Rebtel Blog

Focus on Mobile Web

A new day and a new post from San Francisco. This time the topic will be on one of the presentations from the actual conference that I found generally interesting, but particularly from a Rebtel perspective.

The session was entitled Mobile Ajax and the Future Web and was held by Daniel Appelquist. Daniel is senior technology strategist with the Vodafone Group based in London, UK, where he primarily works on Web and Internet projects and industry activities.

The first part of the talk (which I found most interesting) was a lot about the two different (and today separate) entities we refer to as “The Web” and “The Mobile Web” and how a convergence between the two is taking place.
In a (not too distant) future there will only be one Web when referring to mobile devices as well as regular laptops and desktops. Thematical Consistency, ensuring that content across all devices is provided coherently and consistently, will be ubiquitous and the standard to aim for. Thanks to devices like the iPhone (which naturally was mentioned as a groundbreaking device in this field), the task of obtaining Thematical Consistency becomes significantly easier.

Daniel also mentioned that today, mobile devices are slowly overtaking desktops and laptop based web usage (so cool). Mobile browsing is in other words seriously on the rise and with that device from Apple that came out last year securing a fourth place overall on the Internet browsing market share list with its 0.15%, we can get a hint of what’s to come. In as little as five years, the majority of the total worldwide web usage is predicted to be mobile (!).

A cool little detail during the talk, which felt very reassuring for us coming from someone like Daniel, was that he mentioned Rebtel (see the picture above) as one of the companies that truly are in the forefront in mobile technology and web. Thank you Daniel, you are a rock star!

Rebtel at web2.0 EXPO, San Franciso

We’re off to the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco later this month. According to their website, the expo will:

“…take the pulse of the Web ecosystem and look to its future, training a spotlight across the Web 2.0 universe to illuminate how the Internet Revolution is being created and delivered. Web 2.0 Expo is for the builders of the next generation web: designers, developers, entrepreneurs, marketers, business strategists, and venture capitalists, people who have experiences to share and a passion for learning–the hot new thing, lessons from failures, innovations and inspirations, and the practical applications of all of the above.”

We’ll be doing some microblogging from the event, so be sure to add us to your Twitter friends if you haven’t already. Or maybe we’ll even see you there - let us know!

Group Talk Review

Here at Rebtel, we encourage users of our service to give us feedback on what we can do better and what we’re doing well (flattery always welcome!). Naturally, it’s very nice once in a while to hear from you guys that the work we do is appreciated embraced and makes your lives easier.

As some of you might know, not too long ago we launched a brand new, really neat Facebook app called Group Talk . Group Talk allows users to set up conference calls with each other in a truly simplified manner. You don’t even have to be a Facebook member to join in on the conversation - how sweet is that?

Recently, Group Talk got some well-deserved attention from the wicked people over at the blog Facebook Applications . They write reviews on different, cool, and useful apps you can find on Facebook, and recently they wrote about us (woohoo!!). Here is a short snippet from the review:

“…for people like me living abroad with so many friends to call and so many hours spend in websites providing services like this application does, Group Talk is a really interesting application that lets me stay checking all my stuff in my Facebook plus get connected for free in some cases, or at really cheap rates, with a great quality of sound.”

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank the nice people over at Facebook Applications for the wonderful review (they gave us 4 out of a possible 5, woohoo again!). Thanks guys. Please keep providing all the Social Media and Facebook types like us and others out there with insightful reports!

Lastly, if you have written a review about our Facebook app, our service in general, or have any tips or suggestions on how we can make what we are doing better, please do not hesitate to send an email our way.

Until next time, have a wonderful week!

Tried-and-true is new at Jajah

We want to tip our hat to our friends at Jajah for the introduction of Jajah Direct. Those folks have done a brilliant job at making something that Rebtel has been doing from the start sound brand new and innovative.

What I’m talking about is free or low-cost international calls without the need for Internet access. Or said another way: Rebtel service as it’s been from day No.1.

And while we’ve always thought our service was innovative, it’s super nice when you get validation from a competitor that you really did break new ground and that all the other ways of making a VoIP calls are “old school.”

This concept of removing the barriers to unrestricted communication by providing the savings of an Internet call and the convenience of a telephone has been at the heart of Rebtel since our founding in January 2006.

We are firm believers that distance in the 21st century is a myth. It doesn’t cost any more to send email to a co-worker down the hall than to a co-worker on the other side of the world. And since Rebtel is using IP for your call the same should apply to voice services.

Today, Rebtel is hands-down the cheapest way to make international calls. If you know of a cheaper per-minute rate please let us know immediately and we’ll do everything in our power to beat it.

