January 2013 Summaries

Inigral is helping higher education institutions measure student interactions on Facebook and reach students directly via text using Twilio SMS through their Schools App. The app allows universities to monitor interactions, answer questions, improve community engagement, and increase enrollment. Inigral has seen significant success in increasing student retention and graduation rates, with the Gates Foundation investing in their work since 2011. By leveraging social media and mobile communication channels, Inigral is providing colleges with a tool to better understand and support their students' needs, ultimately improving the college experience.

Building a mobile app landing page with Twilio SMS and Parse can help drive more app downloads by reducing friction in the download process. The solution involves creating a pure HTML mobile app landing page that submits a user's mobile number to a back end powered by Parse, which sends a link to an app download page via SMS. The page redirects to the proper app download page based on the device's platform, and the source code is available on GitHub. To customize this app landing page for your own use, you need to configure it with your own Parse and Twilio account credentials, deploy the cloud code to Parse's servers, and upload the client code to a web server. With these steps, you can create a useful app landing page that reduces barriers between users landing on your page and enjoying your mobile application.

YooTok offers international calling with Twilio, allowing users to make calls from their iOS devices while abroad, with no need for additional credit card information or contracts. The app provides a dedicated Twilio number and tracks call costs, as well as features such as free call recording and call forwarding. Pavlos Mitsopoulos and his team at MobileLoft have developed the app, which is currently available only for iOS devices but has plans to expand to Android in the future.

Twilio Devangelist Michael Wawra reflects on his experience building toasters as an analogy for understanding Twilio's capabilities. He shares the story of Thomas Thwaites, who built his own toaster and encountered difficulties due to its complexity. Similarly, when working with SMS messages, Wawra faced challenges in sending a simple message manually before finding success with Twilio's platform. As a developer evangelist at Twilio, Wawra aims to encourage developers to explore the API and discover new possibilities through their creativity and imagination. The company's platform is seen as a more refined and user-friendly alternative to building custom solutions from scratch.

The team at London-based creative firm Poke created an interactive project that allowed passersby to make it snow on Rivington Street by texting a Twilio number. The project used a combination of technologies including Django, Twilio API, Foursquare API, Arduino, and an EE 4G connection to bring the magic to life. With five snow cannons installed on rooftops, users could send a text message to create a flurry of snowflakes, accompanied by Dean Martin's "Let It Snow" playing over their phone line. The project was designed to be immersive and fun, exceeding expectations as it brought joy to London residents during the holiday season.

Hushed, an Android app offering temporary numbers in over 40 countries, has gained significant traction since its launch just 24 hours ago, logging over 2,000 downloads and climbing. The app utilizes the Twilio Client Android SDK, providing simple pricing plans and access to local numbers at a low cost of $1.99 for a 30-day pay-as-you-go plan. Co-founder Justin Shimoon founded Hushed to address his own need for an anonymous number during travel, as well as the high cost of additional phone lines. The app is now available in multiple countries and has received positive user feedback, with plans to launch on iPhone within six weeks and expand package options.

GoCardless`, a UK-based service that allows users to accept payments via links, has created an internal tool called "Nodephone" using Twilio, Node.js, and Socket.io to track customer support calls and requests. The system, built by Customer Support Manager Tim Rogers, organizes GoCardless' support data, tracks peak call hours, and develops customer profiles. By analyzing the collected data, Tim has been able to identify trends and make data-driven decisions, such as setting office hours based on peak call times and revamping FAQs with new content. The tool also provides a web interface for support agents to view customer records and add descriptive tags and notes. GoCardless plans to expand Nodephone's capabilities to other support channels, including email, and build an internal dashboard to display headline stats in real-time.

The time to consider moving contact centers to the cloud has arrived due to increasing requirements for agility, flexibility and cost reduction. A careful analysis is necessary to avoid hype-driven decisions. Companies like Hulu and Redbean have successfully made this shift with impressive results, such as building a personalized customer support platform from scratch and scaling a call center hotline to over 1 million voice minutes. To learn more about trends driving the transformation and best practices for success, join a free webinar on January 31st featuring case studies and expert insights.

