December 2012 Summaries

iFactor is a digital communication solutions provider that powers grid companies with tools like StreetLightOutages, Notifi, Storm Center, and iFactor Mobile, allowing customers to stay informed about outages, account balances, and grid-related issues through SMS and voice notifications. These solutions utilize Twilio's SMS and Voice services to proactively communicate with customers, enabling them to report outages, request updates, or receive reminders about bills and energy usage. The company's CEO emphasizes the importance of integrating its software with business processes and utilities, driving success for iFactor in addressing the specific needs of the utility industry.

You can build a phone-controlled car using Twilio and Arduino, create an SMS voting app that displays real-time results, send holiday messages with Python and Flask, build a music hotline powered by Twilio, and create a holiday wishlist spreadsheet that updates via Twilio SMS. These projects showcase the versatility of Twilio's APIs and developer tools in creating interactive and engaging experiences for various applications.

A company called Twilion has created several emergency music hotlines that connect callers with their favorite artists' songs, providing a unique way to experience nostalgia and entertainment. These hotlines, including "Callin' Oates" for Hall & Oates fans, "Bob Dialin'" for Bob Dylan enthusiasts, and others like "Diamond Rings" for Neil Diamond devotees, allow users to press numbers to hear specific songs or artists on demand. The hotlines were built using Twilio's platform and have already gained popularity among music lovers, with over a million calls made since their inception.

MeatText is an app that allows users to share their exact location via a URL that opens in the user's native mapping client, enabling more accurate communication of where they are in crowded areas like Dolores Park in San Francisco. The app was created by Bobby Sudekum, who initially developed geo-centric apps while studying Geography at the University of Vermont and later used it to reunite with a lost friend at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass concert series. MeatText aims to provide a more precise alternative to relying on landmarks or vague descriptions, allowing users to share their exact location through text, tweet, or email.

Kevin Whinnery is a software development enthusiast who started his journey by tinkering with hardware and eventually discovered an interest in technology and writing code. He began programming in Scheme and later joined a large ERP software vendor, where he eventually became a developer evangelist for Appcelerator. After four years, he transitioned to Twilio as a developer evangelist, enabling developers to work on the global telecommunications network with simple web APIs. Whinnery is now excited to help others build communications and digital engagement experiences, encouraging experimentation and collaboration in software development.

NY Tech Meetup brought together a large community of developers to build solutions for Hurricane Sandy victims, resulting in the development of volunteer management apps that streamline communication among groups and coordinate efforts for disaster relief. In contrast, HackMeat challenged attendees to improve the environmental and financial ecosystem between meat distributors, butchers, farmers, and consumers, leading to innovative solutions such as a smart scale that helps processors gather data on meat cuts and a Foursquare app that allows shoppers to request specific cuts of meat in their grocery stores.

Seconds is an online payment system that allows users to send money via web or Twilio SMS using Stripe and Dwolla as the back-end money transfer services. The platform was initially designed for friend-to-friend transactions but has since expanded to include charity efforts, such as GiveNation, which challenges states to raise money for Hurricane Sandy relief. Seconds aims to utilize its platform to facilitate donations and leverage SMS technology for good, partnering with nonprofits and charities to support their fundraising initiatives.

Voxlineas is a live visualization of phone calls being made on Twilio, showcasing the heartbeat of the platform by displaying anonymized views of call routing in context. The initial design featured blue raindrop-like lines that were later adjusted to improve visibility, with subsequent changes including color, speed, and duration iterations to optimize the visual representation for longer calls and varying lighting conditions. Through a combination of paper sketches, sample data prototypes, and iterative development, Voxlineas was refined to utilize HTML, CSS, and Processing, allowing it to run seamlessly in Chrome on a large screen. The visualization was successfully showcased at Twilicon 2012, with plans to host it in the Twilio office moving forward.

