Show HN: Phoneify - 20 hours with Rails 3 & Twilio

I wrote Phoneify over the last couple of weeks using Rails 3, Twilio and a variety of Gems, putting in about 2 hours per day. I'd love any feedback from the HN community on any aspects of the site (design, API construction, documentation, marketing, pricing which is TBD).<p>On a related note: I have to say that I'm really flying with Rails 3. Typically I roll with Django, but have been super impressed with the Rails 3. Feels really clean, and there are some Gems that make the more mundane parts of the webapp construction fun and agile: Haml/Sass, blueprint, Fancy-buttons, Devise.<p>I'll probably write up a blog post soon on all the tricks &#38; shortcuts I used to get this off the ground. Many of the shortcuts have to do with design and layout, and less so about backend coding.

Amazing--I've worked on projects before where if the barriers to integrating with existing solutions were lower, phone verification would have really helped. This is an awesome example of a niche problem, with an elegantly simple solution. If only you made this a couple of years ago...

+1 for great execution. Nice visuals. Did you do them yourself? If not, a reference would be great.<p>+1 for needing pricing details upfront. I'll suggest $.10/call or SMS but I might pay up to $.50 for my application. I could be using this within a couple of weeks for a project I'm building.<p>But... You must have noticed that there's another company using Phonify.com (no e). You're going to get in trouble with trademark infringement if you launch with this. Seriously, it's an easy call, and I wouldn't say that your space in the commerce realm is too far apart to matter. [insert flashing red light] Now maybe the other company won't have a trademark, in which case maybe you could use this, but then you can't trademark it yourself. Given the potential name confusion (I just typed their URL when I wanted yours a minute ago), I'd think hard about this before charging anyone for anything.<p>Some PHP sample code wouldn't hurt.<p>There are several Wordpress plugins for signing up for an email mailing list. Adding your service to that would be compelling. Note that the Wordpress people have a strong interpretation of the GPL (that is they assert that all plugins are covered under GPL and must be $free) though. But maybe that doesn't matter if you're charging per call.<p>Going further down that train of thought, I'm thinking someone might duplicate this functionality for Wordpress and just require the user to have Twilio account (as some folks require an Amazon storage account, or whatever). Twilio signup is a low bar to jump, so I'm thinking this is a reason to keep your fees low.

I like it. The only thing that bothered me was that I couldn't find the prices. But it looks like that is because the prices don't exist yet.<p>I would definitely look at using this, but only for a pretty serious application. Nothing I've worked on so far has required that level of authenticity, or verification of a working phone.

Nice job on the layout, very clean. I too would be quite interested in your notes about design and layout.

Nice App! I would love to hear your thoughts on why i should use phoneify over traditional email verification.

I tried your demo but it didn't work for me. I opted to verify by phone, got the phone call, entered the verification code but it said verification code incorrect (i typed it correctly - did it twice).

Sweet &#38; simple.<p>2 questions: - works world-wide or US only? - how much do you charge per verification (SMS / voice)... can't find on a website, but I see I have $20 balance

Curious what your hosting / reliability / scalability strategy is, if any at this point?<p>If my web site sign ups would rely on your service I'd be looking to be reassured about how robust it is going to be. Of course, after 20 hours it's amazing you have a front page, let alone a scalability plan so this is just a suggestion really rather than a question, but if you do have this designed in I'd be curious to hear it.

What made you design it that the user has to give the passcode to the calling server and not the other way around like with TXT?

Beautiful execution. Gorgeous really.<p>Would like to see pricing. Don't be shy about it, dude. This is valuable service you're offering with a barrier of entry about as high as placing a LIKE button on one's page.<p>I experienced a bug with the demo. When I entered the first letter of the verification code it said "message recording". Subsequent tries didn't work either.

I have the very same app 80% complete. I haven't launched it because of all the caveats with international numbers. It's hard to try to sell this to web stores and the like that take orders from around the world if I can't support half their customers' numbers.

Looks very nice. Do you support international numbers or just US only for now?

Wow. That's an amazing idea and gorgeously executed. You should be really proud of that, put some prices in - you're in a great position to make a killing from this service.

It's clean, concise, and to the point. Great layout and everyone looks really polished. I look forward to your tricks and shortcuts write up.

I love it, easy to use, and it seems very simple to integrate. Much more cool than captcha. congrats

Awesome idea, slick &#38; complete implementation. I look forward to pricing details!

+1 for pricing details