Vivek's dashboard

A comment on the discussion "Voicemail Transcription" in Twilio:

Per my understanding, Twilio doesn't support self-signed ssl certificates. Right? – Vivek, on June 18, 2009 22:20

Vivek replied on June 17, 2009 02:18 to the question "Recording quality" in Twilio:

John,

Out of curiosity, how does caller tunes work at high quality? The personalized song (paid feature on carriers) which plays at high quality when somebody calls a number instead of Graham Bell's ring ring.

- Vivek

Vivek replied on June 17, 2009 02:13 to the question "Recording quality" in Twilio:

Ahh ....

On the negative side, people will not be able to record music as their "voice greeting". On the brighter side, people will not be able to record copyrighted music which means less legal hassle over DMCA takedown notices :)

Vivek asked a question in Twilio on June 17, 2009 01:40:

Recording quality

We rolled out a functionality on HintCafe today called voice greeting. This feature allows users to record a greeting for visitors to their dating profile. We call the user's phone and use Record verb to record the message.

So, for first recording in production, we used the youtube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCmqzr... played it on the laptop and recorded the music into cell phone feeding the Record verb.

The final recording available at http://hintcafe.com/user/lakerfan or http://api.twilio.com/2008-08-01/Acco... lacks good chunk of music. We tried couple of times and still got a choppy recording.

Wondering why is the recording quality is so low. The cell phone signal was good. Ideas? Twilio team?

Vivek replied on May 22, 2009 11:22 to the question "For password protected sites how can we use twilio" in Twilio:

sure .... you can post more details here. or mail me at vivek at hintcafe.com

Vivek replied on May 22, 2009 09:09 to the question "For password protected sites how can we use twilio" in Twilio:

Eshwar,

I had the same issue using twilio on HintCafe test setup. Giving url like http://user:passwd@url.com doesn't work as twilio doesn't use that user and passwd.

The solution I ended up using was opening port 81 for twilio and exposing only the twilio urls on that port via apache/lighttpd (of course you can choose other port like 8080 too)

My twilio URLs already check the X-Twilio-Signature (see John's link above) and throw a 403 response code (not authorized) if X-Twilio-Signature is missing or incorrect, so it was as good as password security.

Vivek replied on May 06, 2009 10:39 to the question "Calls that go to voicemail: How are they?" in Twilio:

I didn't understand the second part of your question ... Is that separate from voicemail question? Assuming it is separate, yes, you can use a Gather verb (let's assume - press 9 to speak to customer service). When user enters a response indicating option to speak to someone (9 pressed in example), you can use dial to forward the call to a human ... or even use dial with multiple numbers to let the fastest human win the race ;)

Regarding the first part, You can hangup if you reach voicemail using IfMaching=Hangup or leave a custom voicemail using IfMaching=Continue
See http://www.twilio.com/docs/api_refere...
The action URL will get DialStatus=answered-machine if you are recording a message for answering machine or answered-human if you are speaking to a human.

Vivek replied on April 27, 2009 05:15 to the idea "processing inbound calls" in Twilio:

Here is one design idea,
add a variable inbound which defaults to true. When making a call or dial, add inbound=false to the action URL passed on to twilio.

Then, you have single URL/Servlet which still knows whether the call is incoming or outgoing.

Vivek replied on April 26, 2009 18:54 to the question "Can you limit the duration of a call?" in Twilio:

There is timelimit for recording as well as dial.

For other calls (ie regular incoming and outgoing call), the call will run only as long as you keep feeding it TwiML. So, if you stop feeding it TwiML or add a "Hangup" in the TwiML, the call will hangup.
http://www.twilio.com/docs/api_refere...

In your specific example, use the timeout on the Gather http://www.twilio.com/docs/api_refere... ... Its already defaulted to 5 seconds though, so if your caller doesn't push any buttons, gather will move on in 5 seconds.

Vivek replied on April 23, 2009 18:30 to the question "Privacy of Recording" in Twilio:

Hi Jeff and Evan,

I think the random 34 character already in place is secure enough. Heck, its more secure than 8 character passwords we usually use. But then, security is often about paranoia.

I wanted to put the question out there to see if other Twilio customers are also concerned about it.

I am not sure if I need additional security, but I am glad to know that I have HTTP DELETE option if I do want to fortify the application further in future.

Thanks for the quick responses.

Vivek marked one of Jeff Lawson's replies in Twilio as useful. Jeff Lawson replied to the question "Privacy of Recording".

Vivek marked one of Evan's replies in Twilio as useful. Evan replied to the question "Privacy of Recording".

Vivek asked a question in Twilio on April 23, 2009 08:03:

Privacy of Recording

I understand that Recordings are obfuscated URLs but they are still public.

Is there a future plan to use Access Control so that only the Twilio account which created the recording can access the recording URL?

Something like S3 privacy where the URL can be used in the browser but is time-stamped and has authentication hash so that the developer can control who can listen to these recordings.

Are these recordings actually hosted on S3?
If yes, see S3 User Access by email here http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/Ama... The Twilio customers who wish to use this feature can add their S3 Account Email address to their Twilio Account settings.

Vivek replied on April 19, 2009 05:30 to the idea "processing inbound calls" in Twilio:

Do you have the same server side script handling both outgoing calls and incoming calls?

At HintCafe, we have incoming.jsp for incoming calls specified in Twilio account, so we know its an incoming call just because the script is incoming.jsp.

Vivek replied on April 16, 2009 05:31 to the question "Local TwiML without webserver" in Twilio:

Interesting thought ... If I was in your shoes and didn't wanted to wait till Twilio develops a way to read a parameter, I would just put the XML on Amazon S3.

Vivek replied on April 09, 2009 20:09 to the idea "Charge a flat monthly rate, as an option" in Twilio:

I am a fan of Twilio for the amazing pricing model. Its so much better than $250 setup fees, $50/month API fees and per call charges offered by competitors. Its variables but the variables can be controlled by the customer.

You can always not recharge your account if the expenses exceed your monthly budget.

Vivek replied on April 09, 2009 19:55 to the question "options for offered call acceptance and rejection" in Twilio:

At HintCafe, we run the incoming call with a challenge to user to enter the extension. If they don't know the extension, they can't get in.

Personally for us, saving 5c on our toll free number is not worth the effort to loose a call from a blocked number. If a non-customer calls us, I would rather play a recorded marketing message than reject the call.

Maybe marketing dynamics and costs are different in different spaces, but in the space of dating services, 5c/3c is cheap to play a marketing message to a new customer. I know its cheaper than approx $1-$2 per customer to run it on free-411 kind of services.

Vivek replied on March 31, 2009 19:59 to the question "getting details when using a dial verb" in Twilio:

Awesome. In next release (which in startup terms means tomorrow night), I will bake in a grandcentral kinda functionality where user A records his/her name and I will play that name to userB when using a dial.

Vivek replied on March 30, 2009 10:50 to the question "getting details when using a dial verb" in Twilio:

John,

So far the documentation suggests that no TwiML can be executed on the dialed party before the call is connected but your reply here suggests otherwise. Please clarify.

While TwiML is executing on Dialed party, what would the first party hear on phone?

- Vivek

Vivek replied on March 29, 2009 08:46 to the question "Can we make the phone verification code separate from the phone call?" in Twilio:

looks pretty good. I also like your pricing and promotion model.