There are plenty of companies out there offering texting to your landline without affecting voice service (ie zipwhip, heywire), but does anybody know what they're using? Twilio almost offers this, but it's currently in beta and only for toll free numbers. TextUs.biz has an explanation of how they do it in their faq, which explains that they have some sort of agreement with their SMS gateway provider that lets them get texts to a particular number routed to them, but afer a lot of googling I still can't find any resources on how to make it work.
(Disclaimer: I'm the VP of Engineering # HeyWire) The TextUs FAQ is spot on. SMS routing and voice routing are completely separate. OTT text carriers like us have agreements with SMS aggregators and have to abide by industry rules and guidelines. The agreements and rules may vary depending on whether you're doing short code, non-toll-free long code, and toll-free long code. International and MMS are also other dimensions as well.
In general, our application stacks connect to SMS gateways, which connect to SMSCs at our aggregator partners. Beyond that, the details of how everything works isn't technically complicated. Some the real special sauce comes in the details of all the agreements and partnerships required to get things up and running. Unfortunately, those types of details fall under the umbrella of "trade secrets". Partly due to providers not wanting to reveal too much to competitors and partly due to the agreements themselves, which prohibit disclosure of details.
Are you asking because you're trying to build something or just to try to find out some general information?
EDIT: And I just realized I wasn't logged into my account when I posted this. Oh well.
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I'm having a problem with payment procedure in heroku account(billing section).
I got verified first time successfully and in one month all charges of my card are giving an error: "Unable to verify your card. Please try later or contact your financial institution for help'".
I tried with 10 credit cards, all of which are from Mexico (and I triple checked all the info and I’m sure it’s correct). I also talked to my bank and there is no attempt of charging cards.
Heroku support can't help me out. This is their answer to my ticket "I truly wish I could be of more assistance, but unfortunately I do not have access to anything that would be able to make a difference here. I apologize for the poor experience."
Maybe someone had the same problem?
Thank you.
The answer is ... that noone can help me in Heroku.
Support of Heroku answered: "Unfortunately, the many layers of security make it impossible for us to further investigate. I find it frustrating myself, since my job is to try and help customers and in cases like this I'm told there's nothing I can do. I'm truly sorry for the poor experience here. The only choices are pretty much to use only Free Dynos and no add-ons except the free version of Heroku Postgres (and no custom domains), or to move to a different platform. I apologize that these are really the only choices".
So I'm moving to other platform. Lol
If that many cards are not working, one of the possibilities is that your user footprint (things that can compare your online activity to the other user profiles, like location, e-mail, credit card) could be triggering fraud prevention tools, which can happen if patterns are identified that are similar to ones used by spam or fraudulent accounts. It doesn't necessarily mean that your account is identified as fraudulent or spam, but it does mean that the virtual footprint is considered too risky to approve.
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Magento is a great product but out-of-the-box it really lacks recurring billing support. I've come to a crossroads with my current project and need some direction.
We have exhausted every Google search and module that is under the sun for Magento to support recurring billing the way we need it to. So far, all we have come across is one module that costs $300 by aHeadWorks in the UK. We've tried the module and are extremely disappointed so far, mainly just due to total lack of support and documentation; Nobody seems to have the knowledge to answer our questions, or even attempt to.
Our goals are simple and we cannot figure out why there aren't more solutions out there to do this, so the question becomes, what is everyone else doing?
All we need to do is the following:
Provide subscriptions for items such as web hosting, text message marketing, etc.
Tie into our merchant account and authorize.net
Keep the customer on our site at all times
Skrill Moneybookers & their module isn't compatible with what we need to do (at least in the US). PayPal sucks and wants to hold our money back and also wants to redirect customers to their site to setup a billing agreement. iTransact services are fantastic but there is one module that is 2 years+ old and has no support.
The answer is recurring billing is quite a taboo in the e-commerce industry. This is mostly because the big boys, i.e. Mastercard and Visa have very strict rules governing recurring billing transactions.
Recurring billing means storing a customer's credit/debit card data, long number, expiry, and cvv2, for future processing. However, this opens up a huge can of worms in terms of security. This is why Visa/Mastercard impose rules on merchants in becoming PCIDSS compliant. Practically this means your server/website have to be certified to be secure, using a service like McAfee PCIDSS, which basically scans your server/website remotely and attempts to break it. It looks for open ports, badly configured firewall (or lack of), xss scripting flaws, mysql injection breaches, operating system security breaches, and many more. One of the most important elements with PCIDSS is having all card data encrypted.
It is a laborious process, since once you are given a report, you are also expected to repair all flagged critical issues and pass the scan. There are other steps to complete, but I shan't enumerate them all here. See the pci dss website for reference. You are also expected to keep the certification up-to-date on a quarterly basis.
Basically what this means is that Visa/Mastercard don't particularly like the smaller merchants to have this feature, as they can be of major risk to clients. If their system is breached, hackers could use the card data for criminal enterprises.
