Twilio Cloud Communications - Discover Our Web Services API for Making & Receiving Phone Calls & Text Messages, Cloud Telephony

Twilio Logo in the Snow by David Jones

Everyone once in awhile, someone creates a Twilio logo and sends us a picture (usually via Twitter).  Some of your might remember the Twilio Burgers... and now we have Twilio in the snow thanks to David Jones!

Now I'm just waiting for someone to do Twilio crop circles... that might be fun weekend project.

Join Us at the First API Hackathon at Hacker Dojo This Weekend

Would you like to discover some APIs and meet the people who build them?  Join us for the first ever API Hackathon.

Come and hack in a chill environment this Saturday at Hacker Dojo in Mountain View, and introduce yourself to the creators of Twilio, Bump, Olark, Box.net, Yahoo Query Language, PBWorks, Yazzem, and more.

There will be pizza, beer, and smart geeks interested looking to work on new projects.  Come for a little bit or stay all day, bring exisitng projects or start something new... it's up to you.  We'll be hanging out from 1pm to 11pm on Saturday.  More information and RSVP on Eventbrite.

Why Mashup APIs?

Aren't you curious what would happen when you mix this and that?  That's what we're interested in - how combining different services together can yield new efficiency, functionality, and products that we never would have dreamed up before.

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Do you have an API?  If there is an API you'd like to share, please email danielle@twilio.com so we can add you to the list of API companies participating.  We are also looking for APIs, meetup locations, and sponsors for future events as we continue to grow this community so let us know if you'd like to get more involved.

SMS Developer Contest - Week #2 Winner is Waiting4aTable by Geoffrey Simpson

Congratulations to Geoffrey Simpson, winner of last week's developer contest for Twilio SMS.  For the second week in a row, we focused on applications using our newly released SMS API.

Waiting4aTable is for restaurants who are tired of keeping customers chained to a small radius holding on to those antiquated pagers.  Why not let your customers roam freely while waiting on a table?  Don't worry about your pagers walking off with those pesky teenagers anymore!

Waiting4aTable keeps your waiting list for you, and it uses text messages to notify your customers when their table is ready.  Your hosts can manage the wait list with a click of a mouse, no more pages to get lost, accidental mark-outs, missed names on the list, etc.  You will need to have an SMS capable device to use the service.

How Waiting4aTable Works

• * Go to http://www.waiting4atable.com and register for an account.
• * After you register, you should be on the "Waiting List" page. If not, click on the "Waiting List" tab to open the page.
• * Add some parties to the waiting list by clicking the "Add Party" button and filling in the information.  You need to have at least a Party Name and a valid phone number (this is the one with text messaging).
• * Now that you have at least one party in the waiting list, you can sit and watch it for a while.  It will auto refresh and update the wait time (cool, i know).
• * To let the party know that their table is available, just click the "Table Ready" button.
• * To have them come see you, click the "See Host"
• * Once the party is seated, click the "Seated" button to remove them from the list.
• * To remove them from the list because they left or you really just don't like them, go ahead and click the "Remove" button.

Interview with Geoffrey on the Making of Waiting4aTable

How did you hear about Twilio?

I first heard about Twilio at the Startup Weekend Tulsa.  I came up with the GoalPrompt idea which let users setup personal goals to achieve and it used the Twilio API to call them to remind them about their goals and to celebrate with then when they achieved those goals.  We found that using the Twilio API was easy and extremely powerful.

How did you come up with the idea of Waiting4aTable?

To come up with the idea for Waiting4aTable, I brainstormed on the situations in life where I wish I could get a text message.  I thought about my dissatisfaction with restaurants that keep you tethered to the waiting area because the pagers they use won't even let you walk down the block without getting out of range.  Giving the restaurant your cell phone number so they can send you a text message when your table is ready seems like a really good solution, and with the proliferation of cell phones today, it seems like it would be a great fit.

How long did it take to build your app?  How many lines of code?

