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New Twilio Contest Category: Holiday Retail

The winner of last week's contest will be announced shortly, but we want to give you as much time as possible to build submission's for this week's contest - Holiday Retail.

Guess what?  Our economy is elastic!  Especially during the holidays, all aspects of retail businesses become elastic... demand swells as retailers rack up a huge percent of their annual sales leading up to Christmas Eve.  Every part of retail must be elastic to meet the rush...  hiring, scheduling staff, advertising, ordering, organizing displays, inventory, returns and refunds, and much more. 

This week we challenge you make these retail processes more efficient, especially during the enormous holiday rush, using voice applications forged with your Twilio development skills.

Here are some ideas...

* help businesses manage their seasonal staff with a phone line for checking schedules, calling in sick, and swapping shifts
* let customers call in a leave a note about items they'd like to buy, then family members can call in and enter that person's phone number to retrieve the items
* provide coupons to customers via voice
* provide return and refund information over the phone so customers can handle issues without having to come in
* provide an "express checkout" option for customers who want to pay over the phone and skip the line
* set up notifications for key members of your staff to ensure orders, inventory, and restocking are completed on time
* set up your shelves to call staff whenever the store runs out of a product (or even call the vendor directly to re-order - vendor managed inventory)
* offer discounts to customers who make appointments over the phone to come in and work with a personal shopper
* provide a VIP hotline for personal shopping customers who spend over X dollars including concierge services like calling cabs, making dinner reservations, etc.

New Contest Category: Twilio Conferencing

Earlier today, we announced the release of the latest Twilio feature: Simple Conferencing.  We are also making conferencing the focus of this week's Twilio developer contest, and challenge you to use conferencing in a Twilio application for your chance to win a sexy little Dell Netbook.

How the Developer Challenge Works

Each week, we choose a category for developers to focus on when creating their contest submissions.  We accept submission throughout the week, and on Sunday at midnight (11:59pm) we close the call for entries, and the next morning we announce the winner on our blog, website, and partner sites.  Our goal is to highlight the features, functionality, and use cases of the Twilio API while bringing attention to the creations of talented developers in the Twilio developer network.

Twilio Developers in Demand

We've seen an increased volume of requests for Twilio developers to help businesses integrate voice into existing products, or build new voice solutions to improve business processes.

What better way to showcase your skills than to build a Twilio app for the world to see?  If you're a Twilio developer looking for project work, or a business seeking a talented developer to help with your voice applications, we suggest you join the Twilio Developers Network on LinkedIn.  If you'd like us to refer you to businesses looking for developers, make sure to fill out your profile.

Announcing Ridiculously Simple Conference Calling

We're excited to announce the release of a new Twilio feature: Simple Conferencing!  With the addition of <Conference>, you can bridge together multiple inbound or outbound calls, opening all new possibilities. 

Sick of those crappy conference lines?  The ones that that require you to enter your conference id, participant pin, access code, weight in kilograms and pi to fourteen digits before you can get to chatting?  Now you can build your own with just a few lines of code.  Ready?

How Conferencing with Twilio Works

Twilio conferencing adds new REST and TwiML elements to allow bridging two or more in-progress call sessions.   Just <Dial> a <Conference>, and specify the name of the "Room"... any callers who dial the same room will be conferenced together... it's that easy!  Check out these ideas:

Simple Conferencing

Create a simple conference call in just a few lines of code.   By default, we take care of all the niceties... playing music while the first person is waiting, playing the "ding" when people enter and leave, and more.  

Check out the Simple Conference Call How To now to start building.

Moderated Conferencing

For larger conferences, it helps to have a call "moderator" to determine when the conference starts and ends.  By explicitly specifying the "startConferenceOnEnter" and "endConferenceOnExit", you can determine who's in control. 

Callers who are not moderators will hear hold music until a caller with startConferenceOnEnter='true' calls into the conference line.  

You can also drop participants into a conference muted, and later mute, unmute or kick participants via the REST API in realtime.  You're in control.

Check out the Moderated Conference How To to get started!

Call Holding

In addition to building traditional business conference lines, a <Conference> is also useful for keeping one caller on "hold" while waiting for another caller to join.

Let's say a customer calls to speak with an operator or customer service agent. Drop them into a <Conference>, and let the hold music roll.  When the agent is available, <Dial> them into the same <Conference> to start the conversation.  You can also specify that when the operator leaves, the first caller should be sent on her way.

Are there features you'd like to see added to Twilio in the future?  Fill out our the Twilio Features Wishlist to share your opinion, and we'll notify you with any updates about features you've requested.

Google Wave Meetup @ Twilio HQ Tonight - Streaming Live!

