

Twilio Client Lets Developers Integrate VoIP Calling Into Any Application - rahim
http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/26/twilio-client-lets-developers-integrate-voip-calling-into-any-application/

======
patio11
I got to try this out at a little mini-conf Twilio organized some months ago.
It is, if anything, even more fun than "Hey you can reimplement Skype in 3
lines of code", because one of the parties to the call can be a computer. You
can use the client as a "programmable audio pipe" direct to the user's
browser.

We all got to do little weekend project demos. I made a website for learning
the Japanese numbers where the computer would audibly quiz you, drill to kill,
etc.

You can also make more intuitive interfaces for those underrepresented
demographics in the world by having the computer programmatically narrate what
they need to be doing on your website. (If you haven't tried this before, I
recommend it: it works even better than the standard popup-based product
tour.) Say you're eBay. Somebody is trying to list a antique China doll and
can't seem to find the submit button. Why don't you ask if she would like you
to walk her through it? If people aren't going to read on the Internet _don't
force them to read_.

Or those lovely little "Heya I see you are browsing our website why don't you
chat with me" applets. How's about making that vocal? "It's OK ma'am, just
talk at your computer. You're looking for the buy button? Try the purple one
on the top left of your screen. Yes, we _do_ offer free shipping. You have a
good day now."

You can also do the usual Twilio magic for business process automation. "Oh
look, we can provision an entire call center with everything they need to do
inbound or outbound work for the cost of headphones. No gazillion-dollar VoIP
contract or phone lines required."

~~~
Jimmyjacobson
I also got to hack on this API before public release at a probably the same
hack-a-conf as patio11. Twilio has put a lot of thought and work into this and
even the alpha preview was very solid.

Let's just say, my next weekend project will be a voice chat that wraps a
flash game. Imagine being able to choose to jump into a Twilio style
conference room with other people playing the same level of a tower defense
game!

~~~
arkitaip
_Imagine being able to choose to jump into a Twilio style conference room with
other people playing the same level of a tower defense game!_

I can imagine it:

\- Shitcock!

\- Shitcock!!

\- Shitcock...?

\- Can you hear me?

\- Shit what is this I -

\- No we can't hear you speak up NO I AM STILL GAMING DAMNIT

\- Are you talking about Hitchcock?!

\- My little guys are stuck! What the hell do i do??

\- Like I said two minutes ago: you need to click "Run" _sighs_

\- ... so basically she cheated on me because I didn't give her all my gold
and stuff when I closed my account

\- HAHAHAHAH

\- Shitcock!

~~~
18pfsmt
I don't make comments like this that often, but that is hysterical (and, off-
topic :). I don't have any insight into the modern gaming generation, so this
is an especially interesting comment because I often feel like I'm missing
something, but my underlying suspicion was that their was nothing but a vapid
notion, at most.

~~~
ZoFreX
There is no "gaming generation", and while you are not missing out on
philosophical discourse by avoiding the Halos and Call of Duty's out there, I
think you might be surprised by the intelligence and depth available in other
places.

------
krmmalik
Seems to me Twilio is quickly going to become the 37Signals of the Telephony
world, and should they continue to play their cards right, they're likely to
be a dominant force in a very short space of time. I wish them well and hope
that someday soon we can do away with our complex voip infrastructure and move
over to theirs.

~~~
thom
Surely for Twilio to become the 37Signals of the telephony world, they'd need
to stop releasing new features and just let the product stagnate, while
occasionally publishing bitter screeds on their blog about how worthless other
companies are?

~~~
13rules
LOL ... well played.

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aquark
Seems a neat idea, bt it isn't exactly seamless to the user -- I get the Flash
security dialog asking for permission to access my speaker & microphone, and
the default was to deny.

Many users probably won't have a clue what to click there.

The lag time on actually calling through to my phone was rather long (over
10s) but maybe that is just because their servers are busy.

~~~
johns
Lag time dialing your phone number or audio lag?

EDIT: In regards to the Flash issue, the security dialog is a necessary evil.
It's an unfortunate UX, but the opt-in model for accessing your devices is
important.

