Sunny Release v1.5.2 patch is out
Ringio upgraded its production environment to v1.5.2 on 8/19/2010 at 5AM EST.
This patch contained small bug fixes from the “Sunny” release v1.5, posted on 8/5/10
Most important changes:
- Fixed many sources of crashes for Ringio Mobile for Android – big thanks to all the users who sent their bug reports!
- Dramatically improved Ringio Mobile’s connection management (for when your cell phone switches between 3G and Wifi)
- Improved the usability and robustness of call whisper / audio pop (when you get a call and you hear Ringio whisper the caller’s name to you)
- Further simplified the process of signing up for Ringio
Head on over to the Ringio Support Community for the full release notes.
If you were logged into the Ringio software during the upgrade, the system may have logged you out, and upon trying to log in you may be asked to upgrade your client software… sorry for the inconvenience, but this helps us ensure that you’re getting the best possible experience with the service.
Lets us know what you think!
photo credit - flickr user storm crypt
Ringio’s Latest Release – A Quick Look Under the Hood
If you have been visiting our website over the last few days, you might have noticed a few changes to both the design and content. Most notably, you may have seen our growing buzz section with a number of new articles written about our latest upgrade and the positive feedback we received from bloggers, journalist and analysts.
We also put out a press release last week in which we announced some of the highlights of the new functionality, but since you’re paying by the word on PR Newswire and most journalists have a notoriously short attention span, we could only scratch the surface of all the good stuff we packed into our latest product release.
Before we dig into the details, in the name of the entire Ringio team I would like to say a heartfelt thank you to the more than 300 businesses who signed up for our service in the last few months and who provided the feedback, ideas and focus for this release. We could not have done this without you (obviously) and hopefully you were excited to see some of your requested features appear ‘magically’ in your account last week.
To shamelessly rip off the Microsoft commercial: Ringio 2 Was Your Idea!
So let me give you a quick run down of what we added and how you – as our current or future customers – can benefit from it.
Streamlined Sign-up Process
OK, we admit it. The process and the experience we put our initial beta customers through when first signing up was clunky at best. (We also heard ‘confusing’, ‘unusable’ and ‘Microsoft-like’. Ouch!). So while still not perfect, I think the new step-by-step wizard is a major step in the right direction. Please, try it yourself. (And yes, I did just try to trick you into signing up for a free trial 
) Our stated design goal is that the setup for a 10-person company should take 10 minutes or less. So get out your stopwatch, and tell us how fast you can get it done!
Management Dashboard
The next thing we heard is that our users wanted a central dashboard from which they could get a quick overview of their entire Ringio setup, from which they could make changes with one-click access to all major feature groups. So here we go. I think the new design (see below) is pretty nice and clean. If you don’t think so, we don’t want to hear about it (just kidding).
Ringio News: Public Beta Completed, New Features Launched
The Ringio team is thrilled to announce today the completion of our public beta phase, and the introduction of some usability enhancements and new features that make the Ringio product even more attractive for small businesses. Ringio launched in April 2010 – just a few short months ago – and since then we’ve taken the feedback from over 300 small business users to improve multiple facets of the Ringio experience.
The press release we issued today contains the details, but here is a quick summary of the new features and enhancements:
“Bring Your Own PBX”
Preexisting PBXs now work with Ringio. Calls and their CRM displays can be routed straight to those on PBX extensions as well as those on direct-inward-dial numbers, with no need to change recorded greetings, prompts, etc. Ringio can also make “virtual extensions” out of phones at home and mobile phones, either forming an entire hosted PBX or adding them to an installed PBX. This makes remote or dispersed employees reachable through the company’s main number and system.
Caller-Centric Call Routing
Personalizing the customer experience for every call, Ringio can automatically greet callers by name. It can also automatically route them to the person they spoke with last. The service can also reach employees on the fixed or mobile phones they desire. Calls can also be routed to a predefined list of employees — for a particular skill set, language or marketing campaign, for example — or evenly distributed to all employees to handle particularly heavy call volumes. Companies can also record, install and change custom greetings as often as they wish.