Twilio has announced the appointment of a new European Developer Evangelist, Michael Wawra, based in its London office. The team is actively engaging with developers and attending various events throughout January and February, including conferences such as MIDEM Hack, Mobile World Congress, and web standards meetups. In addition to these events, they will be hosting hackathons, teaching sessions, and meetups for developers in the UK. Twilio is also hiring a new developer evangelist for Europe, offering an opportunity for individuals to join their team and work on exciting challenges in the mobile space.

Alex Ember, a photographer, and Dan Kaminsky, a hacker, collaborated on an SMS payment app for a silent auction, ibuy.io, which allowed attendees to bid anonymously via text message. The app was created to automate the bidding process and add fun to the night. Dan's expertise in security systems and Alex's artistic background came together to create a seamless experience for bidders, who could view prices and receive notifications via SMS. The app is not for sale but will be made available to lower the barrier of inquiry for buyers, making it easier for people to engage with art.

This tutorial uses Twilio's Node.js Module and the Twilio Rest Message API to build a real-time SMS voting application using Node.js. The app is designed to scale to thousands of votes per second and millions of total votes, making it suitable for large-scale events. To achieve this, the authors denormalized event and vote data, allowing them to tweak how they handle persistence. They used CouchDB's range queries to fetch information on an event and its votes, ensured against people voting more than once using CouchDB's _id mechanism, and implemented simple caches and flush operations using CouchDB's bulk operations. The app is built using Node.js, Twilio's Rest Message API, and CouchDB, with a focus on scalability and performance.

### Sending Images via SMS with Filepicker and Twilio` Sending images via SMS is a complex task that involves handling file uploads, dealing with large files, cross-browser compatibility, integrating different APIs, normalizing response formats, and maintaining these integrations. However, using Filepicker.io can simplify this process by providing APIs to connect, process, and store any piece of content in web applications. With Filepicker.io, developers can easily send images via SMS using Twilio by writing minimal HTML code that includes a form with input fields for the cell phone number and image to be sent, along with JavaScript code to set up the Filepicker.io API key. This approach enables users to choose photos and files from services like Facebook, Dropbox, Google Drive, or Flickr and streamlines the process of sending images via SMS.

Lyle Pratt, founder of Better Voicemail, a customized voicemail system provider, quit his job as a senior software engineer and didn't work initially before launching the company using Twilio's API. He was first introduced to Twilio in 2011 while working on another project and saw its potential in the telephony space. Lyle built every aspect of Better Voicemail, leveraging various technologies and languages including Python, JavaScript, Objective-C, Java, and Amazon Web Services. The product is expanding its market and Lyle is working on integrating it with broader CRMs to capture valuable data from inbound calls that hit mobile phones. He is excited about the opportunities in the telephony space and regularly works with other companies to help them effectively use Twilio's API.

By Meghan Murphy, 2013-01-09, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn` Codecademy has expanded its curriculums to include new lessons on APIs such as Twilio SMS and Twilio Voice, empowering developers with skills like user login, text messaging, YouTube video embedding, and more. The platform now offers over 450,000 users a chance to learn programming basics, including those who joined the "Code Year" challenge in 2012. New API partners include Bit.ly, NPR, Parse, Placekitten, SendGrid, SoundCloud, Stripe, Sunlight Labs, and YouTube, allowing developers to build various applications with these tools.

Publik Demand is a free service that empowers customers to file complaints with businesses and get their problems solved. The company, founded by CEO Courtney Powell, uses Twilio-powered hotlines and social media community support to make sure customer issues are heard and resolved. By providing an easier way for customers to report bad service, Publik Demand aims to change the face of customer service, making it more efficient and effective for both businesses and their customers.

In this video, Rob Spectre and Christopher Castiglione from General Assembly demonstrate how to build a customer support line using Twilio Queue, a tool that allows for call management, wait time updates, custom music, and automatic call bridging between employees and customers.

The author, Kyle Kelly-Yahner, built a custom conference line using Twilio for his family's holiday celebrations. He started by registering for a free Twilio account and purchasing a phone number, then set up a voice request URL to host his code. The author used TwiML verbs to build the conference line, including `Gather` to read a greeting, `Join` to connect callers to the conference room, and `HoldInPlace` to start the conference. To add a touch of personality, he incorporated custom wait music from Donna Summer's "Last Dance" MP3 into his TwiML code. With these steps, anyone can create their own unique conference line for special occasions or everyday use.