Starbuck's dashboard

Starbuck replied on March 15, 2010 17:37 to the question "Calling two people into a conference" in Twilio:

It does seem that a separate REST call needs to be made for person2 after returning the TwiML to get person1 into the conference. That means spawning off a new thread, perhaps avoiding timing issues. It would be helpful if we could get a postback from a TwiML response so that we can perform a second action when the Twilio server is done with a first action. For example (avoiding XML tag bracketing):

Response
- Say
- Dial
-- Conference
- Url (call back here after user is put into conference)
- Method

Is there an existing mechanism for this? If not, what do you think about an enhancement to the API?

Thanks Evan.

Starbuck asked a question in Twilio on March 14, 2010 09:46:

Calling two people into a conference

Maybe I'm missing something simple, sorry... I'm not sure how to accomplish this: I want to call person1, put them into a conference room with music, ask them to wait for person2. When person2 joins, the conference starts.

I'm using a thick client to place a call via to person1 with an action to go back to my web server. There I can Say "please wait", then use Dial with Conference to add the person to a room. After this operation, is there a flag to invoke another callback to the server? If not, I need to launch a new thread on the web server to do the same thing with a second person.

If I Say, then Dial/Conference, and in the same TwiML I Dial the second person, does the Twilio server process all statements back to person1 before it dials person2, or does it wait for someone to answer on the call to person2 before sending the Say and Conference music to person1?

Thanks!

Starbuck replied on March 14, 2010 09:15 to the problem "URL - http://IP:PORT/resp.xml ---- PORT ignored" in Twilio:

I'm using http://myhost:port/foo?x=bar with no problem.
Maybe the issue is specifically with IP addresses. If so then you may want to consider using DynDns.org to get a hostname for the IP. It works for me.

There may also be a problem with httpS on a non-default port. I'm not securing my comms yet (Twilio doc says they don't acknowledge self-signed certs and I'm not ready to buy a cert for this).

Starbuck reported a problem in drop.io on March 01, 2010 01:28:

Sidebar maintenance, Augi mouseover breaks Preview

Go to /admin/sidebar and mouseover all options. You'll see a preview of the widget that displays to represent the option. Mouseover Augi and all other mouseovers then stop. I believe this is because there is no preview Div for Augi and something breaks in the display script. This occurs in IE7, haven't checked others or looked any further to diagnose specific issue. If you (save first!) refresh the page then all mouseovers (except Augi) work again.

Starbuck reported a problem in drop.io on February 27, 2010 00:11:

Issues creating Notes in web page

I added a note today via the browser interface and the date on the post says it's tomorrow. It's only 4pm here, so the posting date might be GMT. After leaving page and going back, the posting says "Today", so I'm assuming it somehow reset to the proper time zone. RSS shows it was posted x minutes ago.

Speaking of the RSS - I have another post that was made on 10-feb but RSS says it was 09-feb. Something is really wacky with these asset dates.

Also, does the HTML edit box on notes really need to be so tiny?

Starbuck replied on February 22, 2010 05:01 to the question "Pronouncing time of day inside the verb." in Twilio:

How about changing the colon to a space and putting a space between p and m?

Starbuck asked a question in Twilio on February 19, 2010 18:45:

Why is SMS better than Email for our purposes?

When doing business with known people, we can ask who their mobile carrier is and easily get the correct email address for that number@carrier. Then we can email messages that look like any other SMS. This is simple and free. So when I offer for-fee services to send SMS from a server and someone says "why don't you just email it for free?", what response is most reasonable?

My answer now would be that we don't need to know the carrrier to start, and if the person changes carrier but takes their phone number with them, we don't need to be advised of the transfer. We can also avoid the extra data field for Carrier and the logic for changing email addresses based on carrier. But honestly that all sounds a little lame.

This all applies to outbound-initiated messages only. For inbound it's easy to justify SMS since we just need a Twilio phone number and responses go back out the same pipe. The follow-on argument here is that it's nice to use the same mechanism for inbound and outbound comms. But when there is a cost for each packet inbound And outbound, the convenience may be quickly overshadowed by economy.

Thanks for your consideration.

Starbuck replied on February 18, 2010 16:03 to the question "Avoiding "Slashdot effect" or costly abuse" in Twilio:

As a general cutoff, yes, we can stop calls from being forwarded for processing. But it's a shame that we need to completely disable our service in the case of abuse from a specific source.