Streamlined Sign-up and Account Administration
Ringio makes self-service, web-based setup and administration of their office-communications systems practical and easy for busy SMBs, with friendly phone technical support for backup. With its new online administration dashboard, 10 employees can be set up and running in 10 minutes or less.
Ringio Wins Editor’s Pick Award by DiscoveringStartups.com
We are delighted to announce today that the editors at DiscoveringStartups.com have chosen us as their pick of the month for July. If you haven’t checked out their website, you should definitely do so. It’s a great resource to keep your finger on the pulse of what’s hot or not in the startup world. For more info on the award, please visit Ringio Wins July Editor’s Pick and help us spread the word!
Ringio Chairman Michael Zirngibl Talks Rich Calling with TMCnet
Ringio Co-Founder and Chairman Michael Zirngibl sat down today with Rich Tehrani, founder of TMCnet and Editor-in-Chief of Customer Interaction Solutions Magazine. During the extensive interview, Michael explains Ringio, covers the topic of rich calling, and identifies the types of businesses that can truly benefit from Ringio.
The “Dark Side” of Android
(This post was originally published by Ringio CEO Sam Aparicio on the Small Biz Go Mobile Blog)
Some would say I’ve been waxing lyrical about Android in the last few weeks as I compared iphone vs android. I am a fan, no doubt, but –lest you think that I’ve lost my sense of objectivity– here are some worrisome trends that have recently emerged about Android phones:
* Some new Android models arrive with so-called JunkWare: gratuitous apps that are shoved into the standard distribution of the OS whether the user likes them or not. Mark Milian highlights some of the abuse in a recent LA Times article.
* There are unconfirmed reports that the new Motorola Droid X (a very cool phone by technical standards), contains hardware preventing users from installing their own homebrew version of the Android Operating System. While most users won’t be doing this type of hacking, it’s just bad form on the part of a manufacturer.
So just because the Android platform has been making a lot of progress in competing with iPhones, it doesn’t mean that the platform is devoid of its own dubious practices… remember, use your best judgment when picking a phone for your business.
image credit – scifi cool
This Week in Cloud Computing: Interview & Demo with Ringio CTO Ashish Soni
Yesterday evening, the folks over at This Week in Cloud Computing welcomed Ringio Founder and CTO Ashish Soni to their set. During the segment, Ashish discusses topics such as Ringio vs. Google Voice, how and why businesses mishandle customer phone calls, and provides a complete demo of the Ringio application. Thanks to Amanda Coolong, Mark Jeffrey and Dave Linthicum for being such well-informed and gracious hosts. Check it out below.
Google Voice and Ringio: A Match Made in Heaven
Image Credit: GoogleAt Ringio, we’re big fans of Google Voice. I remember standing in the audience watching Vincent Paquet and Craig Walker relaunching in 2007 at the ETel conference and saying, “Wow, this is really useful!”
We’ve built Ringio based on the same philosophy as Google:
- Communication tools can be better, but have to be centered around the users.
- We can help people be more productive and stay more organized as it relates to phone calls.
- We have to build a web product, not a telecom product.
Just as Google Voice has improved personal communication, Ringio is designed to improve business communication.
For instance, here are a couple of useful Google Voice features:
- Find me on whatever phone I’m at
- Transcribe my voicemails
And a couple of the more useful Ringio features:
- Get a screen pop with information about who’s calling me
- Easily transfer calls to my business colleagues
Google Voice is for individuals. Ringio is for groups.
Here’s where the real power lies – if you combine Google Voice with Ringio you get a super solution for small businesses.
Use Google Voice for:
- Calls that are directed at you
- As the solution for call-blasting your different phones
- To make cheap phone calls
Use Ringio for:
- Calls that are directed at your company (calls for Sales, Technical Support, or Ordering)
- As the solution for distributing calls between employees
- As the mini-CRM that allows you to write notes and keep a history of your conversations with customers
Ringio and Google Voice work together beautifully. Here are a few tips to make this combination work for you:
- Set up your Google Voice number as the number where Ringio should find you
- Turn Google Voice’s call screening off
- In Ringio, set your Outgoing Caller ID to be your Google Voice number — that way if you call people from Ringio they will call you back at your Google Voice number
It’s great to see what the community of Google Voice users is figuring out - the tips, the tricks, and the hacks. Hopefully we’ll see more of these emerge as more people use GV and Ringio together!
