Voice is still the killer app – only this time it has gone beyond the phone

I bailed on SF New Tech last night, and this was very much to my own dismay. I really wanted to check out the demo by hot-shot start-up Ribbit . Why? They are pretty cool… Why?

Everyone wants to go with the new cool technologies. Especially in mobile…

But sometimes it takes extraordinary vision to make the seemingly oldest of technologies into something extremely innovative and compelling.

Ribbit offers an open platform that allows anyone to integrate voice into any service or applications. Any use case that requires making or receiving calls through Web or other applications such as desktop widgets (or mobile applications). I found many an example of applications of Ribbit on Ribbit’s “Idea Wall”. Here are some of my favorites:

Voice powered singing audition for music website

Online Dating Web site. What else can you (or your suitors) display besides your interests and a photo-shopped picture of yourself? Your voice, of course!

More impressive magic occurs when Ribbit is combined with really sophisticated technologies such as voice-to-text. This is what Salesforce.com has done by integrating Ribbit into an application that transcribes test to email, SMS, or simply displays it on the SAAS Web site.

So I conclude with a big thumbs up for Ribbit!