Telephone Blog

The Telephone.com Team has been hard at work on updating the Contacts Management section.
We’ve introduced a fan of new features that will make it even easier for you to contact your friends, family, and colleagues. Our new Contacts Management section has been designed and implemented in a way to smoothly welcome our transition into a broader, more feature-rich Telephone.com experience.

Please watch the demo for an introduction to some of the key features:

Here are some of the new features:

1. Alphabetic scroller of your contacts:
Scroll alphabetically through your contacts by clicking on any letter

2. Send SMSes to a group
Click on the message icon next to the group’s name, compose your message, and send it to all the contacts belonging to that group

3. Instantly SMS a contact
Click on the message icon next to a contact’s name, compose your message, and send it hassle-free.

4. Contact details
We have enhanced your single contact view into a fully-fledged detail sheet. Add as much information as you want, such as websites, IM, and date of birth.

UPDATE

With the growing benefits of FREE SMSes to Haiti, the continued suffering in Haiti especially with the successive and substantial aftershocks, and the growing needs for food and shelter, we have gladly extended our ‘FREE SMSes to Haiti’ initiative until February 10^th, 2010.

Please extend to NGOs and people who can benefit from this offer.



En raison des bénéfices croissants des SMS gratuits en Haïti et la souffrance continue en particulier due aux répliques successives et importantes, et les besoins croissants de nourriture et d’abri, nous avons étendu notre initiative “SMS gratuits en Haïti» jusqu’au 10 Février, 2010.

N’hésitez pas de communiquer cette offre aux ONG et aux personnes qui peuvent en bénéficier.

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On January 7^th 2010, Haiti suffered an earthquake ranking at 7.0 on the Richter scale and causing major losses in lives, infrastructure, and supplies. All forms of help are needed: water, supplies of all types, telephones, medical support, …

In an effort to facilitate aid and relief efforts for victims, Telephone.com is offering FREE SMSes to Haiti until January 31^st, 2010:

1. All SMSes sent to Haiti are FREE of charge. Sign up from anywhere around the world and send SMSes to Haitian numbers for free.
2. All SMSes that are sent FROM Haiti, TO Haiti are also free.
3. We are offering any Haitian mobile subscriber $3 worth of FREE international SMSes when they sign up to Telephone.com using their Haitian mobile number (within 24 hours, $3 in addition to the $1 worth of free SMSes upon signing up).
4. NGOs dealing with the relief effort are offered a 10% discount on all Telephone.com wallet recharges. Contact us via Twitter @TelephoneDotCom or via support@telephone.com prior to your recharge.

The Telephone.com team would like to extend their deepest condolences to all of those who have lost their loved ones.

We would also like to extend a heartfelt concern to survivors and aid agencies on the ground.

Telephone.com vous aide à aider les autres: TOUS les SMS envoyés en Haïti sont GRATUITS

Le 7 Janvier 2010, Haïti a subi un tremblement de terre classé à 7,0 sur l’échelle de Richter, provoquant d’importantes pertes humaines et matérielles. Toutes formes d’aide sont nécessaires: eau, tout genre de ravitaillement, téléphones, soutien médical,…

Dans le but de faciliter l’aide aux victimes et les efforts de secours, Telephone.com offre gratuitement des SMS en Haïti jusqu’au 31 Janvier 2010:

1. Tous les SMS envoyés en Haïti sont exempts de frais. Inscrivez-vous à partir de n’importe où dans le monde et envoyez des SMS gratuitement à des numéros haïtiens.
2. Tous les SMS envoyés à partir d’Haïti en Haïti sont également gratuits.
3. Nous offrons tout abonné à un opérateur haïtien l’équivalent de 3$ de SMS internationaux GRATUITS lors de leur inscription à Telephone.com en utilisant leur numéro de téléphone portable haïtien (dans les 24 heures, 3$ seront ajoutés à l’équivalent de 1$ de SMS gratuits sur inscription).
4. Les ONG impliqués dans des efforts de secours sont offerts un rabais de 10% sur toutes les recharges de portefeuille Telephone.com. Contactez-nous via Twitter @TelephoneDotCom ou via support@telephone.com avant votre recharge.

L’équipe Telephone.com tient à exprimer ses condoléances les plus sincères à tous ceux qui ont perdu leurs êtres chers.

Nous tenons également à exprimer une sincère solidarité avec les survivants et les organismes d’aide présents sur le terrain.

Last Wednesday, Telephone.com participated in “Sing for a cause, Sing for Haiti”. This fund-raising karaoke event was hosted by Melting Pot in an effort to help victims of the Haiti earthquakes.

All guests were giving donations, the sponsors were supplying the restaurant for free, and all the staff was donating their efforts and time for no retribution. A slideshow of the event was played in honor of the victims and the aid workers. This was all done in order to gather contributions and send them to Haiti through the International Red Cross.

We were pleased to contribute to this event and would like to thank, on behalf of the Telephone.com team, all of the attendants and the team over at Melting Pot.

Here are some pictures of the event we would like to share with you:

"Sing for a cause, Sing for Haiti" at Melting Pot

Oreilly’s Web 2.0 Expo New York ‘09 revolved around the approach of “Less is More”, and especially in these rough times for all, including the tech industry.

Speakers of this event showed up from both coasts and were distributed across multiple tracks ( user interaction design,…) and there was a good representation from Europe as well.

This blog post lists the links of interest that we took home with us after attending the Web 2.0 Expo and spent time going through once we were back in the office.