Here are just a few examples of highly trafficked routes from the U.S. and how Rebtel compares to Skype and Jajah (in U.S. cents per minute, calling to a landline phone):

And those kinds of low-cost calls can be made from 40 countries to anywhere in the world that has phone service.

But actually – we think that free is even better. And that’s why we created Smart Calls.

Yes – to make the international segment of your call totally free requires that you and your friends jump through a hoop or two – the old hold-on, hang-up, call-back dance. But anyone who has done it once or twice will tell you it’s not really all that complicated. Nevertheless, we always leave it up to our customers to decide.

But for anyone out there that still thinks our Smart Calls are too complex, keep an eye on our Facebook application Let’s Talk. You’ll soon be pleasantly surprised. At least we hope so.

Let’s Talk… about Rebtel and Facebook

Sorry it’s been so quiet on here - we’ve been hard at work on the next iteration of our Facebook app! And now it’s time to take a peek at some of our new features.

Fancy new dashboard

First off, we’ve renamed the app ‘Let’s Talk’ – because encouraging conversation is what we’re all about! After that, you might notice our snazzy new dashboard screen – imaginatively entitled ‘Home’. You can see your latest activity, view your balance at a glance, and quickly get more numbers for your friends.

Rebtel friendfinder

Maybe some of your Rebtel contacts are on Facebook and you don’t even know it! We’ve made it easy to match Rebtel contacts with Facebook friends with a single click.

Profile box

We’ve also updated the box that appears on your profile once you’ve installed the app. Your friends can quickly get a number to call you for cheap by hitting the big blue button under your user pic.

It’s also quite stalkertastic as your friends can see who you’ve been calling – and who’s been calling you. (Course, if you’ve got things to hide then you can change your settings so nobody knows what you’ve been up to!)

Behind-the-scenes action

We’ve also included a bunch of improvements aimed at reducing friction and easing user journeys through the app. We’ve made it easier for users to get numbers for several friends at once. We’ve enabled people to complete their signup within Facebook (previously they had to visit Rebtel.com), and we’ve enhanced a few things within the payment flow, such as making it easier for users to activate auto-recharge. We’ve also clarified our payment error messages so that, on the rare occasions when things do go wrong, our users can know exactly what happened and why.

What do you think?

Your opinions are invaluable to us, and we’re been delighted with the reviews, comments and questions you’ve been leaving on the application homepage. We always endeavour to answer as quickly as we can so feel free to comment either on Let’s Talk or on our user support forum.

So, your feedback is required: what do you like about Let’s Talk? What don’t you like? And what would you love to see in the next release? Tell us - it’s been great developing this app with and for you, so please, keep talking!

webex connect shoots for widgets

web-strategist, Jeremiah Owyang’s excellent blog, carries an interesting video interview with Shankur Iyer, who is VP of Strategic Initiatives at WebEx. WebEx, a recent acquisition by Cisco, provides enterprise netmeeting, conferencing and collaboration environments. The video is of interest if only because it points the way forward to what the web may become: a shared platform where functionality consists of numerous, widgetized tools. It’s my conviction that widgetized voice tools, such as we’re developing for environments like Facebook will have their role in the enterprise too.

where are the compelling VOIP applications?

Over at Skypejournal, Jim Courtney is reflecting on the scarcity of compelling VOIP applications and, indeed, mash-ups. Of course, his perspective is that of the rich mash up culture that exists around Skype Extras, but I have a hard time calling these “VOIP applications”. It’s clear, that the release of the Facebook API has caused a monumental shift, for us, at Rebtel too: we released our first Facebook Application in August and are now planning the release of a further release before October. For us, the question is, and always has been: how can we add value to our users’ experience of using VOIP? Our approach has always been to use VOIP technology in an invisible and transparent manner. Early on we decided that making calls tethered to computers or headsets was not a route we were going to take. The beauty of Rebtel is its simplicity: you use your mobile phone as you have always done, use your address book as you have always done. Simple and elegant. To us, enhancements are refinements of that basic proposition, not adding bells and whistles to what is a bloated product to begin with. It’s all very well that I can open a mobile browser page to initiate VOIP calls, but what if I don’t have 3G coverage? I have tried iSkoot and Jajah’s mobile offerings, but they fail where reliability of service is concerned, because none of those applications enable you to use your phone for what it was intended.

I think it is Jeff Pulver who raised the stakes by offering a reward for “cool” VOIP apps. It’s true, there is a quest for coolness here, coolness meaning anything that is not “Call Forwarding and/or Voicemail” in Jeff’s words. So, what would be compelling then?. Jeff writes:

(…) after listening to Brian Whitton speak, it became clear to me there is still a great opportunity to disrupt the communications industry, if for no other reason, than because of the amount of business processes in place at Verizon (and other incumbent Telcos) before a new service is deployed. In fact, in the time it takes for the financial analysts at Verizon work out the operating budgets for doing a voice over ATM rollout and the time engineering spends trying to justify the “risks” for deploying an IP Voice solution, the seed of a communications revolution could planted and sown. All it takes are like minded people who want to change the way we communicate and the guts to take on the status-quo. And what is better than the present time to reboot and restart the Internet Communications revolution?

