

An App Platform for Dumb Phones - ramseynasser
http://www.dumbsto.re/

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shadowmatter
I like the idea.

Note that if there is a lot of text traffic on a given number, carriers like
AT&T, Verizon, et al will block texts to and from that number until the
traffic subsides. What's worse is that if you send a message to that number
from the Twilio dashboard, its status will be "sent," but you will not
actually receive it. Apparently in the world of SMS, "sent" simply means the
message has been delivered to the destination carrier, and it is not a
delivery receipt like with iMessage or BBM.

Twilio suggests that, to reduce this risk, you load balance across a
collection of such numbers, or purchase a short code, which isn't cheap:
<http://www.twilio.com/sms/shortcodes>

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jakemcgraw
If you want to see what this would look like if it was a real business,
checkout <http://www.dotgo.com> and <http://dotgo.com/Support/Documentation/>.

DOTGO solves the problem of service discoverability by mapping domain names to
shortcodes representing TLDs. Want wikipedia.org? Text "wikipedia" to DOTORG
(368674). Want to checkin to Foursquare? Text "foursquare" to DOTCOM (368266).

DOTGO also provides a language of reusable components, known as CMRL (Concise
Message Routing Language), it allows you to create hierarchical menus, links
and URL callbacks.

They're available in the United States and select countries in Latin America,
Africa and Asia.

Previously, I was a web application developer for them, I still think it's a
great idea and recommend you guys give it a go.

~~~
ramseynasser
Wow. Thanks! We will be studying this thoroughly. I hadn't heard about it
before.

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bryogenic
Slightly off topic, are there actually any good (i.e. recommendable) dumb
phones? It has been an interesting market to try to navigate and research.

~~~
rapind
I actually spent some time looking into dumb phones a couple years ago. My
favorite would be the motofone. It's got an e-ink display, which is great for
battery and sunlight, and 2 antennas which is also great if you _heaven
forbid_ make actual calls with it. Also, pretty sturdy, small, and light.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Fone>

Beware though, if you txt a lot, you won't like it. Not enough real estate for
the crazy font they use.

There are also these _printed_ cell phones showing up. Do a google for "card
phone". Pretty interesting.

~~~
kevinconroy
I had a Motofone (also called F3) for the last 7 years. It started with a two
week working battery life. It's a pain to text message on since it only shows
4 or 5 characters on, but it just _worked_ as a reliable phone. Finally
switched to an iPhone 5 after it became vital for me to have full Internet
access 24/7 for work. If it weren't for that, I'd still have my F3. I love it
as much as I love my iPhone 5.

You can still find some of them on eBay. I'd offer mine, but I'm keeping it as
an emergency (911) phone for my car.

~~~
devindotcom
F3 to iPhone 5 has to be the biggest jump I've heard of lately. I've been
meaning to pick up a dumbphone myself, maybe I'll grab an F3 - I remember when
they came out, I was dying for one. It's a bit like buying the... junker of
your childhood dreams.

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train_robber
A very similar concept has been around in India - <http://55444.in/>

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ramseynasser
Don't forget that anyone can write a dumb app! Just fork the repository, add
your app, and take out a pull request!

<https://github.com/dumbstore/dumbstore/>

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JosephRedfern
Cool idea - but how is it being paid for? By the looks of things, it's using
Twilio - but that'll get expensive if this becomes popular.

~~~
allisonburtch
I'm doing my best to find change on the ground and in fountains and mailing
them to Twilio.

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mayanksinghal
Seems extremely similar to what Intuit has been building in India: Txtweb[1].
The apps support two modes PUSH and PULL. The most common is PULL, where you
SMS to some number something like "@appname.optionalExtension <stuff that will
be passed on to the application logic", response comes back as SMS. Their
experimental PUSH automatically pushes subscribed users with SMSes. I had
developed an app, @news a couple of years ago and still see decent traffic on
it. The developers are also quite friendly and responsive. If you are
interested in a similar platform but in a market that is benefitted from this
application a lot more, you should definitely check them out.

[1] <http://www.txtweb.com/>

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auston
I've thought about how you could probably get Siri to use SMS as an API to
tons of services, like opentable, fandango, etc, etc - this seems to be a
great step in that direction - which is actually the opposite of dumb, but
instead seems uber smart.

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cheese1756
I like the idea, it might be a nice replacement in the wake of the Google SMS
shutdown. One quick thing: You might want to make app names case insensitive.
My phone automatically capitalized Ltrain, resulting in a message stating the
app was not found, however when I manually changed it to ltrain it worked.
Maybe simple spelling correcting for app names (e.g. off by a letter or a
letter is missing) could be added too?

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ramseynasser
These are all great ideas. Case insensitivity has come up a few times and it's
an easy fix. We should have it in soon!

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brackin
Don't like the interface (makes it seem 100x more complicated than it is) but
love the idea. I often hit my data cap, am in an area with slow or no data
coverage or don't want to load up an app and would be happy to shoot a text
off to get a piece of info.

I'm in the UK but this is a far bigger problem in other countries so if
executed better this would be very interesting.

~~~
ramseynasser
Do you mean the interface of the website, or how you use it on your phone?

~~~
brackin
The website.

~~~
ramseynasser
Noted.

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Groxx
Neat idea. I might recommend allowing at least the first letter (of the app)
to be case-insensitive though, since lots of things auto-capitalize. Also I'm
not having much luck with 'dir', and some error messages or something would
help, but meh - the concept is great!

~~~
ramseynasser
dir can be buggy, depending on how you format your location names. Can you
give me an example of what's not working?

~~~
Groxx
I wasn't really sure what to expect, so I tried something that Google Maps
gets correct: AOL in Palo Alto to Pier 39

I didn't feel like typing too much :) What service does it use?

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hayksaakian
I did an app for rolling dice

<https://github.com/dumbstore/dumbstore/pull/15>

ex:

    
    
        roll 1d20+4
    
        =21 | rolled 17 plus 4 for a total of 21.

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huertanix
Just wrote up an app called Rick Roulette. It's like Russian Roulette, but
with Rick Astley instead of bullets:
<https://github.com/dumbstore/dumbstore/pull/13>

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amjd
Similar services already exist in India and are gaining quite a lot of
popularity among users. <http://txtweb.com> <http://55444.in>

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SSilver2k2
This is really awesome. Back when I was helping work on Pingie (an rss->sms
service), I put some of this functionality into it (weather reports, stock
quotes, traffic reports).

Good luck with this!

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frankdenbow
Saw this at the ITP show, will be adding some Twilio apps

~~~
allisonburtch
thanks!

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netghost
I knew my phone would be valuable some day!

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hatu
This is exactly what companies were doing in the .com bubble of early 2000's!
SMS "games" and services.

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amikahmad
for all the technology and cool applications we have today, we can't forget
that accessibility is still a key issue. dumbstore FTW.

