I have been talking with the guys at 37signals and we have decided to open up the Lypp + Highrise Mashup contest to include all of the 37signals APIs. This means that developers can integrate Lypp with Campfire, Basecamp, Backpack, Writeboards et al!

We think this presents a unique opportunity to create some very exciting telephony features for the 37signals group of applications. Some examples might include:

* Dynamic calling via Campfire for one-to-one or one-to-many calls. Imagine chatting with your colleagues and at the click of a button have a Toll Free number and PIN presented where everyone could call in and be in a conference call. Going 1 step further we could present a link that everyone could click on where everyone who clicked on that link is presented with a dialog that requests their email and telephone. They are called by the system and all are soon in a one-to-one or a conference call.

* Using the Backpack + Lypp API could really open up a new channel for communication within Backpack. Imagine scheduling a weekly call where the entire team is called wherever they are with the call being recorded and added to the assets/files when the call is done.

* Basecamp is another huge opportunity for collaboration. Projects calls could be managed with greater efficiency and again the Campfire ad hoc calling concept could play a roll here as well.

* Writeboards would have hot linked phone numbers that could be clicked and called.

* Emails could have hot links that could invite users into a call or allow them to call the phone number in the signature with one click.

These are just a few examples as to how to use the various 37signals APIs with the Lypp API to create a new and exciting mashup!

The contest will be extended to May 25 so get your applications in before that!

Best app:

• $3000 Apple gift certificate
• 20,000 minutes of call time from Lypp (approx value: $1800)
• 12 months subscription for a Highrise MAX account (approx value: $1800)

Runner-up:

• $1500 Apple gift certificate
• 10,000 minutes of call time from Lypp (approx value: $900)
• 6 months subscription for a Highrise MAX account (approx value: $900)

2nd Runner-up:

• $500 Apple gift certificate
• 5,000 minutes of call time from Lypp (approx value: $450)
• 3 month subscription for a Highrise MAX account (approx value: $450

Here’s how to enter:

1. Fill out the Lypp partner sign-up form.
2. You will receive your Lypp API credentials soon thereafter.
3. Authentication for the various 37signals APIs requires that you have an existing user account.
4. Start Mashing!

Here’s how to win:

1. Make it useful.
2. Make it functional.
3. Make it simple.

How to have a reliable Event-based Conference Call, without paying through the nose.

Many large companies (public companies especially) have quarterly updates which prompts earnings conference calls with a large number of call attendees. This can be tough to manage which is why the competition are charging an arm and a leg for managing these calls.

At Lypp we operate a little differently. Yes, we can provide assistance on large conference calls but it’s more for comfort than anything else. Any user at Lypp can have a large forum-based call (hundreds of callers) without any assistance from us

How to use Lypp Conferencing for a large conference call event.

1. Login and go to them Phone Book. Upload your attendees information to your Lypp Phone Book via vCard or CSV. If you don’t have the attendee info, don’t panic

2. Create your Lypp call. Turn on Record (assuming you want to record the call) & Lecture Mode.

3. Add the call attendees you have uploaded to your phone book to the call by either; clicking on on their name or using search suggest within the phone book widget on the Create Call page.

4. Forgot to add an attendee to your phone book before-hand and want to add them now? No problem, use the Fast Add widget to add the attendee to the call and your phone book at the same time.

5. Finish but clicking Create Call at bottom of page. Attendees whom you have entered email addresses for will get the call notification shortly thereafter.
Call Preparation

A few days before the call make sure you make the time to go through a few trial runs and familiarize yourself with the system so there are no surprises.

A few minutes before the call login to Lypp.com. You will see scheduled call and a Moderator Console button, click on it.

Once in the Moderator Console we can watch as attendees are called in by Lypp and observe those who are dialing into the call. If a caller does not make it into the call we will see that happen and with the click of a button we can have the system call the person back or we can send them an email with the dial-in information

Managing the Call In-progress

Since we are using Lecture Mode all attendees will be brought into the call muted. They will not be able to talk until the moderator un-mutes them.

When you have identified the main speaker (eg. CEO, CFO etc.) unmute them so that they can address the audience. Allow them to speak and when the next speaker is ready mute the first speaker and un-mute the next speaker.

Q & A

When you are ready for Q&A you will want to announce the audience that if they have a question they are asked to press 6# on their phone dial pad. When the audience member does this a “Hand up” icon will appear on the moderator console beside the attendee’s call information.

As the moderator you can drop the attendee who raised their hand into a Private Room. You can then drop either yourself or another member (call assistant ) into that private room as well. You or your assistant will have a private conversation with that attendee, obtain their question, name etc. When you are ready you can bring both parties back into the main conference. The attendee that was muted before entering the private Room will re-emerge in the main conference muted once again.

Here is a video that provides a general overview on how to set up a Lypp call. Much of this functionality is show here.

1.) You have signed up and received your developer account information for our partner/developer environment.

2.) You have given our API documentation a good read.

3.) Your still not sure where to start?

The following example is about the steps to make your first call using the API so I will use curl to keep things language agnostic.

Confirm that your account information works and that your information is correctly entered.


curl \
-u username:password \
https://lypp.com/users/{user_id}.xml


Create your conference.

curl \
  -u username:password \
  -H 'Accept: application/xml' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/xml' \
  -d '

        Development Team Meeting
        2008-08-24T20:19:34Z
      ' \
  -X POST \
  https://lypp.com/users/{user_id}/conferences

On that last curl call your conference will have been created and and you should now have the id of the conference ({conference_id} to reference when adding attendees. Lets take a look at the return for that call before we start adding our attendees.

  {conference_id}
  2008-04-23T22:18:56Z
  2008-04-23T22:18:57Z
  1
  pending
  2008-08-24T14:19:34-06:00

  false
  Development Team Meeting
  false
  false
  false

  0000000
  000000000

All the boolean values you see returned there are also optional arguments that can be passed in while creating the conference or changed after conference creation, including while a call in in-progress. Now all we need to do is add our other attendees to the call.


curl \
-u username:password \
-H ‘Accept: application/xml’ \
-H ‘Content-Type: application/xml’ \
-d ‘

Mom
555-555