Just to clarify : Is a call billed when a connection is made from Twilio to a server via the URL? Or is it billed when Twilio answers the telephone or an SMS is received at Twilio, even if it's not forwarded for processing?

There's some irony here. We can use Twilio as a front-end to other phones, to pass calls or not based on our own white-list or black-list. Unfortunately we can't do that at the Twilio server - to simply not answer the phone or accept an inbound SMS if the callerID matches some criteria - and thus avoid the related charges.

I think the topic of at least a small per-account black-list bears some discussion over there.

Starbuck started following the question "options for offered call acceptance and rejection" in Twilio.

Starbuck asked a question in Twilio on February 17, 2010 06:07:

Avoiding "Slashdot effect" or costly abuse

What mechanisms can be used to avoid these situations? :

• Someone publishes "SMS this number for free money" and your number gets innundated with calls, all costing a ton of unrecoverable money.


• Someone's fax gets stuck on retry with the wrong number, a Twilio account, and a ton of charges get racked-up over a weekend.


• We publish a new service and get overwhemed by success from people who aren't helping to generate income to pay for the service.


• Someone calls a Twilio number, then sets the phone down and goes on vacation for a week

You get the idea... I'm wondering if we can temporarily disable an account, or avoid charges from calls from specific phone numbers, or cutoff our accounts at a specific dollar amount. I know the API has timeout values, but I don't see anything that gives us more control to avoid abuse. What about black-lists or white-lists?

I just found a similar inquiry here with no recent solution.

Think about a website getting hit with a DoS attack, or email bombs. I don't think telephone applications are any less vulnerable.

Has this ever happened to a Twilio user?

Thanks!
==
Twilio Server Library for .NET
Open Source REST and TwiML in one strongly typed library
Beta source available soon

Starbuck replied on February 17, 2010 05:37 to the question "Do you offer a referral program?" in Twilio:

I'll add a me-too here. And someone else asked a similar question about revenue splitting here today.

I'm amazed that Twilio has't publish a reseller program yet. I'm itching to do a lot of things with this platform. It would help if there were better ways to monetize SaaS products based on the platform.

The more I think about this, the more I realize that with software controls we can create turnkey solutions that lock to accounts which we provide, and we can add a fair markup to the cost of business to ensure profitability. But it would be nice to sell a software utility where we get a commission even if the client gets an account direct with Twilio, or simply a commission for referring companies who then do their own development.

While I can think of some interesting scenarios for commissions, white-label branding, etc, I tend to think of this as a "would be nice" feature rather than a "must have".

--
Twilio Server Library for .NET
Open Source REST and TwiML in one strongly typed library
Beta source available soon

Starbuck replied on February 15, 2010 21:12 to the idea "Introducing DropCaster - Broadcast from your PC to Drop.io" in drop.io:

Due to lack of interest from the Drop.io community, I don't plan to continue with this effort. With no demand there is no reason to create supply.

Starbuck replied on February 15, 2010 21:11 to the idea "New visualizer in development for audio and video" in drop.io:

Due to lack of interest from the Drop.io community, I don't plan to continue with this effort. With no demand there is no reason to create supply.

Starbuck replied on February 15, 2010 08:23 to the question "Documentation bug in conference page" in Twilio:

There are lots of little bugs all over the docs. Almost all just little typos. I wish I had edit access to those pages to fix everything. (Wiki anyone?)

I also noticed that when retrieving a list of Calls, there is a Call XML element called Annotation that isn't documented. Can someone define that field?

Starbuck replied on February 15, 2010 08:19 to the idea "Creating new C# library - anyone interested?" in Twilio:

Update: I've extended my project to include full REST client connectivity as well as the TwiML server operations - this is now an end-to-end Twilio SDK for C# developers ... or will be when I publish the source. Details (perhaps too many) are here:
http://twilioserver.codeplex.com/Thre...

Adam (or someone at Twilio) - we really should talk.

Starbuck gave praise in drop.io on January 31, 2010 22:23:

Keeping family informed about Mom

We're putting Drop.io to good use and I thought I'd share this with others.