~~~
aquark
Dialling ... though I never got the audio to work, but I blame that on the USB
headset I have as the only (working) microphone.

Flash probably defaulted to the soundcard mic.

~~~
johns
It currently uses the default system mic. We'll be adding complete microphone
support (changing, etc) in a future release.

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radicalbyte
..just as long as the users are in the US/Canada, or happy calling the
US/Canada..

Hopefully they'll expand into Europe sooner rather than later, as it looks
like being a really useful service.

~~~
johns
We support calling calling over 170 countries:
<http://www.twilio.com/pricing/international-calling-rates>

In addition, you can make client-to-client calls that never touch the
traditional phone network and will work anywhere in the world.

~~~
radicalbyte
Sure, but then you start hitting lag issues, right? Plus we cannot route the
data through the US due to data laws.

Hopefully you'll come to Europe in a year or two, because your product really
does look fantastic :)

~~~
18pfsmt
I am a fan of flowroute.com, but they apear to cater to a more wholesale
crowd. Maybe get your close family and friends to create a cooperative?

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Stuk
I wonder how <https://www.tropo.com/> is doing. They seem to be a bit of an
underdog in the telephony api world.

~~~
trafficlight
I was doing some dev testing with Tropo. It works pretty well, but I think I'm
going to use Twilio. Twilio just seems to be more on top of things.

------
DevX101
I thought I'd take the liberty post a comment from a user in the techcrunch
comments. I'm curious to hear reaction from those more familiar with telephony
than I am.

<comment>

 _PhonoSDK (<http://phono.com>) is a far superior implementation of this same
concept that has the advantage of being released almost a year ago - close to
10,000 developers are now using it.

The number of advantages that PhonoSDK has over this is pretty impressive:

\- Phono supports enterprise-grade open standards for VoIP and IM (SIP and
XMPP). Phono supports HD audio (much better caller experience).

\- Phono supports in-browser IM functionality as well as in-browser phone
functionality, using the same library.

\- Phono is open source.

\- There is no charge for Phono -> Phono calls or IMs.

Noticeably absent from this offering is the use of any of the generally
accepted standards for telephony or communication. You can call this "VoIP"
but but it is that in only the loosest sense of word.

The lack of open standards and the inability to interoperate with systems that
suport them make this little more than a toy for developers to play with
between real projects.

Enterprise customers won't touch this with a 10-foot pole._

</comment>

~~~
euroclydon
Hmm, so Phono is free and open source. It sounds like I'll have to do a lot
more than sign up for Twilio, give them my CC#, and drop four lines of JS into
my app.

~~~
patio11
Twilio is frequently _aggressive_ with describing how much work integration
is. Literally, yeah, you can ring a phone in one line of code but you _really_
don't want to. It starts getting powerful when you can push full features -
tested, with UI/UX, production-ready - in about a day, and you could write a
telephony business in about a month, from scratch. Those aren't exaggerations
in the slightest.

See my upcoming free guide on productizing Twilio apps for why using the
sample code in a live environmwnt is almost always a vewwwwwwy bad idea.

~~~
dpritchett
Well now I'm curious. Just this weekend I had a great time texting myself with
the official Python and Ruby libs from Twilio in only a few lines [1].

Sure there were rough edges like "which and how many phone numbers do I have
access to" and "am I going to run out of credits and cost myself a jillion
dollars accidentally" but on the whole it was a great starting experience.

 _Edit_ : I'm guessing you mean I need to build my own TwiML wrappers and
scripts so that my customers can have a meaningful interaction with the
computer rather than simply getting called by a useless one-line proof of
concept that can't talk or listen to them?

[1] <https://gist.github.com/1102938>

~~~
patio11
Wait for the whole story later, but in general: what happens in terms of user
experience if you input a wrong number? What happens if you input someone
else's number? What happens if 4chan discovers your site and uses it to input
a particular someone else's number 8,000 times? etc, etc

