfers a free “Developers License”. However, enterprise customers can expect to pay $4,500 for an initial evaluation, that includes four days of monitoring an existing IVR system in order to generate a detailed “Caller Behavior Analysis” report. After this initial engagement, VUI Cloud’s experts are available at a $1,200 day rate.

Beside, the ability to originate a phone call (or even a video chat) from “inside” an email client is a candidate for the “most demo’d” feature for the “Unified Communications” suites from Microsoft, IBM, Avaya and a handful of others. According to the “Google Operating System” blog post, Gmail users will be able to click on a “phone icon” which will open a “chat client” that includes a dialpad for originating a phone call. It will also illustrate the credit balance a Google Voice user has on his or her account. For those of us who have used Google Voice on an iPhone, the similarities sound pretty striking. You are presented with a landing page that features the keypad, but also provides one-touch access to Buzz, Gmail and “more”. The keypad captures digits and then initiates a a call that that ultimately goes over the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network). It’s pretty slick, and ultimately transparent to the user (except that a dialog box appears to say that it is originating a call from some third party’s number.

These are by-no-means “stupid phone tricks.” Google is making its point that “voice services” are an integral part of Web-based offerings and that the Web extends from desktops to smartphones to POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) on a natural, as needed, basis.

The service puts the lie to concerns that incumbent telcos would squash IP-Telephony in an effort to preserve traditional toll charges. It recognizes that multinational, multi-site companies have huge financial incentives to avoid paying the tolls and taxes associated with international calls (just like individuals have been doing for years, using Skype, Fring, Truephone or other VoIP carriers).

In addition to cost savings, BT markets OneVoice Ribbit 1.0 as a feature-rich single-number service. Each user will have a single “direct dial number” that is associated with multiple phone lines. Most commonly the list will include that person’s business line, wireless phone, residential phone or a “softphone” in Web browser. Users can designate which phones should be involved for both inbound and outbound call handling.

As for the features and functions that should be important to corporate customers. Phones (endpoints) can be added or changed by users through a Web site. In addition, there are a number of (now) time-tested features that employees will find attractive, including the ability to view call logs and manage voicemail, which includes voicemail-to-text transcriptions. Transcribed messages are delivered a text to either an email address or a mobile phone in the form of SMS. In both cases, the message includes a way to listen to the original message, in the very likely instance that transcriptions contain errors or are hard to decipher. The full list of features is available here.

BT acquired Ribbit for $105 million in July of 2008. It was an act of faith and courage bolstered by confidence that the parent company could harness the creativity of a generation of developers whose sensibilities were not borne out of the Bell System. As the list of features and functions indicate, the Ribbit crew realized early on that phones could do more, and they focused on what the old guard (like me) would call “single number/find me-follow me” offerings.

With a rich set of tools for Web services development and a general trend toward moving all sorts of media streams and activity streams into the cloud, Ribbit’s biggest challenge was to narrow the set of offerings to services that individuals would use frequently in the office, at home and in between. In this respect it is often compared to Google Voice, but the affiliation with BT and the incorporation into OneVoice means that BT’s technical salesforce can bring a BT branded solution to its customer base. That should be a clear advantage over Google, but only time will tell.