Want to Increase Productivity? Use Your Mobile and the Right Software
[This post was originally posted on the Small Biz Go Mobile blog by Ringio CEO Sam Aparicio]
The one thing that defines my life is the constant and overwhelming assault of demands on my time. So for me, productivity is not a nice thing to have, it’s an essential skill to master.
Add to that the fact that I have a naturally curious personality prone to distractions (INTJ in Myers Briggs) and what you have is a recipe for disaster.
So to stay on top of things and be effective I use a suite of software programs that help me be hyper-productive: very focused on the most important tasks for me, on top of the information that I need to get my work done and with a list of things that my colleagues owe me.
I have honed this system over time so that it stays with me, whether I’m working in the office, working at Starbucks, travelling, or even when I’m hanging out and all I have access to is my iPhone or my Android.
Here’s what my productivity software list is made of:
- OmniFocus
- + Basecamp
- + Dropbox
- + Evernote
- + Socialtext
- + Ringio
- = stay productive.
My personal organizer application: OmniFocus.
I mentioned this app in my previous blog post. In a nutshell, OmniFocus helps me implement David Allen’s Getting Things Done system. It is a sophisticated app for managing to-do lists. What’s special about it is that it has many criteria to help you bubble up to the top whatever is important to you.
OmniFocus has desktop software client and a mobile client. I sync between them using a service called Spootnik, which has the added benefit of syncing between my organizer system and the rest of the company’s system, which resides in Basecamp.
Other alternatives to Omnifocus are: Things and TaskPaper (which I really like for its simplicity). Remember the Milk does similar things but is web-based.
My company’s organizer application: Basecamp
It’s not enough for me to keep track of my tasks, I need to be able to keep track of other people’s tasks, and as a group we need to stay organized and seamlessly communicate about each other’s projects. Since Ringio collaborates with a lot of vendors and people outside the organization, we use 37 Signal’s excellent, lightweight project management tool called Basecamp.
If you’re using Basecamp right you will have increased the awareness about the status of projects, and the chances that something will catch you by surprise will be drastically reduced.
If you don’t like Basecamp, or the price, there are many worthy alternatives
My files: always with me with Dropbox
It’s amazing how complicated it was to share files two years ago… if you had a Windows network and had a file server you could set up local file sharing… but it turns out that most of the files you want to share is with people outside of your network 
The alternative is FTP, but many people don’t know how to use it, and it’s insecure anyways. What you really need is a way to create shared network folders without the network or without the file server… enter Dropbox.
Dropbox is an elegant service that integrates right into your desktop (Finder, Windows Explorer, etc) and mobile, and allows you to share folders with other people. When you update a file on your computer, it updates on theirs, and vice versa. Even when you’re not at your computer, you can log in to the Dropbox website and it gives you access to your files, and shows you recent activity. It even helps you recover accidentally deleted files.
One edgier alternative to Dropbox is Drop.io
My personal note taking system: Evernote
Evernote is a lightweight note taking system that helps you keep all your text, screenshot and video notes organized. I use it to jot down ideas, meeting notes, feedback from customers, transcripts of phone calls, reference how-to-do-this things….. anything that is for my eyes only.
Evernote does a great job of staying out of the way until you need to recall something, then it’s super search and tagging system come to the rescue.
With their iPhone and Android clients, Evernote helps me capture notes (even voice dictation or pics I take with my camera) while I’m on the road.
My company’s document sharing system: Socialtext wikis
A wiki is collaboration software that helps you keep documents organized and hyperlinked, much like a website that anybody in your team can edit. The ultimate example of a wiki is Wikipedia. We use wikis at Ringio to create things such as product specifications, software release plans, to create customer proposals, to keep track of our competitors, and to store instructions for different kinds of activities that our teams do.
