Stardust Global Ventures

Reflecting back over 2008 I’ve tried to think of the things that we real highlights among close friends and colleagues in the industry. I’ve come up with two highlights. Let me tell you what they are first, then I’ll explain why they’re highlights.

First from my friends Pat Phelan and Florian Seroussi, we saw TwitterFone. It’s an interesting little integration between Twitter and the telephone network that let’s you call a number and post a “tweet” from your phone. Speach to text in a nice little integration package.

From other friends Stuart Henshall and David Beckmeyer we saw Phweet. It’s a different sort of integration between the telephone and Twitter that lets you set up a conference call via Twitter.

Side Note: Read Stuart’s great story about Phweet and his year end wrap post My Year End Review and Thanks).

Why are these two apps important you ask. Let me explain.

I believe the interface to computerized resources is changing in the months ahead. I believe the old fashioned GUI is going to give way to a new VUI (Voice User Interface) as speech-to-text and text-to-speech conversion engines get faster, more efficient and cheaper. TwitterFone exemplifies the prototype of how the next generation of Communications Enhanced Business Processes will operate. While this app might seem silly to people who aren’t Twitterholids, it demonstrates how users will be able to interact with voice to corporate systems for placing orders, supply chain management and any number of business activities in the future. As the work force becomes increasingly mobile and requires new tools to be productive, this technology shines a real light on that road to the future.

Phweet does something else that’s new. For telephony geeks, we remember that before SS7 signaling was implemented to take phone network signals out of band to a separate network, signaling frequency (SF at 2600 Hz) was carried within the voice badn. SS7 took signaling out of band to a separate packet network. Phweet also moves signaling out of band, but to the Internet. And not just PSTN signaling. It’s an example of using IP-based Internet technologies not just as a collaboration tool for ad hoc conference calling, but for using IP as a command and control channel for network resources in a new way.

These are two new solutions we saw in 2008 that excite me still because they demonstrate where we are headed in communications technologies rather than hang on to the past. They don’t make any effort to prove VoIP is something new (it isn’t). They don’t cling to the past. They simply integrate pieces of the past and present in simple elegant ways that demonstrate how we’ll be using communications systems and resources in the future.

That’s a big deal. Kudos to Pat, Florian, Stuart and David for showing the gloabl communications community what can be built when you simply have a rock solid idea and a thought leadership mindset on how the future will evolve.