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."
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!
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!
I think this is a great idea. It can even be a javascript plug-in for restaurant websites where you can just call if you don't want to deal with online order placing systems. It might make even more sense for someone like Yelp to integrate this as a feature? Who pays for the calls is a question that needs to be solved though.
Pulling numbers out of the air -
0.25c / min * (2 mins / call (on an average)) * 25 orders / day * 30 days / month = 375 $ a month ? Holy crap.
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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.
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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.
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.
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.
Flash probably defaulted to the soundcard mic.
Hopefully they'll expand into Europe sooner rather than later, as it looks like being a really useful service.
In addition, you can make client-to-client calls that never touch the traditional phone network and will work anywhere in the world.
Hopefully you'll come to Europe in a year or two, because your product really does look fantastic :)