This in turn means Visa/Mastercard favor the big players in the industry to handle recurring billing, such as PayPal, Worldpay, authorize.net, etc. One port of call, one entity to fine and recover losses if there's a problem.
And now we return to Magento. Whilst it is relatively easy to create a normal payment method in Magento, since most PSPs work in the same manner [mostly], recurring billing is handled differently from provider to provider. Furthermore, some are more restrictive than others.
I can't and won't recommend PayPal as I have had extremely bad experiences with them, I can definitely recommend Worldpay + Futurepay + Invisible XML method. You would need to hire a Magento developer to write a custom module for you, but it's doable. I am currently writing a module for a client in Norway using a norwegian payment method and recurring billing.
If you still need help, get in touch, I can write a module for your store.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Michael.
Paradox Labs has an Authorize.NET CIM extension that supports Magento Recurring Profiles and Braintree recently released an extension that also supports them. I have made lots of improvements to Magento's recurring profiles. You can definitely tell they are in beta form, but that should stop you from getting your hands dirty and finishing things that the Magento team hasn't got to yet.
Here are a few things I improved:
https://github.com/tegansnyder/Magento-Recurring-Beta-Grid-Improvements
https://github.com/tegansnyder/Magento-Programmatically-Create-Recurring-Profiles-Authorize.net-CIM
https://gist.github.com/tegansnyder
I'm had to make modifications to the cart controller to allow discount codes to display on the frontend when used on nominal items. By default they wouldn't display that they were applied.
I also had to make some modifications to the daily billing job that runs to remove the discounts the second time the profile is billed. Magento was applying them each time it reached the end of cycle.
Lots of little things here and there, but it's getting there.
You should look at the service OrderGroove.com. They specialize in recurring orders in e-commerce systems like Magento.
There are different strategies to implement recurring billing / product subscriptions with Magento:
Magento Recurring Profiles
Magento's built in recurring profiles feature can be used with compatible Magento payment extensions and gateways. These include PayPal, Authorize.Net CIM (Customer Information Manager). A payment extension which supports the recurring profiles feature is required for this approach, for example Paradox Labs CIM Extension.
Customize Magento to Support Recurring Billing
This can be done with a third party extension, like the (AheadWorks SARP extension) or developed from scratch.
Integrate External Subscription Management Software
Platforms which specialize in eCommerce product subscriptions include:
Subscribe Pro
Order Groove
Some subscription management software for digital goods includes:
Recurly
Zuora
Does any US wireless carrier offer individuals or companies with a direct connection to the SMSC?
The number is 747-772-3101 (repalce 7's with 6's)
This number is registered to t-mobile, also verified by t-mobile to be a valid subscriber sending 160,000+ text messages monthly and that all they have is an unlimited text messaging plan on top of the cheapest voice plan. This company of the number verified to me that they don't use gsm modems as they are too slow.
So I know it's possible but who would I contact, Sales or anyone else reachable through a 1-800 is ignorant to these services and developer.t-mobile is worthless and doesn't reply to emails.
Any info??
Most likely they are connected to an Aggregator (Sybase 365, Mblox, Netsize, Verisign, etc. Smaller guys like multimode and Clickatell are more open to this) that is connected to T-Mobile. As they have chosen to not use a shortcode they simply buy a regular T-Mobile SIM/MSISDN and use the full longcode as the origination address of the messages.
A lot of companies use aggregators to enable Oracle Applications Server to send SMS messages.
does anybody have more info on this????
i did a little investigation and here is what i have determined. the company that the long code is tied to is broadtexter.com. they offer a free service to people who want to follow bands/comedians/acts/ etc. you basically join their fan club.
when i text help to the phone number it immediately autoresponds from that same number. that means they are either using an agg with a dedicated vmn (totally possible) of they are using a mobile modem with a sim (totally possible as well, and probably cheaper), but basically all they are doing from this phone number is pushing traffic to their website.
once you go to their website and sign up to a fan club; ALL FUTURE COMMUNICATION is mo/mt thru the SMTP gateway. dead giveaway is that they ask for your carrier when you sign up. second dead givaway is the caller id is xxxxxxx#broadtexter.com every time.
so the simple answer is that they are only using the vmn (long code) to drive people to their website to sign up...then all future communication is over SMTP. so the 160K+ messages are occuring thru the SMTP gateway. since they appear to be non-commercial (no ads, no spamming, etc.) and they are somewhat of a peer to peer setup, they probably fly under the radar (or are accepted by) the carriers.
if anyone can offer more insight to this, i would love to read it!
I've got more info, and its kinda blowing my mind. I'm interested because I've got a social networking website and I'd like to set up an interactive SMS service without a shortcode. So I went to one of the profile pages on broadtexter.com and used their flash widget to join that bands club. I entered my mobile number and for provider I choose AT&T - option 1 (there were 3 options listed). Almost immediately I got a SMS asking me to reply with a Y to confirm. Here's the crazy thing: The number it was from was 1 (410) 000-001. At first I thought it was a regular cell number, then I realized it's missing a digit. Unless the area code is actually 141 and my iPhone is just formatting it weird. Except 141 isn't an area code?
