December Six Hour Startup - Phone-based TWILIO Apps December 7, 2008

SIX HOUR STARTUP - SUNDAY, DECEMBER 7th - TWILIO Apps

Twilio is a revolutionary web application API that enables you to use your web development skills to build applications that make or receive phone calls. You can add voice features to your existing application, or build something new from the ground up. Twilio's simple REST/XML API consists of five Verbs, that allow you to build nearly any phone application you can imagine:

Which collects key presses
Which plays back any computer audio file that is web accessible
Which records audio spoken over the phone
which speaks the text you pass to the API.
which calls another phone number, connecting two callers together

The functions integrate with any web development stack, PHP, Ruby on Rails, Django or any other RESTful application stack.

We think Twilio is a great system made by a local Seattle entrepreneur, and we are excited that we are going to get to use it this weekend. Twilio is going to give a brief overview of the service, and have people on hand to help us 'turn on' phone services for our existing projects or new ones that we dream up. Twilio will be donating services to get our projects up and running for free at the event.

Here are some project ideas that we're confident can be built in 6 hours:

Dial A Joke
- Call a phone number, get a joke read to you!

Office PBX
- Answers the company phone, plays a greeting, and lets the caller enter an extension to hear hours, directions or to speak with a person

E-Commerce Integration
- Notify a customer when an order has shipped, handle incoming requests for order status (has my order shipped yet?)

The developer documentation is located here: http://www.twilio.com/docs/quickstart/
A great presentation of some of the exciting things you can do with Twilio is located here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9077334633843278983

So bring yourself, your laptop, any existing application you might want Twilio-ifying applications, some funny or not so funny jokes (for the dial-a-joke idea) and prepare to have a good time at this weekends Six Hour Startup!

Questions to [email protected]