I’ve been dropping hints about our latest project (StyroFone) for the past few months. This week I had the chance to speak at ClueCon 2010 in Chicago to show it off a bit. We got a great response, both during and after the event, so I thought I would take a few minutes to post something here for those who are interested. Thanks to the great folks at FreeSWITCH for putting it on – wonderful event!

What is StyroFone?

StyroFone (henceforth referred to as simply “SF”) is a mashable, SIP compatible soft phone distributed as a browser plugin.  It isn’t a Flash phone, or anything like that.  We decided to distribute it as a browser plugin to provide persistence of voice connectivity from page to page, as well as to provide a better platform for mashups.

@zlu had a pretty good summary: @zlu #styrofone, takes the guts out of skype and puts in the browser!

At StarPound, we love our beer, and why not?  Let’s face it – when most people think about IP telephony and converged applications, they immediately think of beer.  We are no different.  So, one afternoon, Wei Wang (CTO) and I were at our local watering hole near the office discussing this and that.  Short version – a few beers later, we had conceived the idea behind SF, and started working on the prototype.

The phone app itself is fully SIP compliant, with full codec support (G.711, G.729, et al), echo cancellation,  and can be used with any SIP service provider or switch.

We have a few major goals in the design of the phone.

First and foremost, we wanted it to be seamlessly integrated into the browser.  By this, I mean that it should not disrupt or deter from the surfing experience.  It should augment it.   The phone should not be “intrusive”, but “supportive”.  Don’t want to see the phone?  It minimizes and resizes like Firebug.  We’ve also implemented things like customizable click-to-call capabilities (phone links on web pages are turned into links which popup the phone and start dialing the number for you).

Right now, we’re targeting Firefox/PC for the initial launch, but we’re going to expand that as quickly as possible to IE, and for Macs. And yes, we’re looking at the iPad as well.

The second goal was to ensure that the phone was “mashable”.  See the screenshot below for an idea of what we’re talking about:

So, a call comes in, and all of a sudden, you get to see cool things about that person, like CRM data, Twitter feeds, blog feeds, their Flickr feed, remote weather, etc.  You get the idea.

There is a full API as well, for controlling the phone (making calls, call control for conferencing, etc.).  This is extended into the widget area as well.  The widgets are all driven by what we call an “event bus”, so they can send and receive standard SF events, as well as their own custom events.  Widgets can communicate not only with the phone itself, but also other widgets.

The widget API can also be used to fully integrate into your PBX for voicemail management, user directories, etc:

We’re also incorporating browser sharing, so while you’re talking with someone, you can collaborate over the web together. If you want to bring another colleague into the collaboration conference (or even just a voice conference), you can just drag them into the phone.

StyroFone also has a TON of applicability within vertical markets.  Consider customer service and call centers.  How about your customers conversing with a customer service agent over voice/video/collab at the same time?  Yeah, it looks cool – can’t do a screenshot of that just yet, but trust me … it’s cool as hell.

We use SF for calls all the time internally at StarPound.  I even had a conference call at a local cafe over SF and local WiFi.  It pairs nicely with USB Bluetooth headsets as well.

We think this is all pretty cool stuff. However, what is probably even cooler than the phone, is the business model we are refining for it.  The phone itself will be freely available, so you’ll be able to download it and use it for personal use.  But our business model, we think, will allow us to offer a completely free phone service for subscribers.  When we say free, we don’t just mean SF-to-SF.  I’m talking about SF to PSTN, cell, etc.  A free global communications network.  This is our goal, although this will not be a day-one service.

There’s a LOT more to StyroFone than I have time (or authority) to discuss right now.  However, I will no doubt write more about SF as we move closer to the next beta cycle.  If you are interested, you can head to styrofone.com and apply for it.

Cheers.

44 unanswered voicemails.  That’s how many I had on my iPhone the other day when I came up for a little air after being heads down with our team on our upcoming new  release of the StarPound platform.  My StartupLounge email is full – I have no idea how many hundreds of unanswered emails are waiting for me there. If you are/were one of those 44 people, or one of the countless people who have tried to contact me via my StartupLounge email address – I’ll apologize en masse now.  I’ll also go ahead and tell you that most likely, your voicemail or email will be deleted without my reply.  It’s just too big of a hole for me to climb out of at this point.

