June 30, 2012

Using Twilio to extend the functionality of Siri

Siri is great for playing music from your iPhone. But if you don’t have the song on your library, Siri can’t go and play it on Spotify, Pandora, Grooveshark, or any of the other players (for now). But if Siri can send a text message to a Twilio number (which I called “Siri Tunes” in my address book), that number can reply with a message linking to an mp3 that can be opened in QuickTime. Watch the demo of the application:

I love building Twilio applications. Contact me if you’re interested having a Twilio application created.

June 20, 2011

Mobile Time Tracking using Twilio and Freshbooks

I use Freshbooks to manage all of my invoicing. I manage projects, log hours, and it allows me to keep a careful track of my business. I’m lucky enough to be connect to the internet when I’m working, but for some companies working out in the field, keeping track of hours has been mostly done on pencil and paper.

I built an application integrating Twilio and Freshbooks to solve this problem. Watch the video below to see my Twilio and Freshbooks time tracking system.

How it works

Since you can only submit a completed time log to FreshBooks, the initial clock in call is stored in a database on a separate server. When the user calls back to clock out, it compares the clock out time with the saved clock in time, and then totals up the hours worked. After we know how many hours were worked, the full time log gets submitted to FreshBooks.

Altogether, I mashed up a few different technologies, including:

  • Twilio Voice API
  • Twilio Transcription API
  • FreshBooks API
  • PHP
  • MySQL

If you’re interested in using this for your company, shoot me a message and I’d be happy to set it up for you, or let you license out the code.

May 20, 2011

Twilio Syntax Auto-Complete Mode for Coda

I love Twilio‘s markup language, TwiML. It’s intuitive and easy to understand. Still, whenever I’m developing I have to keep the Twilio documentation page open to know all the verbs and attributes of the language. To save time, I created my very own mode plugin for Coda so that as I’m typing, it automatically completes the Twilio commands and shows me all the available attributes.

So, without further adue, download Twilio.mode and install it in Coda.

Install instructions:

  1. Download Twilio.mode.zip
  2. Unzip it
  3. Copy the new Twilio.mode folder to: ~/Library/Application Support/Coda/Modes
  4. Reboot Coda, and under Text > Syntax Mode you’ll see Twilio

If you liked this plugin, you should probably follow me on Twitter. I’m always giving away little scripts like this.

Note: It’s also available on github.

April 4, 2011

Mobile Mad Libs

The team over at Twilio was running a contest to create a game using their amazing voice and SMS developer platform this week, and I just submitted my entry. The game? Mobile Mad Libs. It’s a word game for those long road trips where you can’t (safely) play Angry Birds on your iPhone, but still want to keep your mind active.

Try it for free! Dial 718-569-7938.

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