June 2011 Summaries

TechCocktail Startup Mixology D.C. Recap` The TechCocktail Startup Mixology Conference in Washington, DC brings together people "who do" with those "who want to do", focusing on startups and their various professionals such as lawyers, accountants, technologists, bloggers, and developers. The event allows attendees to connect with existing customers like Zaarly and Uber, as well as potential customers, providing a platform for the local startup community to share engaging subjects and ideas. The conference is led by Frank Gruber and Jen Consalvo, who are skilled at finding good people to talk about interesting topics, making their events across the country valuable resources for plugging into local tech circles and discovering what's out there in terms of startups.

Brian Shaffer has created a mobile time tracking application using PHP, MySQL, the FreshBooks API, and Twilio's Voice API to log hours on his projects and bill customers. The app is simple to use, requiring only two calls to track work hours and notes. Brian won an iPad 2, $100 in FreshBooks credits, $100 in Twilio credits, and swag as a result of the contest. Twilio and FreshBooks regularly hold developer contests, with the current one focused on OpenVBX, an open-source virtual PBX platform, offering prizes including an Amazon Kindle 3G and $100 in Twilio credit for winning developers.

You can build a call forwarding system using Twilio and Twimlets by following the steps outlined in this how-to guide. To start, you'll need a Twilio account, an email address to send voicemails to, and about 3 minutes of your time. You'll use Twimlets, small web applications that implement voice functionality, to create a call transferring system where one phone number rings multiple phones simultaneously, connecting the call to the first person to answer. The system will also forward calls to voicemail if no one answers. To set up the system, you'll need to generate a Simulring Twimlet, which dials multiple phone numbers and connects the call to the first person to answer, and a Voicemail Twimlet, which sends voicemails to an email address. You'll then copy the resulting URL and paste it as the voice URL for your Twilio phone number. With these steps, you can create your own custom call forwarding system powered by Twilio.

The Twilio company has partnered with oDesk to connect developers with the necessary skills to work on Twilio-powered applications, providing project owners with access to experienced developers in a marketplace setting. Developers can find opportunities to work on such projects and get paid upon successful completion, while also receiving technical resources and support from Twilio. The partnership aims to facilitate connections between businesses and developers, promoting innovation and problem-solving through the use of Twilio's communication platform.

The AT&T Mobile App Hackathon in San Diego was a success, attracting over 170 attendees and yielding 22 mobile app submissions by the 6PM deadline. The overall winners were Alex Rolek and his team for their location-based communication network called Last Call, which allows users to anonymously connect with each other based on map points of interest. Last Call uses Twilio's call integration and Sencha Touch, and was developed in just six hours by Alex and his friend Justen Palmer. The hackathon provided a unique opportunity for attendees, including experienced developers and those with zero coding background, to work together and learn from senior developers.

The Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association (TSSAA) utilizes Twilio to coordinate the state championships for various sports, which attracts over 2,100 athletes from 221 high school teams. To ensure smooth communication among all parties involved, TSSAA created three Twilio applications: a mobile app for staff to communicate with each other, a scoreboard that allows scorekeepers to report scores via voice calls, and a user call-in scoreboard that provides fans and interested parties with real-time updates on scores and news. These applications enabled constant communication channels, facilitated efficient reporting of events, and improved the overall experience for attendees.

Podio is an online work platform that allows users to build a customized workplace with specialized apps for messaging, tasks, reporting, workflow, and contact management. A recent Hack Day event showcased innovative app ideas using Podio's API, including one built by Steven on top of the Twilio API using Ruby client libraries.

OpenVBX has a plugin system that allows developers to extend its functionality in powerful ways, with the opportunity to win prizes for submitting an OpenVBX plugin or improving an existing one. The contest is part of Twilio's efforts to encourage developers from all backgrounds to try the platform and solve problems with it. Submissions can be submitted online by a deadline of July 3rd, and resources are available on Twilio's website to help developers get started and improve their skills.