Next, I replied with a Y and I got another text that asked me to reply with a photo for my profile (something that would be prefect for my site). This time the text from from 1 (410) 000-002.
So I sent back an MMS with a pic from my iPhone gallery, and I didn't get a reply yet. It's been about 15 minutes. It's kinda weird because to sign into their site, I need a username, which they never gave me. I haven't given them my email yet either. Anyway, I don't really care about that. I just wanna know what's going on with those numbers? How are they doing this?!
Do all cell companies have open APIs that allow you to send SMS messages like Twitter does?
Do you have to pay to do this?
Many (most?) mobile companies have email gateways allowing you to send an SMS. For AT&T I believe it's phonenumber#text.att.net, but each provider will have a different address.
This wikipedia article summaries it pretty well. Some cell companies have easy formats. For example, Verizon uses number#vtext.com.
It depends what country you're in.
In the UK to pay to send - receiving is free.
Take a look at messagepub. They provide an easy API so that you can send SMS messages from your application.
If you want a reliable solution then yes you will have to pay for it, there are some limited free versions.
We used Clickatell with an earlier project http://www.clickatell.com/developers.php
It gets a bit more complicated. E-mail gateways may work for some carriers, but not others. As noted, it's based on your cell carrier, what we can the aggregator, and possibly a third-party "intercarrier". However, it also depends on volume. If you're just sending the occasional SMS via e-mail, it certainly can work, but, it's occasional in use, and you don't get the confirmations that your phone normally sees. For volume transfers of messages, you typically need to talk to your carrier about access to their "SMSC gateway". The SMSC gateway speaks an internet protocol (SMPP) to transfer messages from your app, into the carrier clouds. It it designed for volume, and you get response codes for your messages.
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I was brainstorming interesting usages of Twitter and came up with the following:
An application can use it as a call home mechanism
An application that has an invalid license could broadcast its location
A software company could use it as a remote shell like interface and issue commands to shutdown, restart and to publish patches
An application can use it for heartbeat purposes
Has anyone else came up with other non-standard usages of Twitter?
I fail to see the advantage of using a proprietary, third-party chat site in place of an appropriate networking protocol.
Matthew nailed the point that all these "applications" just represent a communications protocol between twitterer and remote host, and there are lots of mature protocols you could use instead right out of the box, rather than rolling your own on twitter.
But depending on your situation, of course there could be scenarios in which twitter is the easy way. I have written similar hacks that use e-mail as transport mechanism for automated tasks, simply because corporate red tape doesn't permit us other more conventional means. They can reboot machines, restart processes, post public messages, etc.
One of it is already available for Windows - "TweetMyPC v2.0 lets you shutdown/restart/LogOff and lots more in your windows PC.remotely."
I'm not sure this counts as a very practical use (a bit of fun mainly), but it certainly attracted my interest:
Twitter image encoding challenge
The idea of this challenge is to try to encode a picture into a 140 (Unicode) character Tweet. It's quite astounding how much information some of the algorithms posted there can fit into a message.
Scott Hanselman used Twitter to create an app for ordering a sandwich.
Check out his post
I think the main advantage of using twitter in instances like this is its SMS capabilities (and the fact they're free - whereas you can buy services that charge a monthly fee to allow you to receive SMS messages to a HTTP page or something like that).
I'd considered using it to make a little budget app for myself where I could SMS twitter things I'd bought to a private twitter account, similar for tracking petrol usage I was planning on smsing the odometer reading,cost etc in a certain format and capturing it at home to run statistics and stuff on it. There are limitations to it though - like you can only hook up an SMS number to 1 twitter account...
It's good to think outside the box, but don't be too focused on using just twitter because it's cool.
If you were comfortable setting up sensors and such, you could get a microcontroller, hook it up to a twitter feed, and then give it remote commands.
For instance, remote controlled house lights. You could then just tweet "Home lights on GXSDFXV" (The garbage at the end is to prevent real tweets from turning on and off your lights).
I wouldn't use Twitter in particular for transferring any private information (think about security if someone hacks the account and can shutdown your corporate servers or transfer fake licenses). For that I would setup a private server which implements the open microblogging protocol (like identi.ca) as long as - like others already said - there is another more suitable protocol.
For publishing PUBLIC information (heartbeat messages can be considered that, too) I like the idea pretty much. We recently had a very successfull (but unfortunately effectless) E-Petition in Germany where a Twitter account posted the number of signatures every couple of minutes.
Carsonified are using this to allow people to discover other people sitting in the same room at their conferences.
They label each chair with a tag and then you tweet that tag to an account they have and it registers you on a floorplan on the venue. Users are coloured in on the plan by their interests.
Clever but a bit overcomplicated for my tastes...
http://hello.carsonified.com/Home/Faq