So why I have been incommunicado lately, or as @Unblakeable puts it, apparently in the witness protection program?  We’ve been heads down working on the next release of our platform, and launching several new customers (including a Global Fortune 100 customer – whee!).  Oh, and talking with investors, growing our base of channel partners, and pulling more than a few all-nighters. Suffice it to say that “free time” is somewhat of a myth around our office these days.

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Sometimes, out of the chaos of business, great ideas emerge.  Unfortunately, you rarely have the chance to aggressively chase those great ideas in the here-and-now.

I’ll be blogging more about this soon, but we’ve been pretty busy at StarPound lately.  We ended Q4/2009 strong, including the deployment of our platform to solve some major problems for a Fortune 50 customer (largest global player in their industry).  But amid all of the frenetic activity in Q4, something else emerged.  A really, really cool thing that I’ve decided needs to be it’s own thing.

So, to cut to the chase – here is what I am looking for.  Hopefully, some of you may have someone in mind for this:

I’m looking for an energetic, startup-minded developer (C++, Javascript, AJAX, XHTML, CSS, widgets, maybe some PHP, MySQL, etc).  Some Java would be nice, but not required.  The technology is a very unique IP voice application.  I am willing to give this person:

• Fully paid 3-4 bedroom apartment, including utilities – we’ll eventually give you some roommates to work with
• Salary, albeit small, but there nonetheless
• Equity in the newco

This person needs to be here in Atlanta, and is ideally a junior level person and is looking for a cool startup opportunity.  This is an awesome chance to get in on the ground floor of something very cool and exciting.

If you have anyone in mind, you can reach me at sburkett AT star-pound-tech dot com (no dashes).

Cheers.

I haven’t exactly been the most prolific blogger as of late.  As some of you know from talking with me (or reading my tweets), we’ve been really heads down and focused over at StarPound these days – working very diligently on something – actually many things.  But one of them is the latest release of StarPound CORE 1.2 GA (General Availability).  I had actually been drafting this email for sometime, but was prompted to finish it when I received an “anonymous” Skribit suggestion from someone asking for an update on StarPound.

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We’ve been going non-stop lately with StarPound, and it has severely cut into my extra-curricular activities (including posting here on my blog).  The good news is that Twitter is there to help me out when I just want to toss a random comment out from time-to-time.

At any rate, we’ve published a few video tutorials on using the StarPound platform.  If you have an interest in telephony-enabled Internet applications, check em out.

The first tutorial provides a nice introduction to StarPound Studio, and shows you how to build a very simplistic application from start-to-finish.  The second tutorial builds upon the first one, and shows how you can very quickly (and visually) integrate with external web services/SOA.  Good stuff.

We’ll be adding some more videos soon which will cover more advanced topics, including my two favorites: how to build Jajah-like functionality in 15 minutes or less, and how we recreated Google’s Grand Central in just a few days.

We’ll also be diving into some of our vertical market solutions, and show you how our call open source center suite can be used to build call center campaigns in the cloud in just a few minutes.

On a semi-related note, I am pleased to announce that our upcoming January release will offer support for Freeswitch … a very cool platform if you haven’t seen it … as well as the latest release of Asterisk.

Stay tuned …

Cheers.

StarPound is on the move.  We have some big announcements that will hit the wire soon, including one that is going to send tremors through an entire industry.  Wish I could say more about it right now …

At any rate, the good news is that we’re hiring.  Job descriptions below – if you know someone that might be a good fit, I’d certainly appreciate any referrals.

Immediate opportunities (details for each are down below):

• Enterprise Project Manager
• Network Administrator
• System Administrator
• Business Analyst
• Java/J2EE Developer

StarPound provides an on-demand, open-source platform for enabling large enterprise customers to design, deliver and adapt communication-enabled business processes. Additionally, we provide an entire PBX and call center suite built on top of our core platform.

Successful candidates must be comfortable wearing a lot of hats in a fast-growth, emerging startup company (venture-backed).  And, they must be passionate about your job, and willing to do whatever it takes to be successful.  If you are interested, please visit our website (www.starpound.net) or contact Dottie Thornton via email with your resume (dthornton at starpoundtech.com).

