Hoiio Developer Blog

As announced a week ago, we are giving away free $10 (SGD) trial credits to all new developers!

We are doing this because we understand that developer wants to try out APIs with zero commitment first.

With this trial $10, you can now

• buy a Hoiio number for $5
• test our IVR API
• test our Voice API
• test our SMS API

However, note that the trial credits comes with restricted use. You can only SMS/call to

• your phone number,
• your Hoiio number, or
• our Hoiio numbers: +6565918793 (for Singapore) and +85258010019 (for Hong Kong)

After you have integrated with Hoiio API, and is ready to go on production mode, simply topup your credits.

Restrictions will be lifted, and the remaining credits will be given to you!

In the last post, we pay compliment to the winning app from THack – Where-Is-My-Travelling-Parents

This post, we want to pay compliment to the app that the Hoiio Team created!

Yeah, we did not just provide API, but also participated in hacking an app.

In that 24-hr, Yew Meng and me created Guidebnb, an app that helps you find a local guide to travel with. This is an Airbnb for local guides! You can try out Guidebnb with your Facebook account right away, or read more for details.

How to use Guidebnb?

• Register using your Facebook account (we will auto set your city, gender, age)
• Enter your phone number (for travelers to reach you on your phone)
• Enter your preference as a traveler (what kind of tour guide you want to hook up with ?)
• Enter your preference as a local guide (what kind of traveler you want to hook up with ?)
• Save changes!
• When you travel to a city, for example Singapore, call this local number +6565918703, and press “1″ to connect to a random local guide!

Also helps you find nearby hotels

Three APIs were used

1. Facebook for social profile
2. Expedia for hotel search
3. Hoiio for SMS and IVR

2 weeks ago, we announced THack, a 24-hour travel hackathon to be held in Singapore. The hackathon concluded with Where-Is-My-Travelling-Parents emerging as the winner!

Where-Is-My-Travelling-Parents is an app that helps to notify family members on the whereabouts of a traveller. The idea is pretty awesome as there is NOTHING that the traveler, nor his family, needs to do. Look at the parties involved here.

The family members are notified automatically in these 2 ways:

• When the flight landed, they are notified. OAG API is used to track the live flight information.
• When the tour group reached a destination, the tour leader will “check in” by making a phone call, and this trigger the notification. This is made possible using Hoiio IVR API!

4 out of 6 apps used Hoiio API

We are also proud to say that Hoiio API has proved to be a very valuable API for the hackathon. Out of the 6 apps presented, 4 were using Hoiio API (there were 9 APIs to choose from)!

And the winning app fully make use of both our IVR and SMS capabilities.

“Simple to use” is one of the key reason why developers choose us.

This is for all Hoiio developers, especially developers attending THack 2011, a cheatsheet for Hoiio API!

This cheatsheet is more of a quick glance of what you can do with Hoiio API. It is NOT a complete/exhaustive list of our APIs. For a complete documentation of each of our APIs, you can start with this online API list.

We have a major release today on how Hoiio Developer account works. There is now a separate billing account for developers.

Don’t fret, this will not break your code!

This is the story.. When we started Hoiio developer program, we wanted to let developers use a single sign-on, with a single billing account, for both Hoiio Developer and Hoiio Personal. (If you don’t know what is “Hoiio Personal”, it is a consumer side of Hoiio, providing friendly communication apps)

Developers can conveniently use the same set of credentials to login the 2 portals, and use Hoiio credits for both Hoiio API and also Hoiio apps! This is similar to the concept of Facebook user and Facebook developer.

However, we have decided to split the accounts for the good of developers.

This is what it means for you:

• You now have 2 billing accounts. One for Hoiio Developer, and one for Hoiio Personal.
• The Hoiio credits in these 2 accounts are for different usage, and cannot be shared.
• Your Hoiio Numbers must be allocated either for Hoiio Developer or for Hoiio Personal.

There are things that remains the same:

• You use the same credentials to log in.
• Of course, all functionalities are still available.

If you wonder why we are doing this.. We wanted to give free $10 trial credits to every new developer. The trial credits comes with restricted use, and cannot be shared with Hoiio Personal account, hence a split is needed. We will provide more information about this trial credits in the next post.

THack, a hackathon organized by Tnooz, is an event where developers produce awesome travel apps in 24-hour.

Following a September hackathon held in Boston, the event now moves to its next city – Singapore! And it will be held in the luxury Shangri-La Sentosa Resort!

Hoiio API is proud to be one of the API providers for THack. This is together with a couple of travel APIs such as:

• Add to Trip
• Expedia Affiliate
• Abacus

If you are interested in hacking out a travel app, you can register here.

For developers who have registered, see ya on 16th Oct!

Hoiio is nominated in Asia’s Top 50 Apps, organized by Singtel Innovation Exchange!

Cast your vote before 10th October, and help us be among the top 50 apps! Simply go to asiatop50apps.com, and like or +1 for Hoiio.

If you have both Facebook and Google+ accounts, do both and give us your two votes. Woohoo!

For your convenience, you can just click “like” below :)