We all sometimes end up in situations that we’d rather not be in. From annoying coworkers to bad blind dates, sometimes a way out can be rather convenient. As technology advances, new ways of getting out of such situations are often showing up. One of these is the Fake Call API, designed to send phone calls to your phone via a web API call.
#blue is a web service to save text messages in an intelligent, searchable manner. It’s a service of O2 UK, and sadly only currently available to O2 UK subscribers. However, it’s a rather interesting web service, and it’d be great to see more service providers use a similar service. The fully functional #blue API provides a compliment to its web based service.
Telephony platform Twilio is now giving developers more insight into their application activities. Now users of the Twilio Voice API and Twilio SMS API have the option to view usage patterns, thanks to a partnership with GoodData. The dashboard shows the last 90 days of call and text volumes, with the option to explore the data further.
The Ez Texting is a simple solution to a problem many developers have in the mobile world. The Ez Texting API allows developers to send SMS text messages to phones in the US and Canada. It recently had a major update, as did its related TellMyCell API and Club Texting API, adding a full REST API to the previous HTTP methods. It also added the functionality to send a text to a number of phones with one API call.
OnSIP is a business VoIP service that uses SIP to provide end users the ability to make unconventional phone calls in a very conventional way: picking up a desk phone and dialing a number. Crank open the hood, and you’ll find that SIP technologies operate a lot like Google [Services] while behaving more like a Verizon [Telco]. The OnSIP & Highrise Click-To-Call mashup, for example, is a new Chrome extension that highlights how phone service as a software opens the gates to smarter business solutions.
And you thought that faxing was a thing of the past. At Phaxio, it’s so new that it doesn’t even use XML. The JSON-only Phaxio API lets you send faxes for 7 cents per page and you can get a confirmation of each fax’s total cost through the API itself. Account level information is available as well. Detailed information about all faxes sent over a specific time period can also be retrieved from the API.
Most mashups try to solve a complex problem in an innovative way, and therefore save us all time. However, sometimes a mashup solves a very simple problem in an interesting way. Either way, I love to see innovative new uses of APIs like this one from Brian Beermann, which controls his garage door using the Twilio SMS API, some hardware and a lot of creativity.
“Hello, who am I speaking with please? Is this LoveUrApi007, who’s attempting to register at my site?” Why can’t there be a little more trust on the web? Have you ever wished that you knew with a little more certainty that user registrations on your website were authentic? Especially with the amount of telemarketing calls that hit those of us that using land lines, it would be nice to add a little more authenticity to the use of phone numbers in today’s technology. Phoneify and its Phoneify API is are trying to help.
Earlier this year, we reported the first 3 winners of the Twilio Startup Fund, which aims to invest $250K in start-ups that use Twilio, the popular Telephony platform. The next set of 6 recipients of the Twilio Fund have been announced. The applications range from an innovative crowd-sourced labor platform to helping out law enforcement agencies.
Today’s mashup of the day, the crowdsourced playlist creator, marks telephony-as-a-service provider Twilio’s 100th mashup added to the ProgrammableWeb directory. The tremendous interest in the Twilio platform put it in the top five APIs of 2010 by mashup count. In this post, we’ll look at three Twilio applications that have recently received funding.
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