I came across
this today about a new VOIP flash component via
Ryan and I have to say it is very, very interesting. Having lived out in the US for the last 12 months I've been heavily reliant on
Skype for calls back to the UK to keep in touch with friends and family. Now while Skype works well (ahem apart from the
last little incident) there is a setup cost attached to it in terms of it needs to be
installed on your PC or MAC, and as I move more and more to an online
ecosystem for my communication and applications I find myself less
tolerant with being tied to my particular pc/mac for an application.
Whether it be writing blog posts (I'm composing this in
Google Docs), reading blog posts (I use
Google reader), e-mail (
Gmail and
Hotmail), storing data (I use
BingoDisk
) I find more and more that I will opt to use an online application
that I can access from anywhere with an Internet connection.
So
hence my interest with a VOIP application that is deployed as flash, as
to me this is not only incredibly powerful, but fits my criteria for
roaming use. I think I have to agree with Ryan that this offering from
Ribbit
could well be a game changer, adding more cowbell to the VOIP market
and Skype should certainly be looking over their shoulder (or looking
to buy them).
From a user standpoint, it means no more
downloading setup files and going through the process of installing it,
you have it available to you from any machine that has flash (think
mobile as well). From a developer point of view, having the ability to
add VOIP to your application as simply as embedding a flex application holds all manner of new powerful communication options.
I look forward to having a play with it when it's released. Now my question is who's going to build the Silverlight version?