This week Web 2.0 Expo storms into New York, and many innovative companies will make news announcements. Among them will be BroadSoft, which will announce its Voice Mashup Contest winners.
BroadSoft and Ribbit really got the telecom industry and Web developers thinking differently about voice services this year. While telecom service providers have watched their margins become thinner as their services increasingly become commoditized, these two companies began to push voice as an application that can be added to other business and consumer applications.
So, here’s a short wish list of voice mashups I would like to see:
· An iPhone VoIP application. There’s been plenty of blog chatter that we can expect as many as 100 VoIP apps for the 3G iPhone. Wouldn’t it be great for one of those apps to be carrier-grade for secure business use?
· Sticking with mobile devices for a sec, how about a mobile VoIP & IM app for social networking. Nimbuzz.com has an API that’s just waiting for a money-making VoIP platform.
· Open-source CRM applications. Telecom service provider SimpleSignal recently announced its success in delivering a mashup of salesforce.com with BroadWorks to SMBs, proving the productivity enhancements that come from adding calling features to CRM. So let’s see more voice mashups with open-source CRM apps like vtiger and SugarCRM.
· Online collaboration tools. Anyone who has used Basecamp for project management and collaboration has probably had to call one of the team members or participate in a conference call. Shouldn’t you be able to make that call or launch that conference from within the tool? Adding calling features to Basecamp, Zoho or Google Apps makes these online tools vastly more useful.
What voice mashups are on your wish list?
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