A few weeks ago I was in Portland at the CivicWebs Hackathon talking with Amber Case and Aaron Pareki when Amber asked me why Tropo is better than Twilio. She acknowledged that while she and Aaron love Tropo and built their GeoLoqi app on Tropo’s API, a lot of other people seem to like Twilio. “So why is Tropo better?” she asked.
I responded with all the certainty, aloofness and charm I could muster: “Because we are!”
For most normal people, that answer might suffice, but Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist. It’s hard to win her over with just charm. So I started laying out some of the reasons why Tropo is just plain better, and I figured rather than just keep them between me and Amber and Aaron, I’d share…
1) Features – Twilio for pranks, Tropo for business
This is where Tropo really blows Twilio away, and even Twilio’s own people acknowledge it. At an API vendor shootout session at Internet Telephony Expo earlier this year, Danielle Morrill, Twilio’s head of marketing, said that Twilio would never be able to keep up with Tropo on features.
Tropo offers a ton of advanced features that Twilio just can’t match: Voice recognition, SIP connections (critical for integration with other VoIP systems), Skype integration, instant messaging, short codes, hosting, numbers in 41 countries, speech in multiple languages, and a host of other things.
Furthermore, Tropo is a unified API. The days of needing one app for voice calls, another for SMS and a third for conferencing are over. The same code you use to say something over the phone can also respond via SMS, IM, and Twitter.
2) Tropo’s Extreme Support
Twilio works on a credit system that requires developers to pay to play. Tropo is and always will be 100% free for developers. No credits, no limits on minutes, no ads played to you or your callers. Every developer gets 24×7 support from engineers that know how to write code. Paying customers measure their response times in minutes. Our support team is consistently ranked the highest in customer service and satisfaction, at the top of not only our industry, but above all other software and telephony companies.
3) Scalability, Reliability and Portability
Twilio’s service is based on Asterisk, a free and open source telephony framework and runs on Amazon’s EC2 network.
Tropo runs on Voxeo’s SIP Cloud, the largest worldwide voice application host. Voxeo has been running phone+web applications for 10 years. Because Voxeo’s been doing this stuff for so long they know that business customers demand security and reliability, which is why Voxeo manages their own datacenters that connect directly to major carriers and delivers tens of millions of voice minutes a day for the largest companies in the world, including half the Fortune 100.
Portability is another factor. If someone develops an app on Twilio, they’re pretty much locked in to Twilio. Hopefully it will be a happy marriage, but what happens if they want to switch providers? Tropo, on the other hand, can be run in your own network. You can even run Tropo on Amazon EC2 (if you want to).
If you haven’t tried out Tropo, you should give it a whirl. Here’s a great tutorial to help you get started: How to build a Twitter Bot using Tropo and JavaScript
Related Post: Twilio vs. Tropo AKA A little more noise for Dave McClure
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South Sudan referendum: 99% vote for independence
There was a vast turnout for the vote, which lasted a week Some 99% of South Sudanese voted to secede from the north, according to the first complete results of the region's independence referendum.
A total of 99.57 percent of those polled voted for independence, according to the referendum commission.
Early counting had put the outcome of the ballot beyond doubt, indicating Southern Sudan had secured a mandate to become the world's newest nation.
The poll was agreed as part of a 2005 peace deal to end two decades of war.
Final results from the 9-15 January vote, which Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has said he will accept, are expected early next month.
If the result is confirmed, the new country is set to formally declare its independence on 9 July.
Hundreds of officials and diplomats gathered in Juba at the grave of rebel leader John Garang for the first official announcement of the results.
'The prayer of a country'
The revered South Sudanese leader died in a plane crash just days after signing the January 2005 peace agreement ending more than 20 years of conflict between the black Christian-dominated south and the mainly Arab Muslim north.
"The prayer I say the people of Southern Sudan have been waiting for for 55 years, the prayer of a country," Episcopalian Archbishop Daniel Deng said as he opened the ceremony.
Sudan's Historic Vote
- Voted: 9-15 January
- Vote a condition of 2005 deal to end two-decade north-south conflict
- Most northerners are Arabic-speaking Muslims
- Most southerners Christian or follow traditional religions
- Final result due 6 February or 14 February if there are appeals
- South will become continent's newest nation on 9 July 2011
- National anthem and flag chosen, but not new country's name
"Bless the name of this land, Southern Sudan," he said.
According to the commission website, 3,851,994 votes were cast during the week-long ballot.
Five of the 10 states in Sudan's oil-producing south showed a 99.9% vote for separation, the lowest vote was 95.5% in favour in the western state of Bahr al-Ghazal, bordering north Sudan, Reuters reports.
North and south Sudan have suffered decades of conflict driven by religious and ethnic divides.
Southern Sudan is one of the least developed areas in the world and many of its people have have long complained of mistreatment at the hands of the Khartoum government.
The BBC's James Copnall, in Khartoum, says independence for the South now seems inevitable.
Our correspondent adds that though the South Sudanese are celebrating that their dream of having their own country is a massive step closer there are still issues to resolved - including underdevelopment and inter-ethnic conflict.
Tough negotiations remain on how to divide up economic resources between north and south - which has the bulk of oil, he adds.
The great divide across Sudan is visible even from space, as this Nasa satellite image shows. The northern states are a blanket of desert, broken only by the fertile Nile corridor. Southern Sudan is covered by green swathes of grassland, swamps and tropical forest.
One country or two?
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