February 2011 Summaries

OpenVBX Contest: Extend and Improve` The OpenVBX contest invites developers to create plugins that extend and improve the functionality of OpenVBX, a platform for business communication. The goal is to encourage innovation and problem-solving with Twilio's cloud communications platform. Developers can submit their plugins by March 6th, and the winner will receive $100 in Twilio credit, an Amazon Kindle, and a Twilio track jacket. This contest is part of Twilio's efforts to foster a community of developers who can find success and solve problems using the platform.

OnCompare is a platform that helps software as a service companies get discovered by users, similar to Yelp for businesses. Twilio partnered with OnCompare to sponsor an after-party at the LAUNCH Conference in February 2011, which was attended by over 700 people and featured food from a Chairman Bao food truck. The event allowed Twilio to meet its customers and celebrate the launch of several new technology companies, including OnCompare.

Zaarly, a mobile marketplace that enables real-time buying and selling between buyers and sellers, has emerged as the winner of the LA Startup Weekend competition. The platform allows users to search for items or services they want to buy, set a price, and receive offers from instant potential sellers around them. Zaarly facilitates transactions in the secondary market for events and tickets, which is a multi-billion dollar marketplace. By integrating Twilio into its product, Zaarly enables real-time communication between buyers and sellers, making it easier for users to find what they want and make purchases instantly. The platform is now in private alpha and will launch a private beta at SXSW in early March, with the potential to disrupt the way people shop and buy goods online.

Flxt.it is a simple tool that uses Twilio to manage Netflix queues by sending text messages with movie titles, allowing users to add movies to their queue without needing a smartphone or computer. When a user sends a text message to Flxt.it's phone number, the received information is sent to the web application, which looks up the user's Netflix account information and adds the movie to their queue. The implementation uses ASP.NET MVC 3, Twilio's SMS service, and custom error handling mechanisms to ensure security and privacy.

People Patcher is a service that allows users to anonymously phone-confer with friends who may be going through tough times, created by Mike Lewis using the Twilio API and Django framework. The idea for People Patcher came to Lewis while he was laying down to sleep after seeing a Twilio demonstration at a tech meetup. He spent two days learning new technologies before completing the demo. The service is simple, using Twilio's API with Django and jQuery, and allows users to integrate automated voice services into infrastructure projects such as municipal parking systems. Lewis initially saw People Patcher as a fun project but not a viable long-term solution, instead pursuing other opportunities for integration.

This week, Twilio is running a developer contest where two winners will receive a guaranteed seat on either the Cleveland or Miami Startup Bus, as well as tickets to SXSW, valued at $750 each. The contest aims to encourage developers to try Twilio for different use cases and industries, with submissions accepted until February 27th. To get involved, developers can submit their entries here, and those who don't win will receive an invitation to apply for the Startup Bus. The contest is part of a larger initiative by Twilio to support its developer community, providing resources such as documentation, ebooks, and webinars to help them succeed.

This week, two developers will be selected as winners of the Twilio Developer Contest, each receiving a guaranteed seat on either the Cleveland or Miami Startup Bus and a ticket to SXSW valued at $750. The contest aims to encourage developers to try Twilio for different use cases and industries, with submissions accepted until 11:59pm PT on February 27th. To get involved, developers can submit their entries here, where they will also receive an invitation to apply for the Startup Bus. Winners must arrange their own transportation to the departure location, which departs on March 8th. The contest is part of Twilio's efforts to support developers from all backgrounds and provide resources such as APIs, SDKs, and sample apps to help them succeed.

The OpenVBX iPhone app is now available for download from the Apple App Store, allowing users to access their voice mail, assign messages to coworkers, and return calls directly from their iPhone, using their company's phone number. The app has been open sourced, enabling users to customize it and integrate it with the web application. Key features include protocol handlers that coordinate with the web app, allowing for a seamless experience when clicking on links to OpenVBX in notifications or emails. This release is also accompanied by an upgrade to the 2010 API version of OpenVBX, which includes bug fixes and new features for the iPhone app. Users can download and install the app for free, with no need to compile and submit it to the App Store themselves.

Derrek Wayne won a Valentine's Day contest with his company CustomSongSender.com by creating a customer song sender service that delivers personalized songs to customers' phones, leveraging Twilio technology. Derrek started the business after realizing the huge profit margin in greeting cards and decided to create a digital alternative - a song delivered over a phone. He plans to streamline the service based on customer feedback and has other Twilio-powered projects in the works.

Twilio is hosting a launch after party for OnCompare at the LAUNCH Conference in Los Angeles on February 23rd, featuring an open bar and food from the Chairman Bao Truck. The event aims to bring together recently launched startups, investment community members, and attendees of the conference to mingle and network. Twilio is providing sponsorship for the event, which can be RSVP'd for by registering here.

A presentation on building Twilio apps with ASP.NET MVC was given at mvcConf 2, covering ways to leverage features of the ASP.NET MVC framework for voice and SMS app development. The talk covered an order status inquiry feature using a POST request to a URL specified in the account dashboard, which responds back with TwiML to control the call. Common steps were moved into a TwilioController base class to make it easier to build TwiML responses. Request validation was used to secure controller actions by combining elements of the request and hashing them against an AuthToken. A helper library for sending SMS text messages and making outbound phone calls is available on GitHub, and will be combined with ideas from this post into a new official .NET library soon.

