December 2010 Summaries

The event is called PennApps Mobile, hosted by the Dining Philosophers at UPenn's Computer Science Interest Group, which will take place in Philadelphia from Friday to Sunday afternoon. The focus of this year's event is on mobile development, with demos and tutorials covering various APIs and SDKs. Teams will have a chance to present their projects and compete for prizes, including a Nexus S smartphone. Twilio is a proud sponsor of the event, providing API demos and support.

The Twilio Fund has announced its first three investments in Order Mapper, Textaurant, and Voicendo, a total of 5 individuals, congratulating them on their achievements and encouraging other startups to apply for funding by submitting their proposals before the December 31st deadline.

Jonathan Gottfried and Adam Purkiss are the latest winners of Twilio's developer contests, with Gottfried winning the holiday contest for his PHP-based translation app "The Snowman of Babel" that utilizes both the Twilio API and Google Translate API. Adam Purkiss won the Salesforce contest for his Surveilio Force application that integrates Twilio with Salesforce using Sites to expose TwiML pages, while also utilizing Apex/Visualforce code for survey functionality. Both developers found integrating Twilio easy due to its familiar APIs and discovered new features like foreign language support for voice.

The Twilio company is hosting its last developer contest of 2010, inviting developers to build any Twilio-powered app over the next two weeks for a chance to win a Google Nexus S and $150 in Twilio credit. The contest deadline is January 2nd, 2011, and previous non-winning entries are eligible to participate again. To help with inspiration, Twilio provides resources such as API reference documentation, SDKs, sample apps, and a developer community hub where developers can discuss ideas and share best practices.

The Twilio Developer Contest is a bi-weekly contest where developers can submit their apps built using the Twilio API, with a deadline of January 2nd, 11:59pm PT. The winner will receive an unlocked Google Nexus S and $150 in Twilio credit, while two runners up will get $100 in Twilio credit. This is one of several developer contests run by Twilio to encourage developers from all backgrounds to try the platform for different use cases and integrations. Previous non-winners are eligible to resubmit their apps for another chance at winning.

We built Social Roots with the Zend/PHP framework, which allowed us to easily integrate with Twilio for our free calling promotion. The excellent documentation provided by Twilio made using their services a straightforward process. By leveraging Twilio's capabilities, we were able to offer a valuable incentive to users and attract thousands of sign-ups in the USA and India through word of mouth.

47 teams competed in the Cloudstock Hackathon, with Blaine Schanfeldt winning the grand prize for his real-time multiplayer game "Twilio Tic Tac Toe". The judging panel awarded four house prizes and several prizes for API usage, including two winners who used Twilio. The hackathon also recognized entries that showcased creative uses of other APIs and platforms such as MongoDB and Rackspace's open source cloud services.

The C++ Twilio REST SDK is a simplified library that makes it easier to interact with the Twilio REST API in C++. The library consists of several files, including Rest.cpp, TwiML.cpp, Utils.cpp, and Examples.cpp, which provide various functionalities such as validating HTTP request signatures, generating TwiML, and sending SMS messages. The SDK can be used to build a restaurant dish recommendation service that sends SMS recommendations, retrieve the list of sent SMS messages, and handle pagination. Laurent Luce has provided code examples demonstrating how to use the library to send SMS requests and responses, as well as retrieve the list of sent messages.

The Twilio Developer Contest encourages developers to create push-enabled apps using various services such as Kwikka, Pusher, Orbited, Socket.IO, and more. These services support real-time messaging to browsers and mobile devices, making it easy to publish data in real-time. Node.js is a popular choice for server-side development, with frameworks like Faye and the Google App Engine Channel API providing additional support. With many options available, developers can choose from WebHooks, Comet, and WebSockets to build their apps, and can get help and inspiration from Twilio's resources and community forums before the contest ends on December 19th.

