Monthly Archives: March 2009

I’m on Twilio.com’s Home Page!

Posted by on March 17, 2009 Comments Off

twilio-homeIt is very cool to be linked from the home page of Twilio.com. There’s a rotating banner with a link to my project site, ThisLineIsSecure.com. I suspect they will keep it up for a while and then rotate it out with other community members. I took a screenshot for the day they take it down, though, which you can see on the left.

Twilio makes a great API which I intend to use in more projects in the future. The most shocking thing about it is how easy it is to get started. Many web applications do not necessarily need to reach out from the web and interact with your phone (some do of course). It seems more likely to me that there are businesses that could use a better phone system for certain sales functions and don’t realize that you can have a developer (like me) whip up a web-enabled custom phone system in only a few days.

Tools of My Trade

Posted by on March 17, 2009 Comments Off

I am a former Windows-only developer happily using my iMac and running OS X all the time, rarely booting into Windows anymore. Here is a list of software and services that I use to do my day-to-day development, besides Mail.app and Terminal.app which seem too obvious to include:

  • Komodo Edit 5.0: Good cross-platform IDE, was using Aptana Studio and Eclipse too
  • Smultron: quick plain text editor
  • Cyberduck: FTP and then some
  • 1Password: $ manage all the passwords to all the sites
  • Pixelmator: $ great Mac-only image editor
  • MacPorts: for everything not already in OS X
  • MAMP, which includes Apache, MySQL, and phpMyAdmin
  • Firefox + Firebug + YSlow: for web debugging. All other surfing through Safari
  • Skype: video conferencing
  • Chicken of the VNC: VNC client
  • Snapz Pro X: $ screencasts and screenshots
  • iWork: $ Pages and Numbers work great – who needs MS Office?
  • VMWare Fusion: $ emulator for booting into Windows occasionally
  • MediaTemple.com: $ hosting
  • Unfuddle.com: Subversion hosting and issue tracking for my own projects
  • WordPress: you are here

$ = commercial software/service that I paid for

How ThisLineIsSecure.com was built

Posted by on March 2, 2009 Comments Off

Here is a quick rundown of how my recently launched site ThisLineIsSecure.com was built. First of all, it would not have been possible without the Twilio API. Besides that:

I need to tally up my expenses, but besides my time I’m probably out less than $200 for this whole thing so far. Unbelievable. I think that the Kohana project, Nuvio, the WordPress Audio Player, and Cyberduck each deserve at least a $20 donation, which will be forthcoming.