An Introduction to @Tropo
Tropo is a Cloud API for voice, SMS, and IM. It's kind of similar to Asterisk wherein you can use it to build your own digital PBX by writing up some simple code. But really, it's more than that. Because it not only supports voice, but SMS and IM as well, the integration possibilities for this API are endless. Need to send out voice and text alerts to people? You can do that with Tropo. Need to have conference calls with other people? You can do that with Tropo. Need a support hotline with automatic call queueing, call recording, on-call games, text-to-speech and speech recognition support, and a way for customers to pay by phone? I think you get my point by now.
PHP Retweeter
This past week, I've been coding a little more than usual (outside of work, anyways). I've been working on a few personal things as well as some freelance stuff. But what this post is really about is a little script I put together a while ago to operate a Twitter bot, one that retweets things other users say and follows them back if they reply. I call it the PHP Retweeter (for obvious reasons). It's pretty cool. The concept itself is pretty old and there are probably a ton of guides out there on how to put one together, but I figured I'd release mine to give people yet another alternative. I based it on Abraham Williams' OAuth library for authentication and to send my API calls. Download it and give it a try.