I got to try this out at a little mini-conf Twilio organized some months ago. It is, if anything, even more fun than "Hey you can reimplement Skype in 3 lines of code", because one of the parties to the call can be a computer. You can use the client as a "programmable audio pipe" direct to the user's browser.<p>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.<p>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 <i>don't force them to read</i>.<p>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 <i>do</i> offer free shipping. You have a good day now."<p>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."
Seems to me Twilio is quickly going to become the 37Signals of the Telephony world, and should they continue to play their cards right, they're likely to be a dominant force in a very short space of time. I wish them well and hope that someday soon we can do away with our complex voip infrastructure and move over to theirs.
Seems a neat idea, bt it isn't exactly seamless to the user -- I get the Flash security dialog asking for permission to access my speaker & microphone, and the default was to deny.<p>Many users probably won't have a clue what to click there.<p>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.
..just as long as the users are in the US/Canada, or happy calling the US/Canada..<p>Hopefully they'll expand into Europe sooner rather than later, as it looks like being a really useful service.
I wonder how <a href="https://www.tropo.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.tropo.com/</a> is doing. They seem to be a bit of an underdog in the telephony api world.
I thought I'd take the liberty post a comment from a user in the techcrunch comments. I'm curious to hear reaction from those more familiar with telephony than I am.<p><comment><p><i>PhonoSDK (<a href="http://phono.com" rel="nofollow">http://phono.com</a>) 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.<p>The number of advantages that PhonoSDK has over this is pretty impressive:<p>- Phono supports enterprise-grade open standards for VoIP and IM (SIP and XMPP).
Phono supports HD audio (much better caller experience).<p>- Phono supports in-browser IM functionality as well as in-browser phone functionality, using the same library.<p>- Phono is open source.<p>- There is no charge for Phono -> Phono calls or IMs.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Enterprise customers won't touch this with a 10-foot pole.</i><p></comment>