February 2018 Summaries

Age UK's Call in Time service aims to combat loneliness among older people by connecting them with volunteers over phone calls. The charity initially struggled with a manual call system that couldn't scale, but partnered with Reason Digital and Twilio to build a new software-powered solution. This platform automates the vetting process for volunteers, enables faster onboarding, and scales call volume on demand through a serverless architecture. With this revamped service, Age UK plans to reach 10,000 calls per week, making it easier for older people to join and connect with others, often leading to genuine friendships.

Today is a Day of Action in support of an open internet and urging Congress to restore the net neutrality principles that were recently rolled back by the FCC. The fight for net neutrality matters to innovators, developers, and consumers, who need to hear from their representatives about why this issue is important. A true Internet Bill of Rights should protect all forms of consumer communication, restrict blocking or throttling regardless of platform, protect consumer privacy, be transparent, include clear enforceable rules, and provide means to correct behavior that negatively affects consumers. The protection of an open internet would enshrine the freedom to communicate, level the playing field for all participants, and provide transparency for both providers and consumers of communications.

The internet is not getting significantly safer due to the increasing number of data breaches, with almost 1.1 billion exposed records from US companies in the last two years. However, there is a growing interest in security among developers, with downloads of security packages increasing by 548% since January 2016 and 254% between January 2017 and December 2016. The most popular security package for supporting two-factor authentication has seen a 320% increase in downloads over the last 24 months. Twilio's Authy app is used by users to store and backup their 2FA tokens, and there is a growing trend of developers embedding 2FA into their applications using Twilio's API. While data breaches are likely to continue, tools like 2FA give developers and consumers the ability to secure their data when older security processes fail. Enabling 2FA definitely ensures user accounts are a lot more secure than just using passwords.

This article discusses how to control a massive video display on a cruise ship using Python and the nec-pd-sdk package. The system, which is 17 meters tall, uses 34 NEC X551UN displays connected via SDI and DVI to HDMI active converters. The Linux PCs play video for individual displays, while one additional Windows PC synchronizes playback. To control the displays programmatically, the author used Python and the nec-pd-sdk package to open a connection to each display, test for errors, turn off faulty displays, and then wait for 5 minutes before turning them back on. The code is compatible with Python version 2.7 and later, and it uses a JSON file to store IP addresses of the displays. The author also implemented a system of notifications using files to indicate when and which displays had errors. This example showcases one way to automate tasks related to NEC displays using Python and nec-pd-sdk.

Twilio has added support for RCS (Rich Communications Services), next-generation carrier messaging, enabling developers to build more engaging, rich messaging experiences while leveraging the reach of SMS. With this support, developers can use one API to deliver rich messages on any device, reaching every user. Twilio is also introducing Rich Messaging Extensions, which extend the Programmable SMS API with additional optional parameters for including rich content and interactive experiences. This allows businesses to send branded messages, share rich cards, and include carousels for scrolling through products, while enabling read receipts and click-through data. RCS support enables businesses to reach consumers with more engaging content, transforming consumer expectations for all messaging experiences. With Twilio's support, developers can now build applications that support both SMS and RCS, without custom code for every different channel.

This tutorial guides the reader in building a Slack bot game using Python. The author draws inspiration from a Facebook group called "DogSpotting," where users share pictures of dogs they see, and creates a similar game for a college student organization. The game involves posting pictures and keeping track of points for each player, with the top scorer being announced at the end. The tutorial covers setting up a Python environment, installing necessary packages, creating a Slack app, and implementing the game logic using a class-based approach. The reader is then guided through connecting the game to Slack's API, parsing incoming messages, and deploying the bot to run in their local environment. The author concludes by encouraging readers to add features to their bot and share their experiences.

The Twilio Authy (2FA) and Verify (phone verification) APIs have been updated to provide real-time event notifications and detailed reporting capabilities, allowing developers to monitor user verifications, authentications, and other account security events in detail. The new Webhooks API enables developers to receive real-time alerts for events such as device registration complete, which can be used to update systems or modify UX flows in real time. Additionally, the Reporting API allows developers to query the API for batched events, filtering by time period and type of events, providing valuable insights into user behavior and security trends. These updates make it easier to build rich user authentication and phone verification experiences, reducing ongoing costs associated with supporting users.

Twilio Studio is a visual interface application used to build software applications in a simple way, making it ideal for first-time app-builders. The author of the article, Christianne Abad, created a Valentine's Day text reminder using Twilio Studio to subliminally remind her boyfriend that the holiday was approaching without directly telling him. She followed a step-by-step process to set up the application, including formatting necessary widgets, putting together code, configuring the phone number, and testing it before sending the message. The article highlights the ease of use of Twilio Studio and its capabilities for creating custom applications with minimal coding knowledge required.