Follow the link below to get a copy of all presentations given at the conference. Almost all speakers made sure that they slideshare their talks.

http://www.web2expo.com/webexny2009/public/schedule/proceedings

Every speaker had his / her favorite book that they would highly recommend. We thought you might be interested in these books so we listed them here (we ended up placing a nice big order from Amazon ourselves – some were kindled and some were hard copies).

For more detailed information about the web2expo, a twitter search for the hashtag #w2e will provide ample info.

Speaking of twitter, we would love to connect with you there @telephonedotcom

Take care!

• Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Design and Refine User Interfaces – Carolyn Snyder
• Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships – Daniel Goleman
• Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives – Nicholas Christakis and James H. Fowler
• The Whuffie Factor – Tara Hunt
• Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom – Cory Doctorow (science fiction book that mentions Whuffie)
• The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures – Dan Rome
• Selling To The VP of NO – David Gray
• Envisioning Information – Edward R. Tufte
• Don’t Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability – Steve Krug (number one seller of user experience books)
• Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust – Chris Brogan
• Prototyping: a Practitioner’s Guide (New!) – Todd Zaki Warfel
• The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff (Prentice Hall) – Clara Shih
• Life, Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back – Douglas Rushkoff
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion – Robert Cialdini
• Rape in Cyberspace – Julian Dubell (article)
• Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media (collaboration of many authors)
• Confessions of a Public Speaker – Scott Berkun
• Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful – Beth Noveck
• Designing Interactions – Bill Moggridge
• Content First: Why Content Strategy Will Save the Web – Kristina Halvorson (PDF)
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die – Chip Heath
• Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web – Jessy James Garett

The Mobile Data Collection for Social Action conference that took place in Amman, Jordan, focused on how to best put to use recent technology to benefit causes spanning multiple developing countries.

One of the technology moves in that direction are UNICEF Innovation, who have been growingly working Social Media into their areas of reach. Their incentive is to facilitate communication between helpers, and those who need a helping hand, by crowd-sourcing it. What they do is enable informative SMSes to be sent to or from villages to target specific cases such as nutrition, health, AIDS, and more. This media of communication has greatly contributed to archive knowledge of what is actually happening, and hence, facilitated aid and contribution to these causes.

Multiple platforms were presented in the conference, including case studies, and actual data:

1. RapidSMS
2. Ushahidi
3. Dev Info
4. Sharek 961
5. Souktel
6. Snap ‘N Share
7. Grassroots Mapping
8. NiJel
9. Al Jazeera Mobile Reporting
10. ComCare
11. Supply Intranet
12. Geo Chat
13. Development Seed
14. Apstrata
15. FrontLineSMS

Participants of this conference were from different rich backgrounds. The body of people was collectively from different specialties, all with the intention of alleviating developing countries.

Please visit the following link for a list of TechFair contributors:

http://mobiledatainnovation.pbworks.com/Tech-Fair

Please visit the following link for a list of IgniteTalk presenters, their presentations, and videos of their IgniteTalks:

http://mobiledatainnovation.pbworks.com/IgniteTalks

It was our privilege to participate as Telephone.com. We would like to thank Katrin Verclas, the MobileActive team, and UNICEF Innovation for organizing this conference. We attribute great importance to our Corporate Social Responsibility program and are looking into the best ways to continue to collaborate soon with the different involved parties in order to bring their development, and ability to reach, onward.

Application Title: PHP Example using SimpleXML and cURL

Telephone API PHP Example (using GET)

Description: This is a sample “Compose SMS” PHP application that consumes the Telephone API by means of SimpleXML and cURL (Get Method). It shows how to connect to the API through a GET request. The code provides basic guidance and is not intended for production use. This example does not use hashing as it is intended to be used by one user only, as the setting upon registering for the API key in the following screenshot indicates

Link: http://api.telephone.com/downloads/Telephone API – PHP Example (using GET Method).zip

Application Title: PHP Example using SimpleXML and cURL

Telephone API PHP Example

Description: This is a sample “Send SMS” PHP application that consumes the Telephone API by means of SimpleXML and cURL. It shows how to connect to the API, submit, and receive XML documents. The code provides basic guidance and is not intended for production use.

Link: http://api.telephone.com/downloads/telephone api – php example.zip

Here at Telephone, we strive to implement features to accommodate to our users in a most practical way. This is why we’ve pushed our “Instant Delivery Notification” feature; where our users now get an alert notifying them of the delivery of their SMS(es).

An excerpt of the message is displayed so you know exactly which message has just made it to its destination! You won’t even have to check your “sent” unless you want to get the full details!

Enjoy your messaging experience!

Instant Delivery Notificaion

If you would like to redeem a T Gift Card, here’s what you need to do:

1)    Log in to your telephone.com account, and click on “settings”.

Click on "settings"

2)    Click on “recharge wallet”, and select “T Charge Card”. Input the code of the T Gift Card you have received.

Input the code of the T Gift Card

3)    Click on “proceed” to complete the recharge process.

Click on "proceed"

4)    Click on “done”.

Click on "done"

If you would like to redeem a T Charge Card, here’s what you need to do:

1)    Log in to your telephone.com account, and click on “settings”.

Click on "settings"

2) Click on “recharge wallet”, and select “T Charge Card”. Input the code you have scratched off  your T Charge Card.

Input the code of the T Charge Card

3) Click on “proceed” to complete the recharge process.

Click on "proceed"

4) Click on “done”.

Click on "done"