A company called Ribbit showed a phone component a few days ago at that will be available soon. The Ribbit component could be pretty amazing.

Basically it allows you to place or receive phone calls soley in your web browser.
They say:

The RibbitPhone Component will give Rich internet application developers the ability to make and receive calls, record/send and receive voice mail, as well as add and manage contacts.

They say as part of the service you can specify a number to dial from which then shows up on the caller id of the person you’re dialing. There is a messaging feature built into the application so that anyone can call your number and it will ring both on your phone as well as inside the browser application.

You can answer it from your browser and use a microphone to talk. If you aren’t there, the system tracks your messages so you can see a list of them and play them back individually. They may also be offering a transcribing service so you can get an email with both the sound file attached and a text version of the message.

They’re planning to release a component with all of the functionality for free to developers so that anyone can embed it on their blog and get telephone support inside the browser.

Being able to call someone from your browser is going to be change a lot of things!

It does use Flash but over 90% of web users already have it installed and that makes it so no download required to make it work.

This will be the most accessible telephone application ever anetration at arounnd the barrier to entry is almost nothing. I can’t wait for this to be released to the public and then to see what developers do with it.

Websites can use it as a widget that, once installed, an advertiser can post a number, you click on it and it makes the call to them. Like 1-800-flowers. Check out the photo for an example.

You can read more on this from Rob Abbott who is principle user experience on the project.

You can go to their website, but there is not much there yet. If you want to know more about Ribbit, you can request they send you updates, as they come along.

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