I was on a business trip for the week of the contest, and I was able to get in some good development time on the plane and in the hotel.  I spent a total of about 20 hours of development time, coming up with a little over 1000 lines of code.  I am standing on the shoulders of giants though, I utilized the fantastic jqueryUI classes to make the user interface shine.

What technologies and tools did you use to create Waiting4aTable?

I am really just getting acquainted to web applications, and I have a strong Microsoft development background, so I used the ASP.Net MVC2 framework with the Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate.  As mentioned before, I relied on jQuery and jQueryUI for the user interface.  I am using Microsoft SQL Server as the database, and Linq to SQL as the intermediate data layer.

To communicate with Twilio, I grabbed the .Net examples that are available to everyone in the Twilio Helper Libraries.  I do also have to recommend the Microsoft BizSpark Program because it has allowed me to use the full suite of Microsoft products without any upfront costs for three years.

If you had all the time in the world, what would you build with Twilio?

There are still some ideas that I am kicking around using the conferencing API that was released earlier this year.  The integration of software and telephony is in its infancy, and once developers become comfortable with using telephony in their applications, I think the lines start to become blurred between software and telephony.  Years ago, I remember having to trick a modem using a Unix script to send a numeric page to a support pager.  Being able to send a text message or make a voice call with a few lines of code is something that was only dreamed about.

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Would you like to win a Netbook from Twilio?  Join our the thousands of developers who have already discovered Twilio is the fastest and easiest way to integrate voice and SMS into applications.  We announce a new contest category each week, and you can learn more on our contest page.  Happy coding!

This Week's (Mini) Contest - Exploring the History of the Telephone

We've tested over 100 applications submitted to our developer contest in the past 3 weeks since the Twilio SMS API launched.  Thank you to everyone who has jumped in an participated in this contest, we've had a lot of debate among the judges about which applications should win and it is never easy to pick winners when there is much creativity and innovation. 

We announced Meet Gatsby as the winner of Week #1, and we will be announcing the Week #2 winner later today.

New Contest: History of the Telephone Videos

Since it is already Thursday, we are announcing a "mini-contest" of sorts for this week, with the deadline still on this Sunday, Feb. 28th, at midnight.  We are challenging you to create a 3-5 minute long video about some aspect of the history of the telephone.  Make your own content, or mashup what you find online, and make sure to upload it to YouTube with "Rediscover the Telephone" in the title.

Think this sounds boring?  Check out some of the videos we dug up on YouTube for inspiration:

Photo credit: ABC Archives

Foursquare Mashup Meet Gatsby Wins Week #1 of Twilio SMS Contest

Each week, we announce a new category of applications we're interested in and challenge Twilio developers to cook up apps over the course of the week and submit by midnight on Sunday.  The contest has been running for almost a year, and we've awarded prizes to over 100 developers.

We believe in the power of exploration.  What you build for our contest might not be what you end up turning into a business, but we hope that through experimentation with our cloud communications API you'll discover how simple it is to add voice and SMS to your applications.

Without further ado, the winner for week #1 of the Twilio SMS contest is...

Week #1 - Meet Gatsby by Gabe Smedresman & Will Tsui

Meet Gatsby introduces you to nearby people with interests you share, whenever you check in on Foursquare.  Link your Foursquare account, and give Gatsby a short list of interests. Then go out and enjoy life!

Whenever you check in on Foursquare, Gatsby will see if there is anyone nearby who shares interests with you.  If there is, he'll text you both with your first name and shared interests. Gatsby will also set up an temporary SMS relay, so you can chat and find each other without revealing your cell number.

For newcomers to a city, professionals who want to meet local peers, or anyone who wouldn't mind stumbling upon a new friend, Gatsby can help you meet new people that share your interests, while you go about your daily life.

 Get Started With Meet Gatsby

1) Go to Meet Gatsby and sign up
3) Login to Foursquare, and click "Allow" to the OAuth prompt.
3) In the interests screen, add a few interests, comma-separated.
4) Verify that the phone number is correct in the lower text box, or add it.
6) Checkin to Foursquare with the first account. Somewhere, wherever. Make sure to check 'tell your friends' (so that Gatsby can see the checkin through the foursquare API), and wait for Gatsby to send you a match via SMS

Congratulations! If you didn't know each other already, now you have something to talk about! If one of you responds to Gatsby, the message will be relayed to the match.

