February 2016 Summaries

NBC News has built an online platform called ElectionConfessions, which allows users to share their private political thoughts anonymously via text message, picture, or voice call, without fear of judgment on social media. The platform uses Twilio as a service to receive and store submissions, which are then reviewed by NBC News team members before being published on the website. Since its launch, ElectionConfessions has received over 3,500 confessions and continues to grow in popularity, providing an outlet for people to express their opinions without fear of retribution or backlash. The platform is seen as a safe space for users to share their thoughts, regardless of whether they agree with each other's views on political candidates.

Sara Chipps is the Founder and CEO at Jewelbots, which builds friendship bracelets for the iPhone era, and has also co-founded Girl Develop It, a non-profit that helps women become software engineers. She will be speaking at SIGNAL, a developer conference for communications in San Francisco on May 24-25. Sara shares her experiences getting into software engineering as a home-schooled kid, finding community, and transitioning to hardware at Jewelbots. At the conference, she will discuss strategies for supporting organizations that help women learn to code and share her experience building smart jewelry using IoT technologies.

This tutorial demonstrates how to send SMS messages from a Google Spreadsheet using Apps Script and Twilio's Messaging API. The process involves creating a new spreadsheet with columns for phone numbers, message bodies, and status, then writing code to read data from the spreadsheet and send an HTTP POST request to the Twilio API with the phone number and message body as parameters. Once the script is set up, it can be run to send SMS messages to the specified phone numbers in the spreadsheet. The tutorial also touches on additional functionality, such as validating phone numbers and accessing more advanced features of the Messaging API.

Guillermo Rauch, creator of socket.io, imparted knowledge on the real-time web at SIGNAL 2015, focusing on achieving fast and self-updating interfaces. He discussed topics such as Google Docs' transition to real-time, vi's terse commands, maintaining up-to-date real-time interfaces, and the benefits of rendering HTML on the server and taking over with JavaScript in building fast web applications. The video is highly relevant for building real-time features like IP Messaging and can be found on the SIGNAL 2016 website, where attendees can also join the conversation and receive a discount on tickets by using code PNASH20.

Exchange Solutions built an IVR platform for a national retailer's customer loyalty program using Twilio, which logged over 600,000 calls in just ten days. The platform leveraged API technologies and SaaS solutions to provide seamless and reliable support, including automation of call volume monitoring through a PHP script. With the help of Twilio's technical support, Exchange Solutions was able to launch the platform quickly and efficiently, with a total build time of only three weeks. The retailer's customers experienced a smooth and reliable phone call experience, while Exchange Solutions' team ensured that the client could continue answering calls and making customers happy during the critical moments of the launch.

{ "summary": "This is a tutorial on how to build a video chat plugin for WordPress using Twilio Video, covering the setup, structure, and functionality of the plugin, including generating an Access Token, connecting to Twilio, and handling incoming conversation invitations." }

Brenda Jin, Senior Platform Engineer at Slack, shares her story of transitioning from a professional opera singer to a successful engineer, highlighting the importance of transparency, improvement, and force of will in her work. She discusses how Slack's backend architecture supports its user-friendly design through organization, consistency, and reliability, and what makes ideal developer experience for developers using the Slack API, including seamless workflows and minimal disruption to their workflow. Jin also shares her favorite Slack API integrations and reflects on the commonalities between musicology and engineering, emphasizing the importance of curiosity, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

Alan Shreve built ngrok, an HTTP tunneling service used by tens of thousands of developers, as he learned Go and wanted to create a tool to make web development easier. He realized that making HTTP requests was expensive and created ngrok to avoid those costs, allowing him to easily replay HTTP requests without having to press dial again. With the help of the Go community, Alan built ngrok, which has become an essential tool for developers, and his story highlights the importance of collaboration and community in software development.

The author of this article, Phil Nash, created a fully functional web application using Twilio to send and receive SMS messages. The app uses the Service Worker API to push notifications to users when new messages are received. To achieve this, the developer installed the Service Worker from the front end of their application, got user permission to send push notifications, wrote the Service Worker code to handle incoming push notifications, and updated the back-end to receive webhooks from Twilio when it receives an SMS for its number. The article covers the process in detail, including setting up a Twilio account, cloning the base application, installing dependencies, creating a Service Worker, storing the endpoint on the server-side, triggering push notifications, and adding support for Chrome using the Google Cloud Messaging service. The author also discusses how to use the web-push module to send push notifications across different browsers.

The text discusses how to enhance the user experience of an iOS chat app using Swift, specifically by adding features such as autocompletion, message editing, and a loading overlay. The author provides step-by-step instructions on how to implement these features, including setting up Twilio IP Messaging, creating a table view with autocomplete functionality, and modifying the cell configuration for messages and autocompletion. The article concludes that while the chat application is getting closer to being full-featured and well-designed, there are still some features left to add.

