July 2011 Summaries

Caley Woods Wins Our Twilio/DotCloud Contest With SOSMS` SOSMS was created in response to the devastating EF5 tornado that tore through Joplin, Missouri on May 22nd, 2011. The app allows users to sign up for an account and define a contact group, which can be notified via SMS if the user checks-in with the app. SOSMS aims to provide a vital service during emergency events by enabling a single text message to notify multiple people. Caley Woods launched SOSMS on DotCloud in a barebones state, focusing on SMS notification for now, but plans to expand its features and functionality. The app is built using Ruby 1.9.2, Rails 3.0.9, MySQL, and Twilio for telephony services. Woods' experience with Twilio began after watching John Britton's live coding video in 2010 and started building SOSMS in February 2021 after taking a beginning rails class. The app plans to add voice support, email support, welcome emails, notification emails, and design improvements. Woods aims to implement these features using tests and drive the design from testing.

The Twilio Client is being launched and a new developer contest is announced to celebrate its launch, inviting developers to create something interesting using the platform within two weeks. Five winners will receive $100 in Twilio credit, a customized messenger bag, a full pass to the Twilio conference, and an 11-inch MacBook Air. The contest aims to encourage developers from all backgrounds to try Twilio for different use cases, industries, and integrations, with categories announced each week. The contest is open to submissions until August 7th, and participants can get help or share ideas on the Twilio forums or by contacting support.

Twilio Powers Epicom’s Universal Click-to-Call for SugarCRM` Epicom, an Austin-based consulting and development company, has developed a universal click-to-call plugin for SugarCRM using Twilio's API, allowing customers to make calls directly from the CRM system. The plugin is compatible with various SugarCRM platform options and can be used with any phone system. Epicom leverages Twilio's user-friendly API, which is well-documented and scalable, making it easy to develop and deploy the plugin. Recently, Epicom has started working on a new version of the Click-to-Call product based on Twilio Client, which will be browser-based and less expensive for customers. This integration enables businesses to easily make calls without relying on traditional landlines or legacy phone systems.

The IDC report suggests that telecommunications (telco) applications should move to the cloud due to its economic benefits and technology advances, which outweigh the operational cost models of traditional communication services. While voice communication is not yet widely treated as a cloud-ready service, the cloud's economies of scale are too powerful to ignore, and companies like Twilio are already leveraging the cloud to provide innovative communication applications to customers. The report notes that telcos are focused on significant traffic issues such as mobile backhaul bottlenecks, but users are quickly making connections between communications services and other applications, paving the way for voice to become a standard cloud application in the future.

Trulia has integrated click-to-call with its call tracking solution called Instant Leads, giving real estate agents the ability to respond to leads faster than anyone else in the industry. This integration allows agents to quickly connect with prospects via live calls or send text messages if the prospect doesn't include their phone number or the agent is busy. The integration also provides call analytics, allowing agents to track incoming calls and measure the return on investment of each campaign. With this data, agents can optimize their investments for maximum ROI. Trulia's Instant Leads is a powerful example of Twilio's capabilities, and anyone with web development skills can build their own click-to-call solution or call tracking application using Twilio's APIs and resources.

Sean Saulsbury has won the Power Up Conferencing developer contest with his Call In Studio project, which allows Internet and radio show producers to easily screen and manage calls for their shows. This innovation enables smaller radio stations and individual podcasters to offer call in as part of their show programming without needing expensive equipment or software. As a result, Sean will receive an Amazon Kindle 3G, $100 in Twilio credit, and some Twilio swag. Additionally, the organization holds regular developer contests, with upcoming opportunities for developers to build interesting Twilio apps and host them on DotCloud platforms to win prizes including an Arduino gadget pack, $100 in Twilio credit, a DotCloud Pro account, and company swag.

The Twilio team has announced the release of revamped official helper libraries for PHP, Ruby, Python, .NET, and Java, each written by a Twilio developer familiar with the respective language and framework. The libraries are open source and available on GitHub, where they will be actively maintained and improved. Additionally, community-contributed libraries are now listed alongside the official ones, allowing users to explore a wider range of options for integrating Twilio into their projects. The new libraries provide various installation methods, documentation, examples, and download links, making it easier for developers to get started with using Twilio in their applications.

Twilio is launching a new developer contest with a grand prize of $100 in Twilio credit, a Pro DotCloud account, an Arduino Gadget Pack, and swag from both companies. The contest aims to encourage developers to try Twilio for different use cases and industries, and to provide a platform for them to share their ideas and experiences. Developers can submit their projects by July 24th and receive bonus points for creating helpful materials such as screencasts or blog posts that demonstrate the value of their project. The contest is part of Twilio's ongoing efforts to support developers from all backgrounds and help them solve problems with Twilio, and it provides a platform for developers to connect with each other through Twilio's forums and community hub.

Rising Tides Lift All Ships, Or What I learned at Startup Festival Montreal` Many startups ignore obvious takeaways from events such as the one described, including getting good advisors who have time for them and regularly evaluating their value. Avoiding waste by quickly prototyping ideas and testing them in the real world can also be beneficial. It's also essential to empower the community around a startup, giving before asking and avoiding exploitation of support networks. Building strong relationships with advisors, leveraging existing technologies, and fostering a supportive community are key to success.

You can easily set up conference calling using Twilio by creating a conference room with the verb `Conference` in your Twilio call flow, and then dialing into that room from any phone number. You can also use the `waitUrl` attribute to play audio while participants wait for the conference to start. Additionally, you can route incoming calls to different conference rooms based on the caller's phone number using a conditional statement. To add an extra layer of security, you can require callers to enter a PIN before joining the conference. Twilio also provides a REST API that allows you to initiate conference calls programmatically, and you can use this API to call multiple participants at once. You can also get a list of active conferences using the `Conferences` endpoint, and fine-grained control over individual participants by using the `Participants` endpoint. With these features, you can build your own conference calling solution or extend existing ones.

