It was only when I spoke to the guys from x-Dengue that I understood Singapore has an ongoing dengue fever.

In 2012, the number of dengue cases was 4,632.

But in the first 5 months of 2013, there were already 7,000 dengue cases. That is around 300% increase!

It is an ongoing dengue fever, and we all have a part to play to protect ourselves, and our loved ones.

Firstly, you should know the dengue clusters. NEA has a map for that, but I prefer the one from x-Dengue that uses Google Map.

You can also download x-Dengue iPhone app, and register your family members so that they will be alerted via SMS when they are in a dengue cluster.

Fight dengue. Stay heathy.

Coming June 1, AngelHack will debut in Singapore!

AngelHack is different from your average hackathon. They have this outstanding rule:

All code must be FRESH. Prior to the hackathon you can create your design, wireframes, logo, and user flows.

You can prepare anything, but not the code.

Having been to numerous hackathons, it irks me to see teams participating with completed apps. Merely adding another awesome feature is NOT the same as hacking a new app!

angelhack

If you are interested, sign up here for the Singapore event.

You will also be glad to know that Hoiio API is providing $30 credits to each AngelHack team (:

During the 24-hours hackathon organized by the NUS Hackers, a convenient SMS broadcast script was born, in cool developer’s fashion.

The NUS Hackers used the script to send SMS to the hackathon participants, announcing important events such as lunch/dinner/pizzas..

This is how you can use too:

1. git clone https://github.com/rahulg/textbcast
2. Create a file (eg. phones.txt) with the phone numbers, separating each by a breakline
3. Edit config file and enter your Hoiio App ID and Access Token, and also a sender name (if you don’t have SMS Rebranding enabled, enter your mobile number)
4. Run ./bcast.sh phones.txt 
5. Enter your desired SMS message
6. Press Ctrl-D
7. Press y

If all’s good, you will see success_ok status!

We have added local phone numbers support for 6 more countries:

• Denmark
• Finland
• Israel
• Norway
• Spain
• Sweden

If you follow our blog closely, you should know the above “commit” can be found on Github.

Santa Call, Santa Claus, Santa all the way~

This Christmas, be different. Send your Christmas greetings via Santa Call.

Santa Call is a Chrome extension that let users send Christmas MP3 and play the music over a phone call.

With a few clicks on your Chrome, you can choose from the pre-selected Christmas MP3, or your own.

Enter your friend’s phone number, hit the Send button, and Santa Call will personally make the phone call to your friend, and play the MP3 :) Install now!

Happy magical X’mas!

Today, we are taking a bold step towards pricing.

Hoiio API Pricing is now pushed onto Github, with version control, and fully transparent! Call it “open source”, if you like!

By going to our Github repos, you can

• browse the comma delimited CSV files,
• download all the pricing in all the 6 currencies we support,
• watch the repos and get notified when we make any changes,
• check out the changes (such as lowering of costs!)
• comment on our commits,
• and even fork, change, and push, if you felt the prices are incorrect!

Cheers to Github! It’s no longer just a tool for social coding.

As an example, let’s take a look at the last commit we did when we added support for UK phone numbers.

There were 12 changed files. The comment in the commit will tell you why we make the changes.

In Numbers-AUD.csv, it clearly shows an added line “GB, United Kingdom, 44, 2.1“.

(The phone number prefix for UK is 44, and the cost is $2.10 AUD)

You can also browse the tags, which we use as the date when that pricing is effective.

We have added local phone numbers for United Kingdom.

Developers can now purchase UK phone numbers at $2 (USD) per month.

The UK numbers are capable of receiving phone calls via our IVR APIs, so start making use of them if you have a local service in UK!

Photo Credits: Eurovision

Following our last PHP sample code, this time we are publishing a sample code using Java on Google App Engine.

Company Directory is a telephony application that let callers connect to company phones by keying an extension. You can find the full source code on github: https://github.com/Hoiio/company-directory

A screenshot of how you can configure your company directory after setting up:

We are using the awesome + free + reliable Google App Engine (Java) as the web server. Also Twitter Bootstrap. And of course Hoiio API.

Go ahead and fork the repository, and perhaps add new features such as Voicemail.

But if all seems too troublesome, how about trying Hoiio Main Line app for $5?

Our friends at VisionMobile are running their Developer Economics 2013 survey.

The survey focuses on the best practices for the tools, services and APIs that developers use to build, market and monetize their apps.

It takes just ten minutes and there are awesome prizes to be won! Fill out the survey and stand a chance to win an iPhone 5, Galaxy S3, Nokia Lumia 920 & BB 10 Dev Alpha.

Take the survey here: http://www.visionmobile.com/DE13Tools

PS: When taking the survey, remember to select Hoiio as a Voice Service, and let us know what you love/hate us for!

We have created an example app with PHP: https://github.com/Hoiio/hoiio-auto-attendant

With Auto Attendant, you could dictate how your Hoiio number works when it is being called.

For example, with the following configuration,

$directory = array(
    '1'=>array('+6560001111',   "for sales enquiry"),
    '2'=>array('+6560002222',   "for technical support"),
    '3'=>array('+6560003333',   "to speak to our customer care officer"),
    '0'=>array('VOICEMAIL',     "to leave a voicemail message"),
);

The voice menu will be read over the phone call, and when the caller press “1″, it will transfer the call to the sales enquiry department. Or press “0″, it will record a voicemail message.

This example is fully open source, and we will be very happy if you fork it, and extended to suit your voice app. Let us know if you did something awesome!

Photo Credits: Jim Elyot’s Blog