Updated with a response from the company.

Ribbit, a company that has styled itself “Silicon Valley’s first phone company,” has been purchased by BT, the dominant British telecommunications company, we’re hearing.

[Update: A company spokesperson has gotten back to us denying that there's been an acquisition. However, the company wouldn't comment on whether or not acquisition talks were taking place. There are a few possibilities here. One is that it my source (and I) are completely wrong and that there's nothing happening. Another possibility is that the deal hasn't officially closed but is near closing, with some formalities still to be taken care of. Yet another possibility is that Ribbit is not just looking at an acquisition from BT, but is talking to other potential acquirers; or maybe the company has turned down an offer (or two) and is looking to stay independent. We're digging for more. Let us know if you know anything to add.]

Mountain View, Calif.-based Ribbit’s software lets you make a phone call from a web page, or direct your own phone calls to a web page. It includes ways for you to do things like transcribe these calls into text, that you can then search. The company launched in December, with a platform for developers who are looking to build phone-based web-connected applications for large companies.

Most notably, Ribbit has built voice services for online business software company Salesforce, which includes the first service that combines mobile voice automation and so-called software-as-a-service.

Ribbit also released a consumer-facing product called Amphibian last month.

Meanwhile, a number of other Silicon Valley companies are also working on variations of the concept of connecting calling services and web pages.

Ribbit recently raised $10 million in a second round led by Allegis Capital, and joined by KPG Ventures, which follows on a $3 million round raised from Alsop Louie Ventures more than a year ago.

Here’s a video about the Ribbit-Salesforce integration:

The borders between media are porous. WorldWinner, an online skill-based game company, proved that today when it announced that its “CATCH 21″ game will become a TV show on the GSN channel shown in 68 million homes.

GSN airs only game shows and is jointly owned by Sony and Liberty Media, which bought WorldWinner’s parent company last year. The show will be broadcast on weekdays starting Monday July 21 at 7:30pm Eastern time. The series is expected to go for at least 40 episodes.

“We thought this would be a great way to make TV viewers into contestants and game players into TV watchers,” said Peter Blacklow, president of WorldWinner (pictured below).

The TV version of CATCH 21 was created by Merrill Heatter, who has created game shows such as “The Hollywood Squares,” and Scott Sternberg, whose credits include “The Gong Show.” Actor Alfonso Ribeiro will the game show host. The game is a variant of BlackJack where three contestants compete by speeding through a deck of cards to get as many “21″ hands within a time limit. They can make their opponents weaker by passing them bad cards.

The game debuted in 2000 as one of WorldWinner’s original skill-based online games. In such games, players compete against each other for prizes or in tournaments. Since the games involve skill, and not chance as in gambling, the prize-based gaming is considered legal. The game still draws considerable traffic in the hundreds of thousands and is available on GSN.com, where players can download it and play along with the show, competing for cash and prizes. CATCH 21 also available on mobile phones through Cellufun and on AOL’s Games.com site.

With cross-media promotion, WorldWinner is going to be tough to beat.  That’s why I said last week that German challenger GameDuell may have a hard time coming into the U.S. market to compete with Worldwinner and its other rival, King.com.

The $50 billion video game industry is rife with opportunities, so it only makes sense that someone is creating a venture capital firm that will focus on investing in all stages of the global game industry ecosystem.

VentureBeat has learned two high-profile veterans have created GCube Ventures, a Los Angeles investment firm that will put money into every stage of the industry from small start-ups to big public companies. Its managing directors are Shiraz Akmal, a former executive at game publisher THQ, and Jawad Ansari, a global investment manager.

The effort is going to be ambitious, touching just about every aspect of video games, Akmal said in an interview.

“The opportunity is not an industry consolidation but a transformation as online is forcing companies to change what they do,” Akmal said. “At GCube, I can help multiple companies and fuel the growth of the global industry in a way I couldn’t do at THQ.”

Online business models are taking root in video games, which traditionally have been a console-dominated business where games are sold for $50 to $60 each in retail stores. Now companies are making everything from middleware to outsourcing tools that enable customers to move to online business models.

Akmal (pictured) said that traditional investing has focused on the developers who create the games or the publishers who get them to market. Those areas are just a small part of the industry, he said. New territories for investment include digital game distribution, training schools for game creators, game development middleware tools, and the convergence of games and social networks that are helping games reach wider audiences, he said.

The company will focus on both the U.S. and Asian markets. Ansari said in an interview that the firm will have strategic partners and strategic co-investors. Those unannounced partners will include traditional venture capitalists as well as big media companies. Ansari said that the company will announce its first investment deals in the coming weeks.

Akmal has 20 years of experience in the video game industry. For the past nine years, he worked at THQ and in the last three years he focused on building global production teams. He pioneered the practice of outsourcing tasks in game development to places with lower costs or more expertise. His last position was vice president of operations and production development. He said that it’s hard to start a brand new console game development company now, but there are plenty of untapped opportunities, such as funding schools for game developers or companies that can create local game industries in places such as the Middle East.

Ansari, meanwhile, has 15 years of investment management experience. He was the founder and former general partner of Miven Venture Partners, a $100 million fund focused on media and consumer investments in the U.S., China and India. He is also the founder and former CEO of Corporate Metrix, a diversified investment firm with managing $3 billion of assets.

On each deal, Ansari said GCube may bring in a series of partners. He said the company will disclose details of its own VC fund at a later date. The whole point of the partnership between Ansari and Akmal is to put together the expertise in games and finance.

“Our investments will be stage agnostic,” said Ansari. “We focus on interactive entertainment, looking for companies with hidden value. We can go from seed stage to a roll-up that involves a massive dollar amount.”

The company is based in Los Angeles, where Akmal noted there are a lot of game entrepreneurs. It will also have an office in San Francisco. Peter Leahy has also started a game incubation company in San Francisco. But Akmal and Ansari said the sector has been ignored by the venture industry for a long time.

The industry has had its share of big financial players that came into the industry to make big investments. That includes the now-defunct Capital Entertainment Group that tried to create a new kind of Hollywood-style game production company as well as Elevation Partners, which bought the game development houses BioWare and Pandemic for $400 million and then sold them to Electronic Arts for $775 million.