5 ms·

full disclosure - i work on Twilio, which I used for this

tomjen3 16y ago
Ok, next time could you indicate that you use a restricted service in you headline so those of us who can't get Twillo can skip reading about it?
- catch23 16y ago
  One could always just use a Twilio equivalence in your country. Twilio might look easy, but it's just as easy rolling your own with something like Adhearsion. Just sign up for some cheap origination/termination services and you're ready to roll your own twilio service. I use iCall for origination & VoipJet for termination here in the US; my asterisk & adhearsion stack runs on a small cloud server at rackspacecloud.
- danielle17 16y ago
  Any other disclosures I should add about my startup? Oh, you have to pay for the API too... OMFGBBQAFKBFF4EVA we are working on international support, stay tuned
  - tomjen3 16y ago
    International support isn't the issue, the issue is that you won't let non-americans sign up. And yes, I am running a vendetta against discriminatory start-ups. The internet doesn't care about borders and if you do, you don't deserve to be on it. The internet
    - danielle17 16y ago
      time to write a blog post about this... these "vendettas" from people outside the U.S. against startups that won't let you sign up so annoying. Maybe you should channel all that energy towards convincing your own country to make it easier for us to operate businesses within your borders... the limited resources of a startup have to be carefully spent, and thinking about foreign exchange, taxes, and laws (especially on stuff like telecom) is not a small undertaking
gkoberger 16y ago
Danielle- hopefully it's just a coincidence, however I emailed you exactly this idea (and outlined the implementation almost exactly like you just did) about a year ago (our email conversation about it began on 7/7/2009; we met prior to that at the GigaOM VIP party).
- trevelyan 16y ago
  Do you normally send people ideas you hope they won't implement?
  - gkoberger 16y ago
    I was a really early Twilio adopter, and was having issues with it (since it wasn't nearly as good as it is now). I emailed her a support question, and she asked me what I was doing: "I'd be interested to talk with your more about what you're looking to do with sendDigits/DTMF tones on incoming calls, this might be something we should consider adding in the future." So, I outlined my entire system to her. I have no problem with someone using my idea- however, she was answering a private support issue that I (a paying customer) had, and I was helping her by providing her with more information about what I was doing with her system. Then, she posted it on her blog without crediting me. Implementing the idea isn't bad; posting a private support thread as your own idea on your own blog, however, is.
    - gduffy 16y ago
      This idea is too obvious to stake any sort of claim. And once you've decided to do it, there aren't many variations on the theme. Basically anyone who has programmed with VoIP and has a callbox has thought about or done this. E.g., I did this years ago using a VoIP server that I wrote -- silly prompt sounds and all. Furthermore, companies like Twilio are seldom surprised by applications of their platform; they likely had to come up with tons of examples for investors when they raised money.
    - danielle17 16y ago
      I'm sorry I had no idea I was ripping you off, I appreciate that you're a Twilio early adopter. Like you mentioned, I handle customer support for Twilio and hear about countless ideas, feature requests, etc. everyday. There's no way I could remember who came up with what, and multiple people run similar ideas by me all the time. I built this to scratch my own itch and its also a really simple use case to illustrate the ability to control real world devices with DTMF tones. Some Twilio projects I had in mind when I built this include Buzzeromatic.com, which is also powered by Twilio and costs $1.95/month and had a very public launch. Sunlight Labs also did a door hack with Twilio and an arduino that I thought was pretty sweet. What I think is important is that what I've built doesn't have any UI or anything like that, just a really stripped down version and I'm not looking to make it into some paid service. You could certainly take these guts and turn them into a kickass product, but these <100 lines of PHP are not the defensible secret sauce. The ability to use DTMF tones with Twilio has been around for awhile, I got the tone generator from a Get Satisfction thread that's about a year old: http://getsatisfaction.com/twilio/topics/dtmf_tone_generation http://getsatisfaction.com/twilio/topics/dtmf_tone_generatio...

Ok, next time could you indicate that you use a restricted service in you headline so those of us who can't get Twillo can skip reading about it?

catch23 16y ago
One could always just use a Twilio equivalence in your country. Twilio might look easy, but it's just as easy rolling your own with something like Adhearsion. Just sign up for some cheap origination/termination services and you're ready to roll your own twilio service. I use iCall for origination & VoipJet for termination here in the US; my asterisk & adhearsion stack runs on a small cloud server at rackspacecloud.
danielle17 16y ago
Any other disclosures I should add about my startup? Oh, you have to pay for the API too... OMFGBBQAFKBFF4EVA we are working on international support, stay tuned
- tomjen3 16y ago
  International support isn't the issue, the issue is that you won't let non-americans sign up. And yes, I am running a vendetta against discriminatory start-ups. The internet doesn't care about borders and if you do, you don't deserve to be on it. The internet
  - danielle17 16y ago
    time to write a blog post about this... these "vendettas" from people outside the U.S. against startups that won't let you sign up so annoying. Maybe you should channel all that energy towards convincing your own country to make it easier for us to operate businesses within your borders... the limited resources of a startup have to be carefully spent, and thinking about foreign exchange, taxes, and laws (especially on stuff like telecom) is not a small undertaking

gkoberger 16y ago

Danielle- hopefully it's just a coincidence, however I emailed you exactly this idea (and outlined the implementation almost exactly like you just did) about a year ago (our email conversation about it began on 7/7/2009; we met prior to that at the GigaOM VIP party).

trevelyan 16y ago
Do you normally send people ideas you hope they won't implement?
- gkoberger 16y ago
  I was a really early Twilio adopter, and was having issues with it (since it wasn't nearly as good as it is now). I emailed her a support question, and she asked me what I was doing: "I'd be interested to talk with your more about what you're looking to do with sendDigits/DTMF tones on incoming calls, this might be something we should consider adding in the future." So, I outlined my entire system to her. I have no problem with someone using my idea- however, she was answering a private support issue that I (a paying customer) had, and I was helping her by providing her with more information about what I was doing with her system. Then, she posted it on her blog without crediting me. Implementing the idea isn't bad; posting a private support thread as your own idea on your own blog, however, is.
  - gduffy 16y ago
    This idea is too obvious to stake any sort of claim. And once you've decided to do it, there aren't many variations on the theme. Basically anyone who has programmed with VoIP and has a callbox has thought about or done this. E.g., I did this years ago using a VoIP server that I wrote -- silly prompt sounds and all. Furthermore, companies like Twilio are seldom surprised by applications of their platform; they likely had to come up with tons of examples for investors when they raised money.
  - danielle17 16y ago
    I'm sorry I had no idea I was ripping you off, I appreciate that you're a Twilio early adopter. Like you mentioned, I handle customer support for Twilio and hear about countless ideas, feature requests, etc. everyday. There's no way I could remember who came up with what, and multiple people run similar ideas by me all the time. I built this to scratch my own itch and its also a really simple use case to illustrate the ability to control real world devices with DTMF tones. Some Twilio projects I had in mind when I built this include Buzzeromatic.com, which is also powered by Twilio and costs $1.95/month and had a very public launch. Sunlight Labs also did a door hack with Twilio and an arduino that I thought was pretty sweet. What I think is important is that what I've built doesn't have any UI or anything like that, just a really stripped down version and I'm not looking to make it into some paid service. You could certainly take these guts and turn them into a kickass product, but these <100 lines of PHP are not the defensible secret sauce. The ability to use DTMF tones with Twilio has been around for awhile, I got the tone generator from a Get Satisfction thread that's about a year old: http://getsatisfaction.com/twilio/topics/dtmf_tone_generation http://getsatisfaction.com/twilio/topics/dtmf_tone_generatio...