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Twilio has an incredible API (callinwith.us)

131 points by dickeytk ↗ HN
I made an entire conference call application in like 2 hours.

Not for no reason though, I was unable to find a simple conference calling service. Typing 'simple conference calling' into google comes up with crap like this: http://www.freeconferencecall.com/

Anything good out there? I can't be the first guy to make one.

65 comments

[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 117 ms ] thread
dickeytk
I made an entire conference call application in like 2 hours.

Not for no reason though, I was unable to find a simple conference calling service. Typing 'simple conference calling' into google comes up with crap like this: http://www.freeconferencecall.com/

Anything good out there? I can't be the first guy to make one.

iamdave
join.me is what I'm trying to get my company to replace webex with.
dickeytk
I like it, very straightforward. It is screen sharing though, which isn't quite what I was looking for.
jeffiel
Very cool! Are you coming to the Twilio Conference this week? If not, would love to have you in the audience. Ping me: jeff@twilio.com
johns
Here's a take on it that uses Twilio Client to allow people to join from the browser as well as the phone http://www.twilio.com/gallery/projects/talkasaur-us I'll see if I can get Aaron in here to give out a few beta codes
dickeytk
I saw that one, and it looks great. Definitely the best thing out there I could find. My two problems though:

1. It's in private beta. 2. Not sure I the dinosaur theme is something I would want outside clients to see, although I personally think they're hilarious.

aaronlerch
Thanks! The current Dino theme was intentionally silly because it was for a contest. :)

I'm in the process of making it an actual product, including rebranding it. Still with a dinosaur theme for now, but more like http://docraptor.com in terms of professionalism. If people use it, I might rebranded it yet again based on feedback.

aaronlerch
Thanks John- I'll give out talkasaur.us codes to anybody who wants one. :) I made it for a twilio contest, and just didn't feel like personally funding the entire Internet's conference calls just yet. :) email me at aaronlerch at gmail for a code.

(btw it's currently browser only, but when it goes publicly available it'll be both)

dangrossman
Aside from old cluttered websites, what's wrong with sites like that? Does the website really matter if all you use it for is to get the number to start a conference call, for free?
antoncohen
>Aside from old cluttered websites, what's wrong with sites like that? Does the website really matter if all you use it for is to get the number to start a conference call, for free?

Everything is wrong with them, they are a scam, it's called "traffic pumping" [1]. Google Voice and other VoIP providers will block calls to those numbers.

Free conference call services like freeconferencecall.com have local US numbers in high tariff rural areas, usually in Iowa (like the 712 area code). To you the call is "free" because you have Free Nationwide Long Distance. But your phone company has to pay ridiculous rates, as if it was a 900 number, like over $1/min. If you don't have free long distance, than you have to pay those rates.

The Local Exchange Carries in those rural areas have contracts with these scam companies, giving them a take of the money. Or the LECs run the scam businesses themselves.

Legitimate businesses and consumers are being ripped off. The legit phone companies are required by law to route your call there, and they are required to pay the ridiculous fees.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_pumping

cjoh
How is this a scam? FreeConferenceCall.com isn't lying to anybody. It seems like it's taking advantage of a regulation to charge telecom companies rather than consumers for a free service.

With poor customer service, really anti-consumer behavior in Washington, all benefiting in part by government granted and supported monopolies, I have a hard time feeling sorry for large national telecom companies having to give some of their money to local carriers in Iowa, and the companies smart enough to partner up with them.

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rokhayakebe
This is as simple is it gets.
dickeytk
Trouble is offsetting the twilio bill.

Getting money is the hardest UX problem ever, so I just decided to skip it as long as I can afford it haha

childoftv101
premium number is audio advert free?
dickeytk
From a UX perspective, it'd be great, unfortunately getting advertisers hooked into their system would need much more work than it took to actually build the project in the first place.

I was thinking of just putting it out for free until it got too expensive, then asking for donations and if that didn't make ends meet putting some restriction on such as advertisements or a time limit or something.

childoftv101
clearly your conference call gets rickrolled after 10 mins unless you call the premium no :P
dickeytk
Maybe the rickroll could start out quiet but just get louder and the other callers get quieter until you pay!
iamdave
True story. A friend and I were two shakes of a salt shaker away from launching a business on top of Twilio using openVBX and a few other things.

