VON: SIP-based IVR to ease eBay bidding

This one's a little outside the box, but it's a great application and provides fodder for Skype watchers. If you've been buying on eBay lately, you might have noticed a link that lets you get a phone alert when an auction you're in has three minutes to go. Those alerts come from a company called Unwired Buyer; not only do they tell you that the auction is closing, but they let you bid in real time via an IVR system. It's really quite cool. So what's the VoIP application here? It's clearly a converged system: eBay's database interacting with a telephone infrastructure. Unwired Buyer uses a 2000-line SIP-based system to make the calls and interface with eBay. Oh--and the system has nothing to do with Skype, the eBay-owned VoIP carrier: the calls all go over the PSTN. Interesting, that.

For more information about Unwired Buyer:
- go to the company's Web site