Google Wave meets conference calls, with Ribbit

Image via CrunchBase

by Rafe Needleman

It's becoming clear that Google Wave, which is slowly emerging from closed beta, has potential to be much more than a text-messaging platform. As the telecommunications platform company Ribbit shows, and as does a frothy little videoconference app from 6 Rounds, Wave's architecture makes it a compelling platform for real-time streaming communication.

The Ribbit team recently showed me their prototype widget, which lets Wave users quickly set up a conference room inside a "wave" message on the service. Once you add the Ribbit conference widget to a wave, everyone in it becomes part of a potential voice chat. Users need to enter their phone numbers, which remain hidden from other users. Then anyone in the wave can call all the participants at once to start a conference. (Users can also call only particular people in the wave, if they wish.)

Google Wave meets conference calls, with Ribbit

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