The Twilio Developer Contest is a weekly competition that encourages developers to try Twilio for different use cases and industries, with the goal of finding success and solving problems using the platform. The contest offers prizes such as an Amazon Kindle 3G and $100 in Twilio credit, and provides resources and services to help participants get started. Developers who have previously submitted but didn't win are eligible to resubmit their entries, and can find additional support and inspiration on Twilio's forums and community hub.

Gourmious is a restaurant discovery app built with Python, Django, jQuery, Amazon EC2/S3, the Twilio API, and the Facebook API, allowing users to search for dishes using SMS and receive recommendations based on their location. Gourmious was selected as one of the runners up in an SMS contest, winning $100 in Twilio credit. Pushr is another app that uses Twilio to enhance its services, including sending student reports to parents via SMS and exploring new revenue streams through a potential for-pay service. The winner of this week's Twilio and Salesforce integration contest will receive a Kindle 3G, an Amazon Gift Card, and $100 in Twilio credit.

Awesomeness Reminders` is a service that allows users to purchase a month of calls from real people to remind them how awesome they are, serving as an alternative to automated messages. The idea for the service came from reading about Tim Ferriss's experiences with the VISA Concierge Service and wanting someone to call him daily to tell him he's a good person. The company's creator, Zack Burt, built the website in just a couple of days and used PHP and MySQL as its backend infrastructure. He approached building it by testing the idea with a simple landing page and using A/B testing to determine the optimal price point, which ultimately landed at $45/month.

Joining Twilio at Cloudstock offers a variety of engaging activities for developers, including talks, hackathons, and networking opportunities. The event features presentations from industry experts on topics such as lead generation, sales analytics, SaaS business models, API development, and more. Participants can also showcase their skills by registering their hackathon projects and competing for prizes, including the ReadWriteWeb Data Visualization Award. Additionally, attendees are invited to a free party at Twilio HQ, while those with a Cloudstock badge or who email [email protected] with their account details can gain entry. Furthermore, Twilio hosts a developer contest with a deadline of December 12th, and offers resources such as API documentation, SDKs, and webinars to support developers in building communications and digital engagement experiences.

This week's developer contest encourages developers to build a Twilio app that integrates with Salesforce for a chance to win great prizes, including a Graphite Amazon Kindle 3G, an Amazon Gift Card, and $100 in Twilio credit. The contest is part of Twilio's efforts to encourage developers from all backgrounds to try the platform for different use cases and industries. To get involved, submissions are due by December 12th and can be submitted online. Bonus points will be awarded for creating helpful materials that demonstrate the value or potential of the project. Previous winners are eligible to resubmit, and additional resources are available on Twilio's website, including documentation, ebooks, webinars, and a developer community hub.

The Twilio + Salesforce contest offers a chance for developers to win prizes by building an app that integrates with the two platforms. The deadline to enter is December 12th, and winners will receive a Graphite Kindle 3G, a $50 Amazon gift card, and $100 in Twilio credit. This contest aims to encourage creativity and innovation among developers using Twilio's Cloud Communications APIs. Developers can find helpful resources on the Twilio website, including API reference documentation, SDKs, sample apps, and tutorials, to get started with building their app.

Daniel McOrmond won the Twilio SMS Contest with his Traffic Amigo app, which uses traffic data from Mapquest's API and integrates with Twilio for SMS alerts. The app is built using CakePHP and MySQL, and the integration with Twilio was seamless due to previous experience working with the platform. The idea for the app came from a boss who wanted SMS reminders for his youth football team, leading to a discovery of Twilio and a long-term partnership.

DuelingDates.com, a new take on online dating, won the Startup Weekend Twin Cities event in November. The team is using the Microsoft stack to build their application, with ASP.NET MVC 2 and SQL Server as the back-end data store. They chose Twilio for its ease of integration, particularly for sending SMS messages, which they found more urgent than traditional text messaging methods. With the help of Twilio's REST API, the team was able to integrate the SMS feature in just 15 lines of additional code, making it a painless portion of their project. The live site is expected to be launched in a couple of weeks, and the team is excited to move forward with their platform.