Congratulation to Michael Ansel, the winner of this week's Twilio + Heroku Developer Challenge. Michael created not one but TWO submissions for this week's competition, which required developers to build a Twilio application using Ruby and deploy to Heroku's instant Ruby platform.
Submission #1: DukeNow - What's Open Now?
The first is an application called DukeNow which allows students, employees, and visitors to the Duke University campus to find establishments that are open right now, simply by calling in.
As Michael says, in his submission:
Currently, the majority of those places are dining locations, but I am also adding the libraries and other campus services. In addition to building it into the Duke iPhone application, we've added a "call-in" option, so anyone can access the information, even without a mobile browser.
To try it out, simply call (866) 583-6913 with PIN code 4456-8772.
Submission #2: Twilio Ruby Development Tools
Michael also built a set of libraries and tools to ease development of Twilio applications.
- TwiML response library with attribute and nesting rule validation
- TwiML parser (into nested objects)
- Auth Signature verifier with Rack middleware wrapper
- TwiML processor; simulates a full phone call, returning Symbols that can then be sent to Test::Unit or RSpec, or to another application with an interactive interface
- Web-based call simulator using all of the above libraries that allows one to interactively walk through a call and see both sides of the conversation as well as any errors
Michael - Here's What You've Won
Not only did Michael win the sleek little Dell Netbook, he's also been credited with $300 of Heroku instant Ruby platform credit to spend on databases, dynos, or anything Heroku has to offer!!!
New Category This Week: Lead Generation
The new category for this week is Twilio aps for Lead Generation... more on what that means, and ideas for what you can build in our next post. For now, check out the contest page for all the details and submit your Twilio app for lead generation when you're ready. Good luck!
Thanks Twilio and Heroku! I really enjoyed learning all about your API and getting introduced to the awesomeness that is instant rack-app deployment. I hope the toolset I've put together is useful for other developers as well.
Just wanted to throw a quick disclaimer on here: DukeNow is not officially affiliated with Duke University and the name has not been approved by the Office of News & Communication. Additionally, the entire codebase was developed independently by me, and in no way reflects the university's fantastic development staff.
Boring legal stuff out of the way, here's the code!
DukeNow: http://github.com/michaelansel/twilio-ruby-toolkit/tree/twilio
App Demo: http://dukenow-test.heroku.com
Twilio Demo: http://dukenow-test.heroku.com/twilio
Twilio-Ruby Toolkit: http://github.com/michaelansel/dukenow/tree/twilio
Call Simulator Demo: http://twiml-test.heroku.com/call-sim
Bugs/Patches/Questions/etc are all welcome!
twilio at anselcomputers dot com
Posted by: Michael Ansel | July 14, 2009 at 11:45 AM