Roger Pincombe has won the Twilio/Infochimps contest with his project Social Contact, which uses social media profiles to generate vCards containing information about individuals. He used a combination of APIs, including Infochimps and Google's Social Graph API, as well as scraping techniques, to build the application in C# on ASP.NET 4.0. The project allows users to send a person's Twitter username as a text message, which returns an email with their social media profile information. The contest winner was announced after Roger completed his project within the time limit, overcoming challenges such as LinkedIn blocking scraping via Dapper.net.

The Twilio Conference is scheduled for September 21st and 22nd at the Bently Reserve in San Francisco, featuring technical talks, demos, on-stage presentations, and updates on Twilio products. The event aims to bring together developers and industry experts to share knowledge and experiences. Additionally, the Twilio Fund, a micro-fund of $250,000, is being offered to Twilio-powered startups, with a deadline for submissions set for August 31st. A call for speakers has also been issued, inviting individuals to submit talk proposals on various topics related to Twilio and its community.

Textingly is a text message marketing service that helps small businesses send text messages to their customers via the web, handling message delivery, contact list management, and reporting in an opt-in manner where consumers can scan start, pause, or stop messages at any time. The company was started by integrating various tools and technologies such as Twilio's API into its platform, which is built on a LAMP stack, allowing it to provide a simple integration experience for businesses. Textingly aims to make short messaging easier for all aspects of communication, with plans to iterate based on customer feedback and launch new features in the coming months.

The first StartupWeekend Tampa was a huge success with over 100 attendees participating in the event. The participants pitched their ideas, and after receiving three votes, the top three teams were selected to turn into working projects: CheckoutMyURL, CityQuest, and Driip. These teams received feedback from judges on the quality of their concept, execution, and pitch, and were declared winners. The event was a great opportunity for entrepreneurs to come together, share ideas, and create new projects, with many attendees expressing interest in participating again in future events.

Twilio has expanded its payment options to include credit card support in 21 countries, bringing the service closer to a global reach. The new countries added are primarily located in Europe, with some also found in Australia and New Zealand. Twilio aims to continue expanding its features and services based on customer feedback and requests for specific functionalities or regions. To provide this global service, customers can now use credit cards from their home country, eliminating the need for a US or Canadian billing address.

This week, Twilio is hosting a developer contest where developers can submit their ideas on how to power up conferencing using the Twilio platform. The contest aims to encourage developers to try Twilio for different use cases and industries, with the goal of solving problems and finding success. Developers can submit their entries by July 17th and win prizes such as $100 in Twilio credit, an Amazon Kindle, and Twilio swag. To get involved, developers can submit their ideas on the Twilio website or join the Twilio forums for help and inspiration. The contest is part of a larger initiative to support developers from all backgrounds and provide resources to help them succeed with Twilio.

Creating a simple phone menu using Twilio Twimlets is a straightforward process that requires minimal setup, as it leverages stateless web applications with voice functionality stored in URL parameters. With Twilio's Menu Twimlet, users can craft custom messages and forward calls to specific individuals or departments by assigning corresponding numbers and URLs. This allows for the creation of intricate menus with various options, such as forwarding calls to a person, recording voicemails, or creating sub-menus. The possibilities are nearly endless, making Twilio Twimlets an ideal tool for building communication experiences.

We were able to get started with Twilio easily after reading the API documentation and keeping our business logic in one place. The company plans to always listen to its customers and use their feedback to improve, constantly collecting data from them to inform its development roadmap. The team behind SnapEngage values collaboration and open communication, sharing its success story and encouraging others to do the same.

Chad Smith Wins our OpenVBX Contest With His Stripe Payments Plugin` Chad Smith has created a plugin for the OpenVBX platform that utilizes the Stripe Payments API, allowing users to take payments over the phone by simply entering their credit card information. This plugin is open-source and can be modified to perform various tasks such as automating bill payments or e-commerce services. The plugin's source code is available on Chad's GitHub page, but requires an account with Stripe to process payments due to the API being in beta. Twilio is hosting a developer contest with a similar theme, inviting developers to create interesting mashups of Twilio and data APIs, with potential prizes including books and credits from both companies.

Twilio is partnering with Infochimps to host a developer contest where participants can create innovative applications using data from various sources. The contest aims to encourage creativity in utilizing Twilio's communication platform along with almost any type of dataset available. Participants can submit their ideas and showcase the potential of integrating data-driven projects with Twilio's services, which enable real-time communication and digital engagement experiences.

The Twilio + Infochimps developer contest is a special event where developers are encouraged to create interesting applications using a wide range of datasets available on the Infochimps platform. The contest aims to promote creativity and innovation in data-driven projects, leveraging Twilio's cloud communications capabilities. By participating, developers can showcase their skills and potentially win prizes such as $200 in credits, books from renowned author Edward Tufte, and swag. The contest is open to developers of all backgrounds, and resources are available to help participants get started, including forums, tutorials, and sample apps.

The site CrushGram uses Twilio's SMS API to send text messages, integrating it into various parts of the application such as sending crush notifications and allowing users to anonymously message friends without it being romantic. The development process took approximately one night with the help of technologies like LAMP stack, JQuery, and Facebook Likes, Super Rewards for offers, and PayPal. CrushGram aims to innovate in social relationships and text messaging by utilizing Twilio's API to achieve real-time communication and a more personal experience.