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ETel, as we're calling it, will introduce business people (the enterprise deployers of VoIP, VCs, telcos) to the technologists building amazing applications. What makes an amazing application? We've identified the key features that make a voice app more than just a packet-switched version of a 1980s hardware device:
Applications where distance doesn't matter.
Anywhere there's bandwidth, you can have a call. An app can improve life for a family in India as easily as it can improve life for a workgroup in Palo Alto.
Applications with multiple media channels.
For example, can we talk while we share a whiteboard? The VoIM apps of Google Talk, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger with Voice, et al. have a simple text channel in addition to voice. What can we do beyond that to improve communication and bring people together?
Applications that involve people interacting with computers.
TellMe makes it trivial to extend your voice application with a CGI script. I can have my computer say any piece of data it can get (and Web 2.0 APIs give it access to a lot of data!), and I can respond to anything people type (and, in some circumstances, say) to my application. The power (any data my computer can access!) and ease (same techniques as CGI script!) just blow me away.
Applications that treat voice as data.
You can freeze and thaw voice recordings. Look at the Katrina Voicemail set up by Air America. It's brilliant: you can leave voicemail for people who had a particular phone number, and they can listen to it. Voicemail as it stands is crap, like etching on stone with a chisel. There are so many directions voice can go now that it's within everyone's reach to program voice apps.
Applications that connect to the regular telephone system (the POTS).
That is, computer-to-computer calls are less interesting to us that computer-to-phone or phone-to-computer. VoIP termination is cheap and easy to get, and makes for some killer apps. This is why Skype is more interesting than Google Talk (for now :-).
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