My mother has been in hospitals and nursing centers for several months now. I was sending emails to a group of people but it was a real hassle for various reasons. So I created a drop for Mom. When I go to visit, every day or two, I get a video of our visit. I edit it down at home to about 3 minutes and 20MB, then upload it to the drop along with a note about the visit, observations, and Mom's progress. Everyone who is interested gets an email from drop.io when a video or note is posted. Everyone can login with a Guest password and add their own notes or comment on the latest news. This works really well for the family and is a good application for Drop.io.

Notes:

• I need to recycle vids to avoid the 100MB limit for a free drop. That's fine and if anyone wanted to avoid this we would simply upgrade. This is how the free/fee model works and I hope Drop.io gets some business from others using the service like this.


• I'd like to see a number of changes to the emails that are sent out. That mechanism is efficient but klunky.


• It took people about a week to figure out how Drop.io works and I needed to provide a big HowTo note to help educate them. Specific issues included:
  
  • People don't know when comments are on posts, I tell them to right click to see.
  • They didn't know images were videos until I told them to note the "filmstrip" border on the images, and to click the images to see the vids.
  • The names of new assets are non-descriptive and tough to set.
  
  
• I wish we had another mechanism to provide that sort of help so that people who have never seen Drop.io can use it without a major tutorial. The problem is that the Drop.io environment tries to be a one-size-fits-all platform, but doesn't do it adequately, so to overcome the issues we need to document the issues in the environment itself on a drop-by-drop basis. I just had an idea to create a drop that does nothing but provide more help about Drop.io - I wish I had thought about that a month ago.


• I'm told that even the 20MB videos can't be downloaded in a library PC. It would be nice if vids were streaming rather than requiring download before playing. I don't know if that would fix the problem - but this is just advice to people that you should always add notes to your vids because people may not actually see the vids.


• While we don't use the phone features, it's nice to have a conference number for family to call in, and it's nice to allow people without access to a PC the ability to phone in a voicemail.


• Why not FaceBook? There's too much else going on over there and we can't create a specific page just for Mom. (As a developer, I'll probably create a FaceBook/Drop.io application that does just that though.)

So here is yet another application for Drop.io. I hope others will be inspired to keep up with family in a similar manner.
===
From Starbuck, the guy who brought you Dropcaster: http://drop.io/dropcaster

Starbuck replied on January 30, 2010 01:46 to the problem "Spaces in Notes are missing or removed" in drop.io:

I'd like to bump this issue - I'm dealing with it on a daily basis. Thanks.

Starbuck replied on January 30, 2010 01:42 to the problem "BR tag being inserted into LI list items in Notes." in drop.io:

Hi Peter - While still in edit, before going to Save, you want to just hand-edit 2-level UL or OLs, then click Update to save, then see if it re-renders properly. If it does, click the button to edit the HTML again. I'm guessing it's at this point that it adds the extra tag in there. You might need to Save, then Edit.

Thanks for the fup.

Starbuck replied on January 25, 2010 08:51 to the idea "Creating new C# library - anyone interested?" in Twilio:

I just published v0.0.2 Alpha at Codeplex. This version only includes the test library but will soon include full source.

Here's the documentation page:
http://twilioserver.codeplex.com/docu...
At the bottom of that page is a link to "tests.cs". There you will see that this version now supports all TwiML verbs. The generated TwiML is included in the test suite to show exactly what gets generated by the library.

Approaching a v0.1 Beta, I need to make sure that the generated TwiML actually works. For testing, I will either use the Twilio (corporate) REST library for C#, or I may use the "Twilio WCF REST Client Library for .NET 3.5" provided here: http://twilioclient.codeplex.com/

Updates will be posted here but anyone who is interested can subscribe to the RSS at the project.

Starbuck replied on January 25, 2010 08:39 to the idea "Integrating Twilio with IM (Skype , Google Talk etc)" in Twilio:

I've written Skype apps, and now that I'm writing Twilio code I can see that some integration is possible. Off the top of my head:

• Text skype-chatted to you can cause a Dial and Say to a number of your choice from Twilio.


• Transcribed Twilio text can get sent to someone in Skype chat.


• Someone can leave a voice mail via either service and that can then be played back in the other.

I can see the connections but there would need to be a business case for actually writing an app around this. The "build it and they might come" model won't work for this one.