Over the past months, we have produced code solutions and videos on how to incorporate specific elements of Ribbit into your applications. We are starting a new ‘How To’ series on building applications while incorporating the Ribbit technology. So here is the first entry into the ‘How To’ series, coding a phone.
This video is broken up into 3 different parts covering getting started, adding Flex elements to the application, incorporating Ribbit, and then adding sounds and skinning your application.
This end to end solution will have you coding your own phone in no time. If you haven’t yet, download Flex Builder, the Ribbit SWC, and the Ribbit Code Solutions.
Check out the videos below!
 Code A Phone Pt. 1 & 2 |
 Code A Phone Pt. 3 |
 Code A Phone Pt. 4 |
It’s official, our Ribbit developer community has reached 4,000 registered developers. Up to this point, all perspective and active developers have signed up to code on our platform using our Flex Builder component. After a focused prerelease during August and September 2007, the Flex component (SWC) went public beta at Adobe MAX Chicago on October 1.
Our developers have done some amazing things — many featured in the developer site showcase (login to see more). It’s been a great pleasure touring the country (conferences and user groups in Seattle, San Francisco, LA, San Diego, Chicago, Toronto, Boston, New York and Atlanta) talking to many interested developers about the features of the Ribbit API.
Our strong community of developers have done a great job interacting with us and each other. Through our support forums, developers have shared issues, suggestions and feedback with us on the API and service. Developers have also worked with each other, sharing everything from dial tone sounds to feedback on several applications and projects.
As we begin to introduce our brand new and exciting Ribbit Voice components for Flash, a new breed of designer/developer will now be welcome in our community. While support for the Flex component remains a huge priority, new developers will have the option of building Ribbit apps using our drag and drop components in Flash CS3.
We’ll be announcing some great new features in the coming weeks to ensure that our first 4,000 and our next 4,000 developers AND designers in our community have some great tools and features to work with!
Since we have put out some ideas for AIR and Ribbit together, we thought we would provide some code solutions to get things kick started.
The first example is using the built in SQLite database. If you haven’t written any SQL before, this example will show you how to create, connect, insert, and query the local database. Here we are loading contacts into a list and then giving the option to save them locally. Once they are saved locally, you can delete from the local database and they will never be deleted from Ribbit.
The second example is a drag and drop from the operating system to your AIR application. This is a great feature and in this example you can drag and drop gif’s or jpg’s onto you AIR application to set a contacts personal photo.
These are just the beginning to building some great AIR applications that incorporates Ribbit’s great technology.
You can find the code solutions here.
For all those that couldn’t make it to our first Spawn event, we have put up several videos of the Ribbit Developer Platform team showing off our code solutions.
The videos cover how to make a call, answer a call, load contacts, adding a keypad component, and using Ribbit Shout. With these great videos and our code solutions, it is easier than ever to incorporate Ribbit into your applications.
Check them out!!!
What is your PRIMARY development tool for building Ribbit apps?
You can now sign up to be one for the first to design/develop with the Ribbit Voice Components for Flash.
http://developer.ribbit.com/flash
We will be selecting up to 50 developers over the next few weeks to participate in testing. Have at it and have fun!
If you have not see in it, we’ve got a video sneak peek at the components.
Exciting times for the Ribbit platform as we near the release of the Flash Component set. I’ve had the pleasure of testing (playing with) the first few drops of the component set from our good friends at Infrared5. The components are killer and I can’t wait to get them out to the first round of lucky developers here at FITC in Toronto.
The following is a little video I did showing just some of the capabilities of these very amazing components. If you are here at FITC, you’ll get to see a whole lot more at our booth and in my session on Monday afternoon.If you are interested in being considered for the pre-release, you can sign up at http://developer.ribbit.com/flash.
With Adobe AIR being released recently and with Ribbit’s great API to add telephony to applications, we would like to see what our developers can come up with these new technologies. If you are already building in Flex then instead of building the application for the web, you would build it for the desktop.
AIR has many cool features that make it different from Flex since it is running on the desktop and not in your browser. AIR includes a SQL Lite database so you can store all your Ribbit contact information locally. Once your desktop application has been launched, it can run in your system tray and listen for incoming phone calls and then alert you that someone is trying to reach you. Another great feature of AIR is local file access and drag and drop support. With this you could drag and drop photos to the application and then upload them as your contacts photo.
Here are a couple ideas to get started but we know that your ideas are limitless, so we look forward to what you come up with.
1.) AIR Rolodex – A way to capture all your contacts information and call them from your desktop. Great way to incorporate the SQLLite database.
2.) AIR Call Reminder – Ever forget you Mom’s birthday or forget to call to refill your prescription, then set this reminder with a phone number to pop up on your screen with a reminder and a way to call from your desktop. Great way to incorporate having your application running in your system tray.
3.) AIR Razr – Take this popular clam shell cell phone from Motorola and make a version for the desktop that can also play mp3’s and use them as ringtones. Great way to incorporate drag and drop from local files to set your ringtones and contact photos.
Not only would be building some of the first AIR applications enhanced with Ribbit, but you will be able to sell these applications through our online store called Amphibian which will be up and running in no time.
We would also love to hear your ideas and you can submit them to ideas@ribbit.com. Our forums are open 24/7 and we are here to support taking your ideas to the next level.
To get started, you can download the Ribbit API and some great code solutions at developer.ribbit.com.
Congratulations to Andy Powell for winning the Ribbit category in the 360|Flex API contest. Andy will not only receive the admiration of all, but he also wins a great Nintendo Wii package which includes the Wii console, games, and an extra controller.
Andy’s submission was called, Hotel Search & Call, and is a great example of incorporating Ribbit’s technology into a Flex application. Andy used Kayak’s hotel search to locate hotel information based on a selected criteria, MapQuest to map out the results, and Ribbit to call a selected hotel and make a reservation right from your browser. You can check out Andy submission in our Showcase Gallery here.
We would like to thank all the developers that submitted their applications and keep an eye out on this blog for our next contest. Who knows what we will be giving away next?!
With more apps being built and the developer community growing, we’ve been putting much thought into how to improve our very timely developer support. Last week I decided to pull the trigger on an idea that had been brewing for some time. We are going to boost Ribbit Developer support with our own technology!
It’s so simple, and should benefit our entire community as well as all folks interested in building profitable apps with Ribbit technology. Here’s how it will work…
- We’ll add a click-able badge (swf) on the developer site.
- You can click to call us directly, where the call will come in from the web page, through Ribbit, to a phone that we have setup in the heart of the Ribbit Developer platform team. Depending on our availability, we’ll either answer the call OR the call will be sent to our Ribbit account. If that happens, we will all be notified via email of your message — that email will include a transcription of your message along with an .mp3 attachment of the message.
- If you don’t want to call, you will also have the option of recording a message and it will be sent directly to our Ribbit account inbox. Again, we’ll all be emailed with the transcription and .mp3 recording of your message.
- A Ribbit Developer platform team member will respond and assist you based on your request. If the request needs support from another team, we will promptly escalate it accordingly.
We should have this deployed within the week and I’m confident it will really boost our support offering.
The best part of this solution is that it is something that any Ribbit community developer can build. In fact, we’re even going to make the code available to you so you can implement the same solution on your end — and much more. Stay tuned for an announcement soon as well as a new support badge being added throughout the developer site.
Real time support, Ribbit-style, is on the way!