Enterprise Project Manager

Requirements:

• Project reporting, monitoring, and milestone success on complex enterprise projects
• Experience within contact center, CRM, telecommunication services, or e-business industries is desirable
• Experience with web services, web integration is a plus
• Leadership and mentoring experience.
• Minimum 7 years relevant project management experience required.
• Excellent communication, presentation and interpersonal skills.
• Strong organizational and time management skills.
• Project Management professional (PMP) Certification a plus
• Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent Project Management work experience

Network Administrator

Requirements:

• 3+ years of professional experience in networking field
• One or more of the following industry recognized certifications (or equivalent experience)
  • Cisco CCIE (R/S, SP, Security, Voice, Storage)
  • Cisco CCNP, CCIP, CCDP, CCSP, CCVP
  • Juniper JNCIE (M/T, ER)
  • Juniper JNCIP-MT, JNCIS-M/T, JNCIS-ER, JNCIS-FWV
  • Foundry FNCNE, FNCNP
  • ISC2 CISSP
• Deep Expertise in at least one of the following areas:
  • Data Center Network Architectures and Design
  • OSPF, BGP, MPLS, QoS
• Highly Desirable Skills:
  • Advanced understanding of IP/MPLS communications theory, design and functionality – Advanced understanding of VoIP technologies, such as H.323 & SIP
  • Experience designing and implementing QoS standards and technologies across platforms to ensure strict service guarantees (SLAs) for Voice and Video.
  • Strong working knowledge of network management and testing tools (at a minimum ethereal/wireshark)

System Administrator

Requirements:

• 3+ years of experience required
• Linux, MySQL, load balancing routers
• Asterisk, shell scripts, cron
• Distributed architectures, Fault tolerant clustering
• SIP, telephony experience a plus
• Performance tuning

Business Analyst

Requirements:

• Experience within contact center, CRM, financial services, or e-business industries is desirable
• Minimum 3-5 years relevant experience required.
• Excellent communication, presentation and interpersonal skills.
• Strong organizational and time management skills.
• Experience with CRM systems and processes is desirable.
• Experience with process modeling tools is desirable.
• Must have strong experience with J2EE Middleware
• At least a basic understanding of BPMN

Java/J2EE Developer

Requirements:

• 3+ years of experience required
• JBoss, MySQL, JSF, Struts, Linux
• GWT, WSDL, XML, Eclipse plugin development
• Asterisk, VoIP, SIP, PBX, ACD, IVR, CTI
• VoiceXML, UML, BPMN, Model-driven development

Cheers.

The other day, someone wrote me an email asking me to explaining how StarPound’s platform compared to Asterisk.  After I replied, it occurred to me that it might be worth taking a moment to blog about this topic.

First, if  you aren’t familiar with Asterisk, it is the leading open-source software PBX and telephony package out in the marketplace.  They’ve done a remarkable job in creating something of enormous value.  I will go so far as to say I think Asterisk has quickly become an integral part of the open source enterprise stack.  Asterisk was created by Mark Spencer of Digium fame.

Asterisk is a telephony engine and toolkit.  Meaning you can use it as the underpinning of lots of really cool telephony apps.  You can use it as a PBX, a gateway, a media server, and even in call center contexts.

StarPound, while also an engine and toolkit, builds on top of toolkits like Asterisk.  StarPound consists of a visual business process modeling tool, and a suite of application servers that allow you to automate those processes.  For those processes that need to be “communication-enabled” (see: CEBP at Wikipedia), StarPound’s platform has telephony-related tools that tie into components at the Asterisk level.

StarPound relies upon external telephony engines like Asterisk to provide under-the-hood call control and media serving functionality.  Note:  We’ve done in-house integration and testing of FreeSwitch, and will be rolling out production support for that platform soon.

On top of all of these components, we have developed a suite of enterprise applications specifically aimed at call centers and enterprise PBX users.  These applications are incredible on their own merit, but also serve as great examples of the types of applications that can be built with the StarPound platform.  A lot of the confusion comes from people who equate StarPound as a “PBX in the cloud” company solely.  They think “PBX in the cloud”, and then immediately think Asterisk.

Even though we have a cloud-based PBX application, we typically don’t host it for individual companies.  That isn’t our model – that is the model of Vocalocity and others.  We are the type of company that powers another company that wants to be in that space.  We’ll have some big announcements to make soon on that …

So the short answer is, we are built on top of telephony toolkits like Asterisk and FreeSwitch, but that is really only a small portion of our overall capabilities.  StarPound is more accurately described as a software platform that automates business processes by turning them into web and voice services.  In fact, our PBX and call center applications are driven by, guess what?  Business process models automated through StarPound!  If you want to change something in your PBX or call center, you don’t fiddle with config files – you visually edit the “way” the application is supposed to work – the process model.

A great way to describe it  … with StarPound, you model what an application is supposed to do, not necessarily how it is supposed to do it.

Cheers.