Pingtel Offers Vacation to Java for Best VOIP App

In addition to the Grand Prize, Pingtel will deliver a year's supply of free coffee to as many as five developers who submit almost-grand applications for the Pingtel xpressa phone. And Pingtel will continue to award free xpressa phones -- at regular intervals throughout the competition -- to developers who simply submit cool ideas for new IP telephony applications.

The deadline for submitting ideas and completed applications is May 15, 2002. Developers can receive complete information, including contest rules and entry forms, at JavaApps Challenge. They also can view a current list of third-prize, free-phone winners at Pingtel's Web site.

Pingtel will announce the Grand Prize winner at SuperComm 2002, in Atlanta, June 2-6, 2002. The announcement at SuperComm will give winning developers vital exposure to tens of thousands of communications leaders and customers of next-generation telephony products and services.

With its support for the Java programming language and Session Initiation Protocol, Pingtel xpressa is a development platform that allows innovation to occur at the edge of the network by anyone, not just switch manufacturers. Already, Pingtel has awarded more than 150 xpressa phones to developers who submitted innovative ideas for its intelligent VoIP phone.

The following phone-winning submissions are representative of the wide range of ideas that have been suggested by developers worldwide:

1. Finbarr Coghlan, at Voxpilot Ltd. in Dublin, Ireland, won an xpressa phone for proposing a Call Completion application, including an end-to-end "Call Back When Free" service for SIP phones. The application also would allow the called party to respond by indicating either "I'm Free" or "Do Not Disturb." The Call Completion application also would employ AOL Instant Messaging or ICQ to invite users to make a SIP call to the requesting party.
2. S. Shaun Park, an undergraduate student at Columbia University in New York, won an xpressa phone for proposing a Call Announcement application that would use text-to-speech translation to have the phone verbally announce the incoming caller's phone number in addition to displaying the Caller ID information on the phone's display.
3. Wayne Robinson, director at Designer IT Pty. Ltd. in Queensland, Australia, won an xpressa phone for proposing a Time Sheet application that helps professionals track their billable time. The application would enhance the phone's call statistics capability by tracking time spent on client calls as well as time that is not directly associated with phone calls. This information would then be linked to project management, time tracking and accounting systems.
4. Dirk-Willem van Gulik, vice president of research at Covalent Technologies in San Francisco and co-author of the Apache Server, won an xpressa phone for proposing a Follow Me application based upon the Jabber.org instant messaging system. Users would invoke the application by changing their current preferences, and could determine whether to forward a specific call by using the instant messaging channel for call screening. The application also could be extended to offer Follow Me voice mail.

"The JavaApps Challenge is an example of Pingtel's commitment to inspiring the creativity of Java developers, who can change the world of telephony by exploiting the intelligence of the xpressa phone," said Jay Batson, chief executive officer and co-founder of Pingtel. "There are some really cool ideas out there for what phones should do. Stay tuned for our Grand Prize announcement at SuperComm."

Pingtel makes it easy to write a new application for the xpressa phone, as well as applications that integrate the Pingtel phone with a PC. Developers can download an xpressa Development Kit (xDK) from Pingtel's Web site. The Pingtel xDK includes a Programmer's Guide, Reference Manual, User Interface style guide, code from sample applications and more. Developers also can participate in online forums where developers exchange information, tips and techniques. And they can receive free consulting services and support from Pingtel.