[PhoneGnome]

We keep hearing that developers want open APIs to telco customers. We give it to them, and we get nothing. Where are the developers?

We have open and FREE APIs here: PhoneGnome API

We even offer a User Contributed Libary as a place to publish your home-grown apps here: PhoneGnome API - Contributed Files

It seems there are a lot of talkers out there and few walkers. What's the deal?

We even offer no cost methods for selling tightly integrated Voice 2.0 applications and services to anybody with phone service and broadband Internet (like the IOTUM service, your own PSTN termination or origination service, etc.) It costs nothing to get started. See: PhoneGnome - Developers

Where are the Voice 2.0 innovators?

[Paul.C]

I don't think I'm part of the group you're addressing, but I was curious and took a look.

I can see there being a couple of issues:

a) I didn't know that you had an API, before reading your post. You might want to make more noise about that on your public & user websites.

b) the disclaimer probably needs to be reworded. It basically says 'bits of this are probably broken, other bits may break in the near future, don't use it for anything that matters'. Doesn't exactly encourage people to invest their time...

"DISCLAIMER: The current state of this interface is experimental and alpha. The specifications are very likely to change. Your feedback is appreciated, but we can make no guarantees about reliability, robustness, or longevity. Use at your own risk."

Perhaps you can kickstart things with a good skeleton or two? it's heck of a lot easier to tweak existing source than write something from scratch.

Paul

[PhoneGnome]

Thanks for the feedback. There are some examples in the user contributed library area I menteioned: PhoneGnome API - Contributed Files

The API shown on the API site: PhoneGnome API are useful for loosely coupled applications/features. We also have deep integration APIs for partners and developers to participate with tightly coupled applications, that certainly don't have the 'free and experimental' disclaimer: See PhoneGnome - Developers

We offer all of this ont he site, including the Extensions API Overview (PDF) for an overview of the partner application integration capabilities of the PhoneGnome platform: http://www.phonegnome.com/ExtensionsAPIOverview.pdf

If you have a wonderful Voice 2.0 product idea, our platform makes it practical (meaning economically viable) to deliver it to any home phone in the world.

This is the platform integration that Tellme and iotum use (see O'Reilly article about this O'Reilly Network -- Plugging iotum into PhoneGnome)

The lack of application of these deep integration possibilities are what we find particularly astonishing. While everyone else seems to go out their way to keep third-parties out and lock down their systems (and customers), PhoneGnome is the only VoIP service that so dramatically embraces and encourages participatioin by third-parties, yet few seem to want to take advantage of it (our terrific current partners, iotum, Tellme, and Vocal-net not withstanding).