If you didn't receive a match, it is probably because no one in your area is signed up or checked into a location, or because your interests don't match anyone.  (If you're in the Bay Area and add cooking as an interest you'll be sure to get matches)

Meet the Creators of Meet Gatsby - Interview with Gabe & Will

How did you hear about Twilio?

I've been interested in projects in the phone area for a while. I think I came across it when I was looking for choices to set up a game that uses phone keypress frequencies to control gameplay.

How did you choose which app to create for the contest?

We'd been building Gatsby for a week or two prior to the contest being announced, but I was struggling to figure out how to handle the SMS. We had been using Textmarks, but its universal shortcode and app-specific keyword means that for our app to receive texts, users need to remember to include the word "GATSBY" as the first word of all texts to our service. This is a terrible user experience and it effectively rules out automated two-way SMS communication. The twilio SMS API came out literally just as I was looking for alternatives, and was exactly what we needed. And the contest proved to be the perfect deadline for launch!

What technology/tools/etc did you use to develop Meet Gatsby?

Our frontend for signup is a python/django web application running on a small slicehost server. Most of the work is done by a python background process that monitors foursquare for new checkins by friends of Gatsby. With every new checkin, Gatsby looks for nearby people with shared interests, and if there is a match, uses Twilio's SMS API to send a text message to each user. The webserver is set up as twilio's callback URL for incoming texts, and that's how we relay incoming messages from a matched user to his or her match.

We've been building a django extension to handle our foursquare authentication that we'll be open-sourcing very soon.

How long did it take to build and/or how many lines of code is your app?

The application took about two weeks of on and off work to build. It's about 6000 lines of code.
 
Any advice for developers who are considering using Twilio for the first time? ... and anything else, feedback for us, apps you wish someone would build, etc?

Twilio is a SNAP to set up. Took me less than an hour to get SMS send and receive working. You do a great job with documentation and reference code to help developers get started. And the SMS messaging happens so fast! I can't recommend it enough, the world has been waiting for a service like this for some time.

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Would you like to win a Netbook and the chance to be featured on the Twilio blog?  Check out our weekly Twilio Developer Contest for your chance to participate in a category that interests you. We announce a new category each Monday, and participants have one week to build and submit their apps.  We will be announcing the new category for this week shortly.  Have questions?  Drop us a note at help@twilio.com, we're always listening.

New Twilio Cold Fusion Library by Jason Fill

We're very excited to share with you a user contributed Twilio Library for Cold Fusion, which was created by Jason Fill. It works just like our PHP helper library. The author Jason Fill, uses the library for both his personal projects and his job at eLearningToolBox.com.

Jason recently started using us after reading about Twilio in TechCrunch, so we asked him to give us some feedback, and he said:

"I like the idea of building polling system that can be used easily by anyone to gather feedback. There is really so much that can be done by coupling voice and sms to the web the possibilities are endless and exciting.

Working with Twilio is truly a breeze.  The fact that you only pay for what you use and their are no minimums is very nice. I really enjoy the functionality and look forward to building some more applications using ColdFusion and Twilio."

Thanks Jason!

Some information on Twilio Helper Library for Cold Fusion

The library helps to facilitate:

• * Making requests to the Twilio REST API
• * Constructing TwiML requests
• * Validating Twilio request signatures

NOTE: This is the first version and should be considered in beta form. While all the examples have been tested there still may be some bugs.

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Have you build something that would benefit the Twilio developer community?  Share it with us and we'll help spread the word.  Just a drop a note to help@twilio.com, we're always listening.

Twilio SMS Heroes: Get Rescu'd with Rescu.me by Daryn Nakhuda

This blog post is part of a series of posted featuring applications developed using the recently released Twilio SMS API.  Read about SMS applications we've featured and submissions from our weekly developer contest.