Conner Nannini created a Valentine's Day app using Twilio Studio, a drag-and-drop user interface for building communication "flows", without writing any code. The app allows users to deliver a last-minute gift by calling or texting a pre-configured phone number. The flow is triggered when the caller inputs digits on their keypad, and the user can choose from options such as hearing a favorite memory or thing about the person they're calling. After selecting an option, the app plays a message using Twilio's text-to-speech engine, and eventually signs off with a romantic message. With some modifications, users can create more complex experiences, upload their own audio files, or even build a full-fledged chatbot.

This blog post introduces the concept of Web Components and how they can be used with Stencil, a tool from Ionic. The author creates a simple progress bar component using Stencil's TypeScript, JSX, and decorators, which are then published to npm for consumption on other websites. The article covers the setup process, including configuring Stencil's build system, creating a new project, writing the component's code, publishing it to npm, and testing its functionality. It also touches on styling the web component using CSS Custom Properties and adding properties to the component via JavaScript. The author concludes by highlighting other tools and frameworks for building web components and encourages readers to share their own projects or ask questions.

The guide provides step-by-step instructions on hosting a Python and Flask Facebook Messenger Bot on Heroku, covering the process of registering an account, setting up prerequisites such as requirements.txt, Procfile, and runtime.txt files, hooking up version control to Heroku, deploying the app, setting environment variables, and testing the bot. The guide assumes users have basic knowledge of Python, Flask, and Heroku, and provides examples and instructions for each step, including using config variables to securely store sensitive tokens such as access and verify tokens.

Lazarus, a command and control cluster automation system built by Twilio, automates frequent operational tasks to improve scalability and efficiency. It addresses the challenges of running thousands of microservices in a large-scale distributed system by providing automated remediation for failed hosts, services, and other issues. By analyzing events and triggering workflows, Lazarus minimizes false positives and true negatives, ensuring that only complex failures are escalated to on-call engineers. The system is designed to work with existing tools like Nagios and Datadog, and provides a flexible configuration management framework, notification engine, and auditing & reporting features. With 90% of instances in Twilio's cloud infrastructure running with Lazarus remediations enabled, the system has been successfully deployed for over two years, improving resilience and reducing engineering workload.

When law enforcement agencies like the FBI reach out to tech companies for information, they can show up at the office and deliver a sealed envelope. National Security Letters (NSLs) are unusual requests because they're secretive and don't require court oversight. However, companies like Twilio have started requesting judicial review to see if the nondisclosure requirements are necessary. After reviewing their NSLs, some agencies dropped the nondisclosure requirement, allowing companies to notify users and include the number of requests in transparency reports. Companies can push back on default government requests and issue an initial objection response that requests review. If a company receives an NSL, it should respond with the requested information, notify customers, update its transparency report, and publish the request and agency response. Adopting this process promotes transparency, accountability, and oversight, but there's still room for improvement in terms of full oversight and disclosure.

Twilio has published its sixth semi-annual transparency report, detailing the total volume of government requests for information received by Twilio in the second half of 2017. The report reflects a continued increase in international government agency requests, with 1581 requests received from 24 countries. In the US, there were 340 federal, state and local agency requests, including two National Security Letters that Twilio was able to publish after requesting judicial review. Twilio continues to advocate for accountability and oversight in data privacy and has developed resources to aid developers in preparing for the EU General Data Protection Regulation. The company's transparency report aims to provide visibility and earn trust with its users.

Twilio.org has announced its latest funding recipients for its Impact Fund, supporting three nonprofits and one social enterprise in their efforts to leverage innovative communications to deliver impact at scale. The organization's mission is to fuel communications that give hope, power, and freedom, and it plans to award an additional $1.5 million in 2018, following the $1.5 million awarded in 2017. Twilio.org has invested in Edovo, a social enterprise working to decrease recidivism rates through correctional education and communication with loved ones, as well as three nonprofits, including the International Rescue Committee, MindRight, and Caravan Studios, which will use their grants for projects such as improving client-caseworker communications, empowering youth of color to heal from trauma, and deploying skilled volunteers to time-sensitive tasks.

Introducing New Twilio Support Plans - Today, we are excited to announce four redesigned support plans to ensure customers get the help they need from Twilio, whenever they need it. Our new support plans include Developer Support, Production Support, Business Support, and Personalized Support, each with its own set of features and pricing tiers. The new plans offer improved response times, 24/7 support options, and personalized support for large software companies and partners. Pricing is now based on Twilio usage volume, allowing customers to scale their support plan accordingly as their business grows. Existing customers will be grandfathered into the new plans unless they choose to switch or sign a new contract.

`Building Simple SMS Phone Verification with Twilio Verify and Python involves creating a Flask application that collects user input, sends a verification request to Twilio's Verify API, and checks the token received by the user. The application uses Flask sessions to store the user's phone number and country code, allowing it to verify the token without asking for the phone number again. With just two API calls and two web pages, this process enables secure phone verification, reducing fraud and increasing reliability of notifications.