There are tons of ideas out there in the mobile voice arena.

llch
If you can't monetize it, you can at least sell the source code as an enterprise solution -- i think there are many SMB would like to get this simple system in house.
dickeytk
Honestly, Twilio's API is so well done I don't believe my code is worth anything. However, it's available here: https://github.com/dickeytk/callinwithus for anyone to take a look at if they're curious how it works.
6ren
Remember, people don't pay for code, they pay for solutions to their problems. The amount they are happy to pay isn't related to the code, but to their problem.

If it's easy to write the code, you will (or might...) quickly have competitors, that's all. But since you couldn't find any, that might not be the case...

alnayyir
Thank you so much for sharing the code. <3
dickeytk
No problem! I MIT licensed it as well, so feel free to hack, change, sell away! If you have any questions about it, let me know.
bryanallen22
You might consider adding something like this: "This meeting cost me $3.45, which I'm paying out of my own pocket. Want to donate that amount? Click the Paypal button below. Thanks! -Jeff"
dickeytk
ooo! I love it! How could I communicate that though? I don't track emails. I COULD send an sms afterwards, but I don't have a good way to figure out who was the originator of the conference call.

Maybe I could just put a side note on the page saying how much the average meeting costs and asking for donations there?

3pt14159
Do not do this. Just let it be free for now then build up traffic, call your most active users and see what type of businesses they are and ask them what else you could do to help.
patio11
Trouble is offsetting the twilio bill.

This is the least hard problem in startup-dom, because Twilio lets you solve Serious Problems for Serious Businesses and they are ecstatic to pay money for them. (P.S. In case it isn't obvious, don't charge based on what you're paying for Twilio. Underlying phone service: cheap. Application logic: expensive.)

There are a lot of one-week Twilio applications worth 5 or 6 figures to the right people.

dickeytk
I guess I feel that since it's SO simple and obvious it isn't worth anything. It was more of an itch I wanted to scratch, so I did.
ceejayoz
> I guess I feel that since it's SO simple and obvious it isn't worth anything.

There are lots of "simple and obvious" things that aren't. "Hey, this mold kills bacteria." Sometimes, realizing what's simple and obvious is the valuable bit.

tomjen3
The problem is that you then have to

A) Find those businesses

B) Sell it to them

I suspect B) is the most difficult, especially for programmers who may not have a deep network into fortune 500s.

I also have a feeling that if you could sketch out a way to do B) in a blog post you may write the most valuable post ever made.

chc
Not asking you to write a business book or anything, but can you give an example of the sort of thing you're thinking of? (Is callinwith.us an example?) I looked at Twilio because I thought it sounded really cool, but in the end I couldn't think of many Twilio applications that 1) have a clear revenue model, and 2) aren't already features of Goldmine or similar that anyone who wants it would already have.
nc
What about starting everyone off with a balance of say $5-10, and running it down after the first call with an option to top up via PayPal once over?
dickeytk
Trouble is, without accounts, how can I tell who the originator of a conference is? My goal is to keep the UX as brutally simple as possible. I'm really against having payments get in the way of using the product in ANY way since I feel that this is a problem that needs to be insanely simple and easy since conference calls are always a pain in the ass for some reason.
asmithmd1
By the incoming phone number - if they are out of money prompt them for a credit card when they call in
iamdave
Twilio provides call logs in .csv through the API.
aymeric
I wish Twilio was available in the rest of the world though...
hopeless
Take a look at Tropo — in my opinion it's better than Twilio, not least because scripts can be written in Ruby and hosted on Tropo, and has (or had) much better international support.
dickeytk
I do like that they don't charge dev rates, but it does cost 3x as much in production.

And twilio works great with ruby, callinwith.us is a rails app.

Although if I needed international support I guess that would be an issue. Being a naive American has some perks though.

johns
We've got great coverage for voice in countries all over the world: http://www.twilio.com/pricing/international-calling-rates You can both call to those countries and receive calls from them. We also just recently added local numbers in the UK in beta (http://www.twilio.com/uk-voice), which is just touching on the surface of what will be coming outside the US.