A wiki is a system that acts as “company memory”. If you’re using it right you will be avoiding duplication in the long term, because you will be able to more easily recall when somebody had been working on an idea that you’re revisiting.
There are alternatives to Socialtext, such as Clearspace, or Google Sites.
My company’s virtual PBX system: Ringio
I spend a good chunk of my time on the phone, making calls to prospective customers, bloggers and the press, investors and partners.
It’s essential for me to spend as little time as possible looking up contacts and dialing, and I need the flexibility to call from any old phone and know that the receiving person is seeing always the same caller ID.
The Ringio software does exactly that for me.
There are alternatives to Ringio, such as Google Voice, Toktumi or Ring Central. I’m biased, of course, but I encourage you to try the different solutions.
Other productivity boosters:
- Searchable email: I heavily rely on Gmail’s search capabilities and labels
- Delicious bookmarking, Chrome’s bookmark sync
- 1Password or LastPass for password management and form-filling
- Tungle for meeting schedule management
What software do you use to increase employee productivity?
Cloudonomics: High Availability Should Be a Part of your Cloud Computing ROI Calculation
High Availability In the Cloud
(Editors Note: At Ringio we have learned a good deal over the last 12 months about cloud computing and we thought it would be a useful topic to discuss in the Ringio blog, as so many of Ringio’s customers are in the high-tech field.)
The typical factors considered when evaluating the ROI of the cloud compared with traditional data centers are:
- Machine Utilization, Elastic Demand and Auto Scaling. Most services do not need all servers all the time. The cloud allows you to scale up and down and reduce cost at low demand times. This is especially well described in Joe Weinman’s cloudonomics blog where he states that “even if cloud services cost, say, twice as much, a pure cloud solution makes sense for those demand curves where the peak-to-average ratio is two-to-one or higher.” In a traditional setting you would have to be provisioned for peak demand all the time.
- Power. In physical data centers the cumulative power cost outweighs the machine cost somewhere in year 2 or 3 onward. In the cloud, the unit machine cost includes the power cost.
- Human Resources to run the data center. Due to no physical work such as cabling, the expected personnel count required to support data center operations is less in the cloud.
However, in addition to the above mentioned factors, one also needs to look at the out of the box high availability tool set that is provided by the cloud in order to provide a more thorough analysis.
The cloud provides the following benefits in the High Availability arena at a fraction of the costs of a traditional data center setting.
- Geographic Redundancy and Diversity
- The Cloud Way: The cloud – out of the box – gives you the power to instantiate your services in geographically diverse regions.
- The Traditional Data Center: To do the same with your own data centers is very costly / time consuming / resource intensive. In addition you need to pay for inter site connections and point to point links. This can cost in the hundreds of thousands dollars extra. Now you need to instantiate 2x the peak demand in any one data center assuming that any one data center can take over all of your traffic.
- Point In Time Data Snapshots
- The Cloud Way: The cloud gives you block storage that allows for snapshotting which allows for data protection and point in time recovery.
- The Traditional Data Center: The same capabilities can cost tens of thousand of dollars or more when being implemented at local data centers by the way of SAN’s and NAS’s.
- Shared Data across Multiple Geographic Regions
- The Cloud Way: With a highly available Network Attached Like Storage your data is available in multiple regions. In additions block data can also be snapshotted and made available across multiple regions
- The Traditional Data Center: You need to work with ISPs regarding bandwidth and Point To Point(P2P) connections and then worry about the availability of these P2P connections. You need to purchase SANs and NAS’s at each site for the data to be replicated.
- Load Balancing & Basic Monitoring
- The Cloud Way: The cloud provides this at a basic level and gets you off the ground quickly.
- The Traditional Data Center: You don’t need to implement your own solution unless you really need to do some advanced loadbalancing for example.
One of the key disruptions of cloud computing has been the commoditization of High Availability offerings, some of which are mentioned above. This is a boon for all startups like Ringio and for any existing enterprise that is looking at the cloud as well as high availability.
In my view when comparing the two approaches it’s not just the cost to run a service but the cost to run a service in a highly available manner – that’s where the cloud truly shines.
photo credit – calle vieja blog.