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Need an excuse to get out of an annoying conversation? On a date that just won't end?

Ask Rescu.me to SMS or call you, and get outta there!  This app, created by Daryn Nakhuda, makes it easy to schedule a call or SMS to your phone ahead of time so you can bust of boring meetings, bad dates, and more.  Check it out:

How it works

Just text "SMS 5" to (206) 866-5924, and we'll send you an SMS message back in 5 minutes. Of course you can change the 5 to any number, and we'll send you an SMS in that many minutes. We can also call you.

Tip: Add (206) 866-5924 to your address book to make incoming texts and calls look like they are coming from someone specific.

 

Rescu.me is built with Ruby on Rails, using Twilio for SMS and telephony.

This is just a prototype - if you really like it, let me know, and I'll keep working on it!

Contest Update: SMS Winner Not Yet Announced, SMS Again This Week

We've been a bit slow getting the news out about last week's contest winner, and that's because we're still testing out all the applications that were submitted. 

But don't let that stop you from getting started on this week's contest... we'll be focusing on Twilio SMS again, since it has been so popular following launch.

This Week's Category: Twilio SMS Week #2

We will begin profiling the applications that were submitted to the SMS contest over the past week, but they are still all eligible to win (if they don't win this week).

Visit the contest page for more information.

Twilio SMS Heroes: Jeff Lindsay Builds TextAuth in 9 Hours

We saw a tweet from Jeff Lindsay, aka @progrium, mentioning a Twilio SMS app he whipped up in 9 hours called TextAuth.

Helping Developers Monetize SMS Apps

TextAuth offers a simple API where developers can send users to sign up to pay for SMS messages by creating access tokens. For just $5/month, users can purchase 160 SMS messages. The tokens can be used to send text messages that count towards a specific TextAuth user's quota. Jeff build TextAuth primarily for his service, Notify.io and he is planning to add Oauth to the service in the future.

Get a Twilio Number. Build an SMS App. Be a hero.

Introducing Trails (Twilio-on-Rails) by Hemant Bhanoo

With Trails, Hemant Bhanoo is making it even easier to develop Twilio applications in Rails with this library for using Twilio with the Rails framework. 

Trails is build on top of the Twilio Ruby Library, and has functional test helpers so that you can simulate Twilio calling you app.  When Twilio calls your application, the application recognizes whether it is Twilio calling or a web request.  The controller is reusable and has views for displaying HTML or TwiML, depending on where the request comes from.

View the source code here:  http://code.google.com/p/twilio-on-rails/

Interview with Hemant on Building Trails

What gave you the idea to build Trails?

I first got a chance to play with Twilio when I was trying to scale our customer service operations at Social Gold. Once I saw how easy your platform is, I was hooked, and started building a few more toy apps (www.xperilab.com) to sink my teeth into the service. But I quickly found that testing my apps was tedious because I couldn't always test twilio's interaction with my app, and wanted a better way to do that. Over several months, and a couple of different apps, I copy/pasted my 'frameworky' code until I finally decided to pull it out into a library.

How long did it take to build?

It got built as a side-effect of my evening/weekend toy projects, overs the course of the last 5-6 months.

What are you thoughts on Twilio, feedback, suggestions for developers getting started?

Absolutely love you guys, end-to-end. At Social Gold, we draw a lot of inspiration from you guys in terms of how developer-friendly your product is.

If you had all the time in the world, what would you build with Twilio?

I love the idea of building really engaging games that only require a simple telephone, or SMS. I'm still playing around with ideas but I think that the telephone could actually be the ultimate viral platform.

Example Code to Get You Started

As Hemant mentions on Github, there is still plenty of room for contributors to step in and add to more functionality to Trails.

Ex

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Have you built something using Twilio that you'd like us to share with our developer community?  We would love to blog about it, please contact help@twilio.com and tell us about your creation.  Whether its a simple app, enterprise solution, developer resource, or something else - we're listening and can't wait to try it out.  Grab a Powered by Twilio banner while you're at it.