We are hosting the San Francisco Google Wave Meetup here at Twilio HQ on Pier 38 tonight, if you can't make it but would like to learn more about wave and be part of the chat you can watch live on Justin.TV:

Watch live video from richreader on Justin.tv

5 Cities Added to the Twilio Startup Weekend Challenge

Last week we watched as several Startup Weekend teams worked hard to integrate Twilio into their projects for the chance to win their local Startup Weekend event, and become eligible to win the Twilio Startup Weekend Challenge and score Dell Netbooks for the entire team. 

We originally included 10 cities in the contest, but are excited to announce we have added 5 more to up the ante.  We will now be announcing the content winner in late December.

Adding More Cities to the Mix

We're excited to announce that we are extending the contest through the end of 2009 to include Startup Weekend events in Athens, Paris, Corvallis, Boston, and Israel.

Buzz from Weekend #1 of the Contest

If you search Twilio on Twitter you'll see a taste of what we heard all weekend long - teams getting up and running with Twilio, helping each other, trash talking, and having a lot of fun in the process.  We had a chance to test drive apps over the weekend and we were available 24/7 to make sure the Startup Weekend teams had everything they needed for success.

Voicify.me

Small businesses have a huge problem - they need timely, honest feedback from their customers. Voicify provides small businesses an interface to enter polling questions, possible answers and then tabulates the responses to provide valuable information to the merchant. Since the owner decides which numbers to use, they can poll certain subsets of their customers. For example, first time purchasers, loyal customers, customers spending over a certain amount, etc.. The business owner can even record the poll in their own voice, which further communicates concern of the customer's opinion.

Twilio is being used to make outbound calls, receive responses, text to speech, and to play a supplied MP3 file.

Menu-O-Matic

Menu-O-Matic is a online menu management system for small to medium restaurants. Menu-O-Matic provide web optimizer, mobile browser optimized, pdf and text-to-speech menu presentations from the same centralized menu data. 

Each restaurant is given a "restaurant code". Customers can dial the toll-free number, dial the restaurant code and hear the restaurant's hours of operation, complete menu with prices or be transferred to the restaurants main phone number to speak with a host or hostess. The voice menu phone number is displayed on both the web and mobile views of the menu. When  views on an iPhone the toll free number can be "clicked" to dial.

To hear a demo  dial (877)490-4909 Restaurant Code 36

To see this menu online visit http://menuomatic.com/menu/Silly+Deli

(currently free) You can visit http://menuomatic.com and create your own restaurant which will be assigned it's own code.

Goal Prompt

With Goal Prompt your goals are within reach.  Goal Prompt™ equips you with real-time tools to reach your goals.

In minutes you can enter a goal, set milestones, and schedule reminders to help you make real
progress. Break large goals into bite-size milestones to track your success.
Goal Prompt™ energizes and encourages you to reach your dreams.

• Schedule reminders for recurring activity – Remember to exercise 30 minutes today.
• Schedule email or phone prompts at key intervals – One more week. You can do it!
• Celebrate your success – Way to go! You’ve reached your target weight.

How much progress have you made on your most important goals? Are you satisfied with your
progress over the last year? Imagine the satisfaction of achieving your goals. Let Goal Prompt
help you get serious and reach your goals.

Become a Facebook fan of Goal Prompt too!

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Startup Weekend continues this weekend with events in Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, New York City, Dallas, Lexington, and Cleveland.  Did you build a project last weekend that isn't listed here? Make sure to submit your Startup Weekend project so our panel of judges can evaluate your project for the grand prize.

Ringerous is Twilio-Powered Voice Blogging for Posterous

Last week, we blogged about a new Wordpress plugin for making voice posts to your blog by phone (powered by Twilio).  In the same vein, over the weekend we heard about Ringerous, a new Twilio app created by Greg Tracy that utilizes Twilio to make voice posts to blogging service Posterous. 

The service is dead simple, just configure your account with your phone and make a call to the Ringerous number to make your Posterous post.

Posterous is know for making it easy to post updates, photos and files quickly and easily via email and Voicerous takes this a step further with voice integration.  Congrats to the Ringerous team for launching this app!

Twilio Apps on the Map

We started a collaborative Google Map of Twilio apps around the world.  I've added Ringerous as the first and I'll be working on adding more.  If you've built something with Twilio, make sure to add your app too!

View Twilio Apps Around the World in a larger map

Do you have a Twilio app you'd like to share with the world?  We'd love to feature what you've built on our blog, just drop us a line at help@twilio.com to tell us more. 

Voice Blogging with Twilio & Wordpress

Jeff came across this blog post, talking about using Twilio to build a voice blogging system that integrates with Wordpress, and as a Wordpress fanatic (yes, I know we use Typepad here) I was excited to give it a try and find out exactly how it works.

The source code is open sourced, so you can download it or visit the github repository.  All you'll need to run it is a serve with php, and a free Twilio account.