OpenVBX is a platform that leverages the power of Twilio, allowing developers to extend its functionality through a plugin system. The company is now hosting a developer contest, where participants can create or improve plugins to showcase their skills and win prizes, including $100 in Twilio credit and an Amazon Kindle 3G. To participate, developers can access OpenVBX's documentation, code samples, and resources to learn more about the platform and its capabilities.

Reservely is a Ruby on Rails application that allows users to make restaurant reservations online and have the app call the restaurant to relay the message with text-to-speech, using the Twilio API for its telecom capabilities.` `The app was created by Brad Miller and Jevin Maltais as part of HackOTT, where they won the event, and is currently being developed into a proof of concept before launching in Summer 2011 with funding from Yellow Pages.` `Brad has a background in building enterprise telecom applications and uses Twilio's platform to simplify the process, having been impressed by its power and simplicity during the HackDays event.

I used CodeIgniter as the PHP MVC framework for the project, which provided a simple and efficient way to develop the site. Twilio was chosen as the SMS service provider due to its ease of use and integration capabilities. The site was launched on a Friday after a week-long development period, with the goal of sending daily class schedules to students via text message. This semester was a trial run for the site, providing valuable feedback and ideas for future improvements, such as integrating additional features like reminders and personalized scheduling.

This was the largest Startup Weekend I’ve been to with almost 200 attendees, resulting in a high number of teams presenting their ideas on Sunday. The event saw the creation of innovative projects such as Airbnb for dogs, online HR document management, and a social alarm clock. Three teams used Twilio, which won special awards for its systems for managing restaurant reservations through SMS, creating a social alarm clock, and organizing flash mobs for good. The event also featured high school students who created a social networking site for students, earning an honorable mention. Overall, the event showcased a wide range of creative and practical solutions to real-world problems.

Canappi is a tool that helps developers build converged mobile apps with voice, SMS, location, video, data, TV, and other features in a short amount of time, using Twilio's APIs. Canappi can generate code samples for integrating Twilio into projects, and its founder, Jean-Jacques Dubray, built a native iPhone app with less than 100 lines of code. The tool is currently free to use during the launch period but will charge $30/quarter after Android launches in early Q3, with plans to adopt a pay-per-use model afterwards. Canappi's design was influenced by its founder's 20 years of experience in software development and enterprise information models. The company aims to focus on the enterprise market and plans to release new connectors, libraries, and platforms in the next six months, including an Android version in early July.

Keith Casey is a PHP developer based in Austin, Texas, with experience working for an SMS aggregator, where he learned about the complexities of telecom connectivity and carrier approval processes. He discovered Twilio and was impressed by its capabilities, which allowed him to complete tasks that would have taken weeks or months with just 100 lines of code. Casey is now focusing on discovering features, problems, projects, and ideas from the Twilio community to improve the platform, attending user group meetings, fielding questions, and helping build components to make life easier for developers. He invites users to share their ideas or showcase cool projects by reaching out to him at [email protected] or connecting on Twitter at @CaseySoftware.

Quora has added SMS functionality using Twilio, which was implemented in a single night by one of its engineers, with the team spending time tweaking the interaction afterwards. The implementation used Quora's in-house web framework and Python, with a standalone web server built with Tornado to handle requests between Quora and Twilio. To get started with SMS integrations using Twilio, developers are advised to start simple and iterate on their design, building upon existing functionality to create a working product quickly.

HotPads, a real estate platform, uses Twilio to reduce fraud in transactions by automating phone number verification before processing credit card transactions, resulting in a significant reduction in fraudulent listings without affecting conversion rates. The company also leverages Twilio's call tracking feature to provide valuable insights to premium listing customers and improve the effectiveness of its promoted listing products. By utilizing Twilio's services, HotPads has streamlined its operations and improved the overall user experience while providing a cost-effective solution for fraud prevention.

Introducing Twilio Applications: An Easier Way to Manage Phone Numbers` Twilio is introducing a new feature called "Applications" that allows developers to create and assign a Twilio Application to a phone number instead of a URL. This makes it easier to manage phone numbers with multiple settings across many phone numbers in a single place. With this feature, users can change voice and SMS URLs and other settings for all their assigned numbers with just one update. The Applications tab has been added to the account dashboard where users can create and manage applications, and complete REST API support is available for managing applications from code. This allows developers to view, create, and update application settings from their code, as well as assign phone numbers to use an application via the API.

The Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) event brings together volunteers with diverse skill sets to develop innovative solutions for real-world problems, often focusing on humanitarian issues. In Atlanta, a team developed a Good Samaritan app using PHP and Twilio APIs, while another team created the Message Carrier application, which enables messages to be relayed through a network of people in disaster zones until they find a data connection. The event allows participants to showcase their projects and vote for their favorites, with the winning project often being continued by other teams in subsequent events.

Dan Hawkins has won the Scratch Your Own Itch Developer Contest with his OpenVBX Notifications plug-in, which solves a common issue faced by developers when working on OpenVBX projects by providing in-app notifications for faster debugging. The plug-in was chosen over other entries that were also innovative and useful, such as a code completion plug-in and a rate-center look up tool. For OpenVBX developers looking to save time, the source code of Dan's plug-in is available on Github, and Twilio is encouraging developers to participate in its latest contest with opportunities to win prizes and learn from customer engagement experts.

Twilio is a company that offers cloud communication services, including APIs, SDKs, sample apps, resource center, and more. The company was founded in 2009 by Andrew Watson after he saw the potential of its product at a startup event. He has since become a developer evangelist for the company, working to improve OpenVBX, a service that automates phone tree problems using Twilio's API. As the new developer evangelist, Andrew is seeking feedback from developers on how to make OpenVBX work better for them, and can be reached at [email protected].

Lucid Meetings is an online meeting solution that uses parliamentary procedure as its foundation to hold effective recurring group meetings. The platform provides a structured approach to meetings, including agendas, decision-making, note-taking, and action items. Lucid Meetings aims to improve the productivity of meetings by providing a consistent experience between meetings and leveraging modern technologies such as Twilio for real-time communication and collaboration. The company plans to continue scaling its service and integrating new features to support device-agnostic online meeting experiences.

Localtunnel is a project that makes it easy to make a local web server public with just one command, `$ localtunnel <port>`. This allows developers to share their local web servers with others for testing or demo purposes without having to set up SSH tunneling. The service uses an SSH library to open a tunnel from the public machine to the local machine and provides a reverse proxy to forward incoming requests to the local port. Localtunnel also has authentication in place to prevent unauthorized access, but currently lacks privacy guarantees and HTTPS support, which are on the roadmap for future development.

The Chicago API Hackday was a successful event where 20 teams presented their projects within six hours, with many incorporating Twilio into their hacks. The winning teams, Twhoacoder and Interpretio, received Apple gift cards for their innovative projects that showcased the capabilities of Twilio's services. Despite the weather, attendees left with a great experience, learning something new about Chicago's tech scene and gaining access to valuable resources from Twilio, including documentation, ebooks, industry reports, webinars, best practices, code samples, and inspiration.

The TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon 2011 was a 24-hour event where many teams worked tirelessly to create innovative solutions using Twilio's APIs and other tools. The event culminated in a 60-second pitch competition, with four winning teams and two honorable mentions announced. The winners showcased projects such as Gilt-ii, Docracy, Doach, and Dispatch IO, which utilized Twilio's capabilities for various purposes like auctions, document sharing, and cloud management. Other notable projects included JoystiCC and Venture Crapital, which leveraged Twilio's APIs to create engaging experiences in gaming and venture capital simulations. The event also highlighted the potential of Twilio's developer community, with many teams utilizing its resources and expertise to build innovative applications.

To create SMS payment notifications for FreshBooks using Twilio, you'll need a Twilio account, a FreshBooks account, and PHP web hosting. You'll set up a webhook in FreshBooks to send HTTP requests whenever payments are posted, and then write a script to look up the payment and send an SMS message using Twilio. The script will also verify the callback from FreshBooks to ensure it's coming from you. Once verified, you can enter a payment to one of your FreshBooks invoices and receive a text message notification.