Danielle- hopefully it's just a coincidence, however I emailed you exactly this idea (and outlined the implementation almost exactly like you just did) about a year ago (our email conversation about it began on 7/7/2009; we met prior to that at the GigaOM VIP party).
I hope that it's not a coincidence. A pretty neat idea was provided for nothing a year ago and has been doing nothing but sitting around in the two of your heads. Danielle brushed the dust off, executed, and shared the results.
What did you do with it?
I'd say this is a timely example of the "Ideas are worthless. Execution is everything." mantra from just the other day.
That frequently regurgitated phrase means that execution matters more than an idea for a business, not that ideas are literally worthless and therefore undeserving of attribution.
I was a really early Twilio adopter, and was having issues with it (since it wasn't nearly as good as it is now). I emailed her a support question, and she asked me what I was doing:
"I'd be interested to talk with your more about what you're looking to do with sendDigits/DTMF tones on incoming calls, this might be something we should consider adding in the future."
So, I outlined my entire system to her. I have no problem with someone using my idea- however, she was answering a private support issue that I (a paying customer) had, and I was helping her by providing her with more information about what I was doing with her system.
Then, she posted it on her blog without crediting me. Implementing the idea isn't bad; posting a private support thread as your own idea on your own blog, however, is.
I'm sorry I had no idea I was ripping you off, I appreciate that you're a Twilio early adopter. Like you mentioned, I handle customer support for Twilio and hear about countless ideas, feature requests, etc. everyday. There's no way I could remember who came up with what, and multiple people run similar ideas by me all the time.
I built this to scratch my own itch and its also a really simple use case to illustrate the ability to control real world devices with DTMF tones. Some Twilio projects I had in mind when I built this include Buzzeromatic.com, which is also powered by Twilio and costs $1.95/month and had a very public launch. Sunlight Labs also did a door hack with Twilio and an arduino that I thought was pretty sweet.
What I think is important is that what I've built doesn't have any UI or anything like that, just a really stripped down version and I'm not looking to make it into some paid service. You could certainly take these guts and turn them into a kickass product, but these <100 lines of PHP are not the defensible secret sauce.
This idea is too obvious to stake any sort of claim. And once you've decided to do it, there aren't many variations on the theme.
Basically anyone who has programmed with VoIP and has a callbox has thought about or done this. E.g., I did this years ago using a VoIP server that I wrote -- silly prompt sounds and all.
Furthermore, companies like Twilio are seldom surprised by applications of their platform; they likely had to come up with tons of examples for investors when they raised money.
One could always just use a Twilio equivalence in your country. Twilio might look easy, but it's just as easy rolling your own with something like Adhearsion. Just sign up for some cheap origination/termination services and you're ready to roll your own twilio service. I use iCall for origination & VoipJet for termination here in the US; my asterisk & adhearsion stack runs on a small cloud server at rackspacecloud.
International support isn't the issue, the issue is that you won't let non-americans sign up.
And yes, I am running a vendetta against discriminatory start-ups. The internet doesn't care about borders and if you do, you don't deserve to be on it.
time to write a blog post about this... these "vendettas" from people outside the U.S. against startups that won't let you sign up so annoying. Maybe you should channel all that energy towards convincing your own country to make it easier for us to operate businesses within your borders... the limited resources of a startup have to be carefully spent, and thinking about foreign exchange, taxes, and laws (especially on stuff like telecom) is not a small undertaking
Comments
full disclosure - i work on Twilio, which I used for this
Danielle- hopefully it's just a coincidence, however I emailed you exactly this idea (and outlined the implementation almost exactly like you just did) about a year ago (our email conversation about it began on 7/7/2009; we met prior to that at the GigaOM VIP party).
I hope that it's not a coincidence. A pretty neat idea was provided for nothing a year ago and has been doing nothing but sitting around in the two of your heads. Danielle brushed the dust off, executed, and shared the results.
What did you do with it?
I'd say this is a timely example of the "Ideas are worthless. Execution is everything." mantra from just the other day.
That frequently regurgitated phrase means that execution matters more than an idea for a business, not that ideas are literally worthless and therefore undeserving of attribution.
Do you normally send people ideas you hope they won't implement?
I was a really early Twilio adopter, and was having issues with it (since it wasn't nearly as good as it is now). I emailed her a support question, and she asked me what I was doing:
"I'd be interested to talk with your more about what you're looking to do with sendDigits/DTMF tones on incoming calls, this might be something we should consider adding in the future."
So, I outlined my entire system to her. I have no problem with someone using my idea- however, she was answering a private support issue that I (a paying customer) had, and I was helping her by providing her with more information about what I was doing with her system.
Then, she posted it on her blog without crediting me. Implementing the idea isn't bad; posting a private support thread as your own idea on your own blog, however, is.
I'm sorry I had no idea I was ripping you off, I appreciate that you're a Twilio early adopter. Like you mentioned, I handle customer support for Twilio and hear about countless ideas, feature requests, etc. everyday. There's no way I could remember who came up with what, and multiple people run similar ideas by me all the time.
I built this to scratch my own itch and its also a really simple use case to illustrate the ability to control real world devices with DTMF tones. Some Twilio projects I had in mind when I built this include Buzzeromatic.com, which is also powered by Twilio and costs $1.95/month and had a very public launch. Sunlight Labs also did a door hack with Twilio and an arduino that I thought was pretty sweet.
What I think is important is that what I've built doesn't have any UI or anything like that, just a really stripped down version and I'm not looking to make it into some paid service. You could certainly take these guts and turn them into a kickass product, but these <100 lines of PHP are not the defensible secret sauce.
The ability to use DTMF tones with Twilio has been around for awhile, I got the tone generator from a Get Satisfction thread that's about a year old: http://getsatisfaction.com/twilio/topics/dtmf_tone_generatio...
Sorry, I didn't mean to pick a fight, I just knew we talked about the exact same implementation a long time ago :)
Keep up the great work with Twilio- I use it on as many of my projects (such as http://getdoorman.com, my commercial door buzzer app and http://pleasecallmyphone.com) as I can.
This idea is too obvious to stake any sort of claim. And once you've decided to do it, there aren't many variations on the theme.
Basically anyone who has programmed with VoIP and has a callbox has thought about or done this. E.g., I did this years ago using a VoIP server that I wrote -- silly prompt sounds and all.
Furthermore, companies like Twilio are seldom surprised by applications of their platform; they likely had to come up with tons of examples for investors when they raised money.
Ok, next time could you indicate that you use a restricted service in you headline so those of us who can't get Twillo can skip reading about it?
One could always just use a Twilio equivalence in your country. Twilio might look easy, but it's just as easy rolling your own with something like Adhearsion. Just sign up for some cheap origination/termination services and you're ready to roll your own twilio service. I use iCall for origination & VoipJet for termination here in the US; my asterisk & adhearsion stack runs on a small cloud server at rackspacecloud.
Any other disclosures I should add about my startup? Oh, you have to pay for the API too... OMFGBBQAFKBFF4EVA
we are working on international support, stay tuned
International support isn't the issue, the issue is that you won't let non-americans sign up.
And yes, I am running a vendetta against discriminatory start-ups. The internet doesn't care about borders and if you do, you don't deserve to be on it.
The internet
time to write a blog post about this... these "vendettas" from people outside the U.S. against startups that won't let you sign up so annoying. Maybe you should channel all that energy towards convincing your own country to make it easier for us to operate businesses within your borders... the limited resources of a startup have to be carefully spent, and thinking about foreign exchange, taxes, and laws (especially on stuff like telecom) is not a small undertaking