As the author of "Blogs Are Wrong" says:

I thought it would be cool to make a system that lets me blog from my cell phone.  And so I started stitching it together.  Seven hours later, the sun was up, and I had worked out a system where I call a special phone number and I get a prompt.  I speak into the phone, just like I’m leaving a message, and the system records my speech as a sound file and then processes it to turn the speech into text.  It then puts together a post to my blog with a link to the sound file and the transcription below.  It’s not a substitute for carefully written essays, but if you want to record and share a quick (I limit it to 2 1/2 minutes) thought with the world, it’s a pretty easy way to go about it.

Getting Started with Twilio for Wordpress

Not into scouring README files to understand what it will take to get code up and running?  That's okay.  Here's a rundown of how to get started:

• * make sure you have a server that runs PHP
• * create a Twilio account - the free trial gives you a $30 credit
• * upload the code to your server, and put it in a directory that's accessible online (so Twilio can reach it)
• * edit remotePost.class.php - Change the $wpURL variable to the URL of your wordpress blog, but keep the 'xmlrpc.php' ending.
• * edit remotePost.class.php - Change the $uname variable to the name of a user for your  blog, and the $pass variable to that user's password.
• * this is optional, but you can change the the image displayed on your blog for voice posts by opening up voicepost.php and replacing the image URL in the following line

$body .= "\"><img class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2538/4082861842_cd8c3f7bfb_m.jpg\"></a></p>";

Configuring Your Twilio Account

That's it! There's just one last thing you need to do:
Log in to twilio.com and, on the account dashboard page, scroll about
halfway down. There's a box labeled 'Your Trial Sandbox,' and in that
box, there's a phone number, a PIN, and a field labeled 'USES URL'
In that field, put the web address of the directory you placed these
files in, with 'makerecording.php' tacked on to the end (i.e.
http://www.myserver.com/mydirectory/makerecording.php)
 
sweet! Now just call the phone numbe on your account page (it's
probably 866.853.6913) and enter the PIN code from your account page.
The software will prompt you to talk. Hang up whenever you're done,
and the blog post will appear in a minute or two on your site.
Hooray!

Get Your App on the Twilio Blog

Building something with Twilio that you'd like us to share with the world?  Drop us a line at help@twilio.com so we can get your creation on our blog. 

Photo credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/4everyoung/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Click-to-Call for Salesforce with Appirio's Twilioforce

As you may have read, we're co-sponsoring a developer contest with Appirio between now and November 19th, challenging you to come up with Twilio apps for Salesforce.  To help with the process, the team over at Appirio created a click-to-call demo to show you how easy it is to use the Twilioforce library in Salesforce.

Check out this demo and download the Twilioforce source code to get started.

About the Twilio Developer Contest

If you're interested in winning a Netbook from Twilio and a flipcam from Appirio, then get started on your app and submit by November 19th for the chance to win. We'll be hanging out at the Dreamforce (the Salesforce developer conference) next week, so submit early and give us a chance to tell people about what you've built.  We'll be announcing the winner on November 20th at the conference.  Get all the contest details here, and read about past winners.

Twilio & Digitrad Present at PariSoma

Last night we headed into SOMA to present Twilio to the French American Chamber of Commerce and telecommunications enthusiasts from around the Bay Area at the PariSoma co-working space.  The topic was the Future of Telecommunications, and we enjoyed a wine tasting of French wines from International Vineyards poured by Raphael Knapp.

Here is a snippet of Evan's presentation of Twilio we captured using Qik (please excuse the low quality, this was recorded with an iPhone 3G camera in low light):

Twilio Presents at PariSoMa

View more documents from Twilio.

We also heard from French company Digitrad, who have a partnership with European carrier Orange, and will be launching their unified communications solution at the end of the month.  Digitrad is betting on that idea that people would rather call by name than phone number, and they are a registrar of .tel domains.

About PariSoma

PariSoma is a coworking and event space located in San Francisco's SOMA neighborhood sponsored by faberNovel (learn more how they work together).  It is home to startups and upstarts, a source for local tech community connections through events, a hub for the French-American tech community, and home to the SF Drupal Users meetup.

We're looking forward to attending many more upcoming events at this fabulous space, and hope to see you there.

Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make Me an App

I'd like to share with you one of the most exciting things we've been doing behind the scenes in the Twilio developer community: matchmaking.

We're connecting businesses with software developers who are familiar with voice-enabling software using Twilio, and helping developers find projects, mentors, and resources to jump start making money with their Twilio skills.  Overall, this leads to more fabulous apps launching on the Twilio platform - a win for everyone.

Tips for Getting Referred

• Submit Your Twilio Developer Profile
• Join the Twilio Developers Network on LinkedIn
• Let Us Know When You Launch

As we continue to learn about the skills and specialties of developers launching apps on the Twilio, its impressive to see the diversity of skills, industries and use cases represented.  The more we learn about what you like to work on, the easier it is for us to help make the right connections between businesses and engineers.  If you want to talk to us about building your business on Twilio drop us an email anytime at help@twilio.com

Photo credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffmcneill/ / CC BY-SA 2.0