Well, yes. However, rebooting in this business to us means giving people the easiest means to accessing VOIP from their ordinary phones. After all VOIP is but a technology for transferring Voice over IP: it’s not a service in and of itself. I would guess that more than 90% of mobile calls are initiated from our phones’ address books. Increasingly, people have free local minutes included in their calling plans. We figured it would be cool to turn those minutes into local calls, especially if you want to call internationally.

Sometimes I think “compelling” services are only compelling for those already in the know, the inner circle of VOIP watchers, so to speak. Twitter and Facebook are often mentioned, and Jeff mentions them too. If there’s one thing we’ve learned it’s that those services are so successful because they remove clutter and simplify things, while offering a wealth of access options to their basic service offering. It’s true, there’s a wealth of opportunity in VOIP, but it is through simplicity that the revolution will happen. Rebtel: simple stuff: use your address book to call your international contacts for next to nothing, or even free if you make smart calls. That’s cool enough for us.

google and grand central reprint your business cards for free

Om Malik reports that Google’s latest acquisition, GrandCentral has shifted its “numbers for life”. “Have one phonenumber you can keep for life” proclaims GrandCentral’s product information, but this, apparently is not exactly the case, as Om writes.

Judi Sohn, who edits WebWorkerDaily and has been a long time fan of GrandCentral got an email from the GrandCentral team letting her know that her number will be changed as of August 25, 2007. She was fuming, but not anymore: Google-owned GrandCentral (GOOG) will pay for reprinting her business cards.

Judi writes: “One number for life.” Not so much, huh?”
As I read her post and that of other recipients of GoogleGC’s email, it becomes clear how narrow the path is that web2.0 service providers travel. Because service and service delivery are now so very transparent, every change in service, especially if it contradicts promises about the product, as it does here, are all over the internet in a matter of hours. Gone are the days when companies could hide comfortably behind a facade. Users are now part and parcel of any product offered nowadays and will make themselves heard if the that product disappoints. A good thing though, that Google offered to refund the costs incurred in having to reprint business card that carried the GrandCentral number.

On a side note: Rebtel has received comments for having a relatively “difficult” product that necessitates a small change in calling habits: assigning a local number to a contact and then using that number as their phonenumber in you contact list. Also, the concept of smart calls (calling that’s free within your inclusive minutes, by asking you contact to hang up and call you back while you stay on the line) needs some time before peope actually start making use of it. Very important to us is the fact that the product is transparent and that we’re visible and active users of it ourselves. After all, disruption is in our blood…

what will be the impact of the recent outage on skype?

Over at Disruptive Telephony, Dan York writes about the impact of Skype’s recent massive log-in outage.

The seductive aspect of Skype is that it makes it very simple and easy to use the product. It has (at least for the moment) a massive directory of users. It has APIs that let it be readily integrated with other web sites and services. It’s easy to use… and I expect that probably many if not most users will simply go back to using it as they have always done once it comes back into full operation. People have short-term memories…

Certainly, Skype has become an infrastructure layer on the net, as so many services are built on top of it. It was interesting to see
how much functionality I was personally unable to use. Crazily, as I was still logged in to Skype through iSkoot on my cellphone, that was the only way I could gauge whether Skype was becoming available again. “Are my contacts there yet”. Skype’s prolonged unavailability also raises questions about reliability of such software, as it was not the service itself, but merely access to it that was disabled. Important to keep this in mind: it has convinced me, that adding a layer to control access to a VOIP service is not the way I wish to have my VOIP needs met. SIP based protocols are becoming more available now, and I consider that a good thing. Meanwhile, for my international telephony needs, I gladly trade add-ons and plug-ins for Rebtel’s elegant simplicity: assign local numbers to my contacts, call them using just my mobile phone, done. No web based software, no log-ins.

Trip advisor acquires “where I’ve been” facebook app for $3M

Inside Facebook brings the news that Trip Advisor has reportedly bought the “Where I’ve Been” Facebook application for $3 Million. Where I’ve Been was coded by Craig Ulliott and is said to have over 2,5 M users on Facebook. This puts the value of every W.I.B user at about $1.30… This is a news story comparable to the “island hype” surrounding Second Life 2 years ago. I’ve been toying with the idea of proposing to add functionality to the Reb Me Facebook app that would show the collective amount the entire Rebtel community takes from the mobile operators’ pockets by using Rebtel.