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Comment by gkoberger | Hacker News Reader

Twilio is one of the best startups I've seen or used- they have a brilliantly simple and useful product. You can do a ton with it, it's cheap, and it's all done using dead simple XML.

Look through the rest of their blog- there's a ton of great uses for their service.

(And yes, I know I sound like head of their marketing department- but their product really is that great.)

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As head of their marketing department, thanks for all the positive comments. I was pleasantly surprised to find this on Hacker News tonight, I hope it helps some folks set up inexpensive international calling

Danielle @ Twilio

Some quick math suggests that even billing my time to set this up, it will be cheaper than the piece of freaking garbage service I use to give my family a Chicago number to call that dials Japan for them. I pay them $25 a month (minimum) and the call quality is terrrrrrrrrrrrrible.

Thanks, you'll improve the lives of my family.

Some other features I think would be good to add: * a pin code, so that no just anyone who calls into the number can use it * a way to add new people to the calling list from the IVR menu * a way to check rates and spending from the IVR menu * a way to gift other people with custom calling cards (a viral feature) * a web based dashboard of minutes/spend

and how do make a bullet list on HN?

and how do make a bullet list on HN?

Easiest way is to indent each line (2+ spaces) and make your own bullet. eg:

  - one
  - two
  - three

More info on formatting here: http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc .

thank you, will definitely use next time

All would be quite straight forward--their XML schema is simple and there are helper libs in a variety of languages.

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