You've got my email now so we can get international calling enabled for your account if you'd like. Just reply in our other thread and let me know.

hopeless
Sorry but a year after I chose Tropo over Twilio, Tropo still wins:

Twilio: "Twilio does not offer phone numbers from outside the US and Canada, and you can’t port international numbers to Twilio." http://www.twilio.com/faq/international

Tropo: "We offer local numbers in the US and 40 other countries - here's the full list of available countries, note that these are also free for developer accounts" https://www.tropo.com/docs/scripting/international_dialing_s...

corin_
That's my issue with Twilio too, I need UK inbound not just outbound - calling US numbers from the UK is (apart from with VoIP phones) pretty expensive.
hopeless
You missed that point: with Tropo you don't need "an app", you can do it all as a Ruby/js/java/etc script hosted by Tropo. It's obviously limited in scope but very useful for small apps
rebel19
And keep in mind that the interface for Tropo and Adhearsion are very similar so if you need to expand beyond using Twillio or Tropo it gives you a lot of options with less pain...you can also use Adhearsion with Tropo as you are transitioning an app.
Murkin
Appears like they do have Voice (and closed SMS beta).

What I don't understand is why it costs 2x-4x more than a regular phone contract gives you.

One day America's companies will discover that outside its borders there are, literally, billions of people.. imagine that.

mcherm
To support just ONE country requires one set of lawyers. Supporting the second country DOUBLES the number of lawyers required, while adding only a fraction the number of customers. Once you scale it up "most of the world" the economies of scale kick in and the lawyers aren't so expensive anymore.

Of course, "lawyers" here is shorthand for several things. Complying with local law, handling local language, dealing with local customs, etc. "Lawyers" is a convenient shorthand because it points out that some of the things actually MUST be dealt with. Google doesn't prohibit the use of their payment system because they dislike having customers outside the current limited list of countries, they do so because they aren't smart enough to figure out how to handle every country!

dmor
We hear you, not only are there billions of people - there are literally MILLIONS of software developers globally, and we can't wait to serve them at Twilio. International support is one of our top requests and we're listening and working to bring Twilio to more customers every day.

Here's what we've currently got - Ability to dial out from Twilio US and Canadian numbers to International destinations - UK phone numbers w/ voice API in beta - International SMS in beta

For either one, just email help@twilio.com

Our full international FAQ is here: http://www.twilio.com/faq/international

asmosoinio
The border anti-alias looks odd in Google Chrome (Windows Vista / Chrome 14.0.835.163), works fine in Firefox.

http://i.imgur.com/91ahT.png

dickeytk
You are correct. Oddly it looks fine on OSX.

Maybe I could just remove the tilt or something? Not sure how to fix it otherwise.

knotty66
Font rendering too is pretty aliased in Chrome on Windows - but fine in Chrome on OS X, Linux. It's strange that Google would introduce Google Web Fonts and then not make it a priority to bring rendering on Windows Chrome up to a reasonable standard.
JakaJancar
After the code has been generated, change the URL to e.g.:

http://callinwith.us/589-106

If the link is opened with the code already set, instead of showing "Your conference room is good to go!" show "We are waiting for you!" or something like that.

This way you can send the link instead of copy-pasting the instructions.

tluyben2
It's nice indeed, however it doesn't work in EU which makes it worthless for most things we do @ Observu :) Any idea if that will ever be solved?
dickeytk
I guess Twilio has UK numbers in beta right now. Maybe I could clone the site and throw it up on another Heroku instance and use one of those.
ntulip
And you open sourced it too! You are a great man.
mbertrand
Nice work on callinwith.us, have been looking for a sleek solution for conference calls lately. Assuming you built it with Twilio, how are you handling the random access codes?
dickeytk
Codes are just randomly generated then stored in a postresql db for later reference. If there is a collision, it adds a digit.
suking
We us twilio for call tracking - any one know how much a local phone number cost if you buy in bulk outside of twilio? We're at 50 cents a number since we're over 1k, but still pretty expensive...
oronadam
Very nice UX ! brilliant on the iPhone / iPad

We have developed http://939.co.il although not with such a slick interface :-) we also offer access numbers in more than 25 countries.and Skype access.

It's built on top of foneAPI.com which is in private beta right now. If there are any developers who would like to try it we would love to talk to you guys.

jmonegro
Alternatively, you can use keeptherecord.com