Hackathon: Twilio and Box.net Conference Call Aid

Posted By svihackspace ~ 7th August 2011

Our last Hackathon at the SVI Hackspace was sponsored by Box.net. First, a big thank you for helping us make the hackathon happen! With a  Box.net API expert on hand, hackers set out to build awesome applications with Box.net’s API.

An awesome example of what came out of this hackathon is a hack done by Swami. He attended our hackathon before this one and met some great people. He found the space to his liking and returned this time with a simple objective: to “think fresh”. He was really hoping to tinker with new APIs.

He writes “On July 26th, Twilio released their new API. That along with the fact that Box.net was present at the hackathon encouraged me to combine their APIs”. The resulting product was something very practical. Dubbed TalkRain, the application records, transcribes and then uploads your conference calls to your Box.net accounts – an extremely sought-after and attractive feature for many companies.

The demo can be seen at: TalkRain

Swami gave us the inside scoop on how it works:

This hack allows users to create and join conference calls from the web as well as their phones  and then store the conference calls as MP3s. The most interesting feature of this hack is that it is multi-dimensional, allowing users to join using the web, mobile, or landline phone.

For example, John can create the conference from the Web, where Ayush can join from the mobile and Swami from his home (landline) phone.

These conference calls would be recorded and the MP3 files of the recordings would be uploaded to a Box.net account. But it gets cooler!

Using Twilio’s API, call transcriptions can be uploaded to the Box.net account. With a Business Edition Account at Box.net, a user can search the transcriptions at a future date.

So, 2 months later when you are at a meeting and you know your client mentioned something specific about the “SharePoint Integration” you can search for SharePoint and get a transcription of the conversation you had and pull the corresponding MP3 to revisit the conversation.

Here is a diagram explaining the hack:


 

Very cool stuff! Good work!

Swami concludes with:

I want to really really thank SVI Hackspace and the team behind it. It may look simple today, but who knows the next big thing may be from SVI Hackspace. Go for it SVI.



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