The Demo technology conference underway in Desert Springs, California always throws up a few standout start-ups – along with lots of ‘me-toos.’ Among the standouts this time around were a couple of communications start-ups with practical and interesting products and services that have the potential to disrupt.

My favourite was Toktumi (pronounced talk-to-me), whose product (also called Toktumi) provides small and home office businesses with a full-functioned PC-based office phone system at really low cost. Toktumi – described by one of my colleagues here as ‘Skype for grown-ups” – is actually a hosted PBX (private branch exchange) service running on the company’s servers in San Francisco.

“There are 40m people working in small businesses with one to nine employees, half of who work out of their homes,” says Peter Sisson, CEO and founder. “This market segment has been ignored by by most providers .”

The basic Toktumi software is a free download and runs on virtually any PC turning it into a powerful yet simple to operate office system complete with call transfer, voicemail, conferencing and auto attendant in less than five minutes. The software requires no special hardware, but helpfully Toktumi also offers an adapter that enables users to plug any standard analogue desktop phone into a USB port completing the setup.

The free version of the service comes with a free phone number (likely to be an out-of-the-way rural area code so don’t expect a 415 or 212 number) voicemail and free calling and conferencing with other Toktumi customers worldwide. For $13-a-month and 2-cents a minute, users can upgrade to a premium version that allows outbound calls to regular phones worldwide and allows customers to select their phone number or port their current POTS (plain old telephone service) number over to Toktumi.

None of this functionality is really new, but the way Toktumi puts the PC at the centre of the office phone system is unique. There is also one really cool feature called ‘Search Dialing’ which enables users to place calls from a PC simply by typing in the name of the person, company or category of company you want to call. Toktumi then trawls through your PC contact book and then the web to find the number you are looking for and presents them on screen ready to click and dial.

The Toktumi service is currently available as an invitation-only beta form but Sisson hopes to make it generally available shortly. In the meantime, he notes, about half of those signing up for the beta are overseas.

The other comms company that caught my attention at Demo was Ribbit which describes itself as “Silicon Valley’s first phone company.” Ribbit’s Amphibian technology platform is designed to bridge the gap between a mobile phone and an internet-connected PC.

Among its features, Amphibian enables users to manage mobile voicemail as though it is email on your computer and on your mobile phone, convert voicemail into text to make voice messages shareable and searchable, and make mobile calls from any browser or web page - such as iGoogle, Facebook et al. The interface is smooth and polished and because Ribbit’s APIs (application program interfaces) are open, the technology is already attracting a host of cool third-party add-ons.

January 30th, 2008 in Telecommunications | Permalink