Using Node.js with Twilio can make building SMS and telephony apps easy and efficient. Node.js is a fast, event-based, async server-side JavaScript engine that provides simple evented IO, making it an ideal choice for handling HTTP requests and view rendering. Express is a popular web framework that works well with Twilio, allowing developers to receive SMS messages, extract their content, and respond. To get started, developers need to create an Express project, set up a Twilio account, and deploy the application using Nodester, which provides a Git repository and CLI toolkit for easy deployment and management of applications. With these tools, developers can quickly build and test SMS apps, and eventually, connect their public Nodester app URL with their phone number to send and receive SMS messages.

Flxt.it won the Twilio/AppHarbor contest by creating a simple mobile web site that allows users to add movies to their Netflix queue via SMS. The service was built using ASP.NET 4.0 with MVC 3, hosted on AppHarbor, and uses RestSharp for consuming the Netflix API. Flxt.it also integrates with Twilio for sending and receiving SMS messages, which proved to be a straightforward process despite initial hesitation about using Twilio before. The app's creator plans to keep it free, add more features, and scale up users through beta testing.

The Twilio Developer Contest is a quarterly competition that encourages developers to create innovative music hacks using Twilio and their favorite music API, with the goal of showcasing different use cases and integrations. The contest aims to reward developers who try Twilio for various purposes and industries, providing them with a platform to solve problems and find success. To participate, developers can submit their projects by 11:59pm PT on February 20th, and can seek help or share ideas through Twilio's forums or email support team. The contest is part of Twilio's efforts to foster its developer community and provide resources for communication and digital engagement experiences.

The winner of the Twilio/AppHarbor contest is John, who developed Flxt.it, a mobile web app that allows users to add movies to their Netflix queue via SMS. The app was built using ASP.NET 4.0 with MVC 3 and hosted on AppHarbor, which provided a quick and easy deployment method. To work with the Netflix API, John used RestSharp, a useful library for consuming REST services. He also leveraged Twilio's SMS capabilities to facilitate queue additions, finding it one of the simplest pieces to build despite never having used it before. With Flxt.it now live, John is focused on ensuring a good sign-up experience and adding more features to the Netflix functionality while keeping the service free.

Teeboxer is a golf simulator that uses over twenty SaaS APIs, including Twilio, which Yuri won the "Coordinating People" contest for by integrating it seamlessly into his application. Teeboxer's technology stack includes Ruby 1.9 and Rails3 on Rackspace's Cloud, with Regenerable data stored in memcached and Redis, and PostgreSQL as the store of record. The front-end uses jQuery and SASS, while Twilio was the most straightforward integration for Yuri, allowing him to focus on other features. Yuri got started with Twilio when he began designing Teeboxer's SMS capabilities, which turned out to be popular among users, and now expects to do more with voice functionality in the future.

Teeboxer uses Twilio as a cloud-based communication platform to help golfers play more and spend less time dealing with their game off the course. Teeboxer's web application runs on Rackspace Cloud, while Twilio is hosted in Amazon's EC2. When users call or text Teeboxer, they are actually interacting with Twilio, which makes a web request to Teeboxer and receives instructions via TwiML markup language. This interaction enables Teeboxer to provide personalized services such as verifying user information, determining local time, and sending texts with links to golf course maps. By leveraging Twilio's cloud-based communication capabilities, Teeboxer is able to offer its users a seamless and engaging experience that combines multiple Internet technologies.

The Twilio company is running a new developer contest called "Love is in the Cloud" which aims to encourage developers to try Twilio for different use cases and industries. The winner will receive an Amazon Kindle 3G and $100 in Twilio credit, with entries due by February 13th. To help participants, Twilio has provided various resources such as forums, sample apps, API documentation, and ebooks on its website. The contest is part of a larger effort to support developers from all backgrounds in finding success with Twilio's cloud communications platform.

Twilio has released Subaccounts, a tool for building multi-tenant web services that allows users to track usage of each user independently from one another, with all usage billed up to the main account. This feature is useful for powering several projects under one account and wants to divide up usage of phone calls and text messages, segmenting users into subaccounts for reporting and invoicing purposes. Subaccounts can be managed using the Twilio REST API and have their own account sids, phone numbers, and caller IDs, allowing for independent management without affecting other subaccounts. Additionally, features such as transferring numbers between subaccounts, suspending usage, and closing subaccounts are available to manage Twilio services more efficiently.

Twilio Subaccounts is a feature that enhances developer productivity by allowing Twilio customers to build multi-tenant applications where each user's usage can be tracked separately. This functionality is particularly beneficial for customers managing multiple projects or reselling Twilio services, as it enables independent tracking and management of calls, SMS, recordings, and transcriptions for each subaccount. Subaccounts are managed under a main account, with their usage billed to it, allowing for user-specific reporting and invoicing. Developers can create and manage subaccounts using the Twilio REST API, which provides capabilities such as transferring numbers between accounts, suspending or closing subaccounts, and maintaining unique account SIDs, phone numbers, and caller IDs for each subaccount. While UI support for subaccounts in the Twilio account portal is forthcoming, developers can currently manage them through API requests, facilitating the creation of customized consumer-facing pricing structures and immediate implementation in applications.