By Marcos Placona, February 17th, 2016` The author is inviting developers to attend SIGNAL 2016, a conference happening in San Francisco on May 24th and 25th. The event has six reasons why attending the conference will benefit both individual engineers and their companies. To help convince bosses to send them, Marcos Placona and others created a template with six great reasons, cost breakdowns, and an estimated total for easy approval. The template is available for download on the SIGNAL 2016 website, and developers can also take advantage of a 20% discount on tickets by using the promo code MPLACONA20.

The Things.io platform helps developers manage dependencies, interoperability worries, and libraries for connected IoT devices, providing monitoring reports and data analytics. The platform allows users to set up SMS alerts for temperature monitoring, triggering an alert if the device gets too hot, enabling immediate action to be taken to address the issue. To implement this functionality, a developer must create a trigger in the Cloud Code feature of The Things.io, specifying the JavaScript code that will be executed when an event occurs, such as writing data to a thing. In this example, the script sends an SMS with a message indicating the device is too hot and provides instructions on how to take action.

A search for Answering Machine Detection (AMD) might lead to frequent failures across different handsets and voicemail providers, making it unreliable. To solve this problem, the solution is Call Screening or Human Detection, which uses a Turing test-like approach in reverse. It involves using the <Gather> verb to respond to keys pressed by a human, with the action attribute redirecting to a message the caller can hear only after pressing some key. This approach can be implemented in various programming languages, including Python, Ruby, Java, and PHP, with helper libraries available for each language. The implementation involves creating a TwiML response that includes a say statement, a gather verb, and an action attribute, which redirects to a message.xml file containing the final message.

The author, Marcos Placona, shares a personal anecdote about missing out on a Star Wars movie because he didn't buy tickets in advance. He then explains how to bridge Twilio Programmable Chat and SMS with ASP.NET, using a step-by-step guide that includes setting up a new project, creating a class to store strings, and implementing functionality for printing messages, loading previous history, and creating new friends. The application allows users to create and manage friends, send and receive messages, and even creates webhooks to handle incoming SMS and IP messages. With the help of ngrok, the application can be accessed from outside the environment, and Twilio's webhooks are set up to trigger the creation of new SMS and IP messages.

IBM Developer Advocate Jeff Sloyer shared how a cancer clinic in Texas eliminated patients' commute by using video chat with IBM Bluemix, Twilio Video, and WebRTC. With just 26 lines of code, developers can set up a video call through their web browser using WebRTC's simple and reusable APIs, abstracting away complex low-level tech. This allows for easy embedding of communications into apps, making video conferencing a breeze, but still requires handling events like invite acceptance and participant connections, which can be simplified with just a few lines of code.

I've built a sophisticated data-driven contact center using Twilio's platform and I'm excited to share my experience with the Twilio community at SIGNAL. The contact center is designed to provide an exceptional consumer experience, with features like humane call state management and warm transfers. In addition to these technical tips, I'll also be discussing essential lunch watching for anyone using Twilio Programmable Voice. I encourage you to join me at SIGNAL in San Francisco this year, where you can learn from other developers and take advantage of 20% off tickets by using the promo code Spectre20.

Brendan Dawes`, a developer with diverse skill sets, created an immersive experience at the Sundance Film Festival by printing crowdsourced stories from festival attendees onto physical strings. The project, commissioned by `Civic Entertainment Group`, aimed to empower Airbnb Haus visitors to share their stories easily through text messaging. Dawes' expertise in hardware tinkering, front-end coding, and back-end database management enabled him to orchestrate the various components of the installation, which included a network of 12 printers and Twilio-powered messaging. By assembling disparate parts together, Dawes created an engaging experience that combined art and technology, as he sees projects from a 50,000-foot view and positions them on the intersection of these two fields. The project's success was evident in its ability to engage festival attendees for hours, with stories being pinned up throughout the exhibit.

Twilio provides a simple way to send and receive text messages in Ruby, allowing developers to build various applications such as appointment reminders, marketing notifications, and mobile marketing campaigns. The Twilio-Ruby library can be used to create an SMS gateway using Sinatra, a lightweight web framework. By following the provided code example, developers can quickly get started with sending and receiving SMS messages in their Ruby projects. With this foundation, they can build more complex applications, such as automated SMS workflows or customer engagement systems.

The author, Kyle Kelly-Yahner, shares a tutorial on building a Twilio-powered IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system using PHP and ngrok. The system allows users to select from a list of emo songs and hear them play back through a phone call. The author guides readers through the process of setting up Twilio and ngrok, creating a PHP file that handles user input and plays the selected song, and hosting the necessary files on a server exposed via ngrok. With these steps, users can create their own IVR system with customizable music options, making it possible to build a range of applications, from simple hotlines to more complex systems.

Introducing Twilio's Next Generation Helper Libraries` are being made available in early access, with a focus on automation and improved developer experience. The new libraries are built using a tool that auto-generates API code and documentation, allowing for faster iteration and introduction of new features and languages. The previous manual generation process has been replaced, bringing benefits such as optimized network efficiency, configurable page sizes, consistent feature coverage, language idiomatic ways of expressing constructs, streaming auto-paging, proper type serialization/de-serialization, and BYOHC. The release is part of a larger effort to re-architect the libraries, with tradeoffs including backwards compatibility and simplicity in the community contribution model. Developers can get started by visiting installation and migration guides linked below, and providing feedback on early release candidates for Python and Ruby libraries.