Wyld Collective is a Montreal-based team of designers, coders, entrepreneurs, and artists working together to create innovative projects at the intersection of art and tech, with their latest project Cityspeak being an art installation that allows audience members to share their thoughts via Twilio SMS. The team's philosophy emphasizes building compelling interactions with computational stuff, while keeping an eye out for opportunities to learn from diverse projects. Wyld Collective aims to make communication more accessible by integrating different social media channels and adding MMS and media capabilities to Cityspeak. Their future projects include installations that build virtual trees out of texts and tweets, as well as educating the public on the construction of the International Space Station. The team is part of Twilio's developer community hub, sharing best practices, code samples, and inspiration to build communications and digital engagement experiences.

Fruition Partners has introduced TeleBridge, a Twilio connector for the cloud-based enterprise IT Service Management platform ServiceNow. This connector allows for simple integration of Twilio with ServiceNow, enabling IT managers to build intelligent call flows using TwiML and customize their workflow activities with 20+ Twilio actions. TeleBridge is designed to improve customer engagement by pushing surveys to recipients via SMS or voice calls, increasing response rates and satisfaction. The connector is part of Fruition Partners' solutions for Service Management in the cloud, which helps large companies maximize the value of their IT and Business Services. With TeleBridge, ServiceNow administrators can now build custom workflows that leverage Twilio's capabilities, such as skills-based routing, agent- and manager-based call assignment, surveying, and supervision.

Secure Quorum is an emergency management application that aims to streamline incident management by providing automated conferencing, SMS updates, and call status tracking through its partnership with Twilio Conference. The platform helps get the right information to the right people quickly during a crisis, allowing users to determine which questions should be asked when setting up a call and set up lists of staff to be contacted in case of an emergency. With features like two-factor authentication via Twilio SMS, Secure Quorum is expanding its capabilities beyond just emergency response systems and aims to build out its management system to notify thousands of people at once.

If you came along we hope you had a blast.` Twilio attended numerous events across Europe since July, meeting over 16,000 developers and attending around 46 events. The company recently moved into its new London office in Central Working Shoreditch, where it now has partnerships with several UK startup incubators and accelerators. As the year comes to a close, Twilio is looking for event organizers to partner with and European accelerator teams to collaborate with; meanwhile, they are also hiring a developer evangelist for Europe.

In this blog post, we built a real-time SMS voting application using Node.js, CouchDB, Twilio, Highcharts.js, and Socket.io. We created a route for an event, set up a view using Hogan.js, configured Highcharts to display the status of the voting in real-time, and added Socket.io to enable real-time updates. The client-side code was used to establish a connection with the server, send event messages, and update the chart when new votes come in.

This past October, TwilioCon 2012 was a gathering of developers building the next generation of communications, featuring keynotes from Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson and CTO Evan Cooke. The event covered topics such as scalability, security in the cloud, and open source projects, with more talks to be posted online. Key takeaways include Twilio's product announcements, improvements to its services, and resources for developers to improve their communication experiences.

SmartThings is working to unlock the Internet of Things by making everyday things easily accessible and controllable through its custom-built "magic hubs" that automatically connect devices to the internet and a cloud platform. The company's goal is to provide a truly friction-free way for consumers to solve real-world problems, such as monitoring pipes remotely to prevent damage like the $50,000 burst pipe incident experienced by co-founder Alex Hawkinson in his cabin. SmartThings aims to bridge the gap between the technical expertise of hackers and the everyday consumer, allowing users to control their devices using a simple app, with plans to open its platform to developers and makers to create new functions, hardware, and apps.

The text message, also known as Short Message Service (SMS), has a rich history dating back to the early 20th century when Alexander Graham Bell invented the first wireless telegraphy system in 1895. The modern SMS system was developed in the 1980s and became widely available in the 1990s with the introduction of digital mobile phones, such as the Motorola DynaTAC. The first SMS message was sent over a cellular network in 1992 by Neil Papworth to demonstrate the feasibility of text messaging. Since then, the popularity of SMS has grown exponentially, with billions of messages exchanged daily around the world. In 2008, American Idol generated 78 million SMS votes, highlighting the significant role of text messaging in modern communication. The rise of social media and messaging apps like Telegram and WhatsApp has led to a decline in traditional SMS usage, but it remains an essential means of communication for many people, especially in areas with limited internet access.