To verify phone numbers in Python with the Twilio Lookup API, developers need to install the Twilio Python library and set their Account SID and Auth Token as environment variables. They can then use the `client.lookups.phone_numbers()` method to check if a number exists and fetch additional information such as carrier details or formatting. If an invalid phone number is provided, the API returns a 404 response, which can be caught by the Python library and used to validate phone numbers. A custom function can be created to handle this validation, returning `True` for valid numbers and `False` otherwise.

In 2016, the rise of subscription-based services led to a problem where consumers struggled to keep track of their monthly commitments, resulting in unnecessary charges. To address this issue, Trim was created as a simple platform that performs an audit of a user's credit card and texts them a list of their subscriptions, allowing users to cancel unwanted ones via text. The company aims to be a "customers' watchdog" and is moving towards becoming more intelligent by proactively analyzing user data to offer personalized recommendations, such as optimizing loan rates.

At the upcoming SIGNAL conference, attendees will have access to zero-fluff, no-pitch technical deep dives on diverse topics relevant to software developers. The lineup features speakers from Twilio and other companies, including Eileen Uchitelle's presentation on modern web vulnerabilities and Kristin Salomon's developer experience with cloudBits. Developers can also learn new tricks from Twilio's finest engineers, who will share their latest projects and innovations. Additionally, attendees will get first dibs on the cutting-edge products from Twilio, such as IP Messaging and Video. The event promises to be a fun and engaging experience, combining technical learning with socializing, and is expected to have a significant impact on teams that attend together.

Twilio is hosting a developer contest to celebrate IP Messaging, inviting developers to submit their sickest hacks using Twilio's IP Messaging service. The grand prize includes a BB-8 life-size aluminum LED floor lamp, tickets to the SIGNAL conference, $100 in Twilio credit, and bonus points for community engagement on social media. Eligible participants can submit their entries by February 29th, with resources available to help get started, including quickstarts and tutorials.

A developer's hiring process is often broken due to unsound methods such as relying on resumes, crazy percentages of rejection, non-technical screening, and unrepresentative interview tasks. Many good candidates get selected out early due to factors like lack of university experience or previous jobs not fitting the bill. Some companies measure talent directly by giving candidates a task that showcases their skills. This approach is more effective than traditional methods. Developers should know how to find hiring champions within companies, perform parallel job searches, and negotiate salaries effectively. Salary negotiation involves finding out the company's scale through conversation, starting with lower numbers and going higher until reaching an acceptable offer. By taking control of the process and being confident in their worth, developers can optimize for a better outcome.

Twilio Programmable Chat provides a set of APIs and SDKs to build cross-platform messaging apps, allowing for features like chat history, typing indicators, read receipts, and integration with third-party software. To get started, users need to authenticate a user in Rails, set up Twilio account credentials, create a token for the client, add chat controls to the Rails view, and wire up Programmable Chat with the JavaScript SDK. The tutorial provides step-by-step instructions on how to achieve this, including creating a secure token, adding chat functionality to the Rails view, and setting up the JavaScript SDK to join or create a chat channel, send and receive messages, and handle user input. With this setup, users can build real-time messaging apps with features like chat history, typing indicators, and read receipts, and integrate them with third-party solutions using REST APIs.

Twilio has been testing additional safeguards and checks around SSL certificate validation to prevent Man-in-the-Middle attacks on HTTPS connections. The change impacts customers who use HTTPS endpoints to receive requests from Twilio, causing HTTP requests to fail if the certificate is self-signed, expired, or mis-matched. The safeguard is enabled by default for all new accounts created after October 2015 and can be enabled or disabled within the "Account Settings" page under "SSL Certificate Validation". To help with debugging failures related to certificate validation, Twilio has introduced three new error codes that will be thrown when certificate validation causes an HTTP request to fail. Customers can validate their endpoint's SSL certificate using a tool from SSL labs and reach out to Twilio's Support Team at `[email protected]` for assistance.

Clojure is a modern, dynamic, and functional programming language developed by Rich Hickey. It's designed to compile down to bytecode and run on a virtual machine, making it OS-independent and compatible with the JVM, JavaScript, or Microsoft CLR. Clojure has a strong focus on concurrency and parallelism, with features like channels, threads, and futures. The language is also known for its macro system, which allows developers to extend the language itself. Leiningen is a popular build tool that integrates well with Clojure, making it easy to manage projects and dependencies. With Leiningen, users can create a new project, install dependencies, compile code, run tests, and even generate an uberjar for distribution. The language has a strong community and a wide range of resources available, including the official documentation, tutorials, and libraries like Twilio's API library. Clojure is often compared to other functional programming languages like Lisp, Scheme, and Haskell, but its syntax is designed to be more concise and expressive. Overall, Clojure is a powerful and flexible language that's well-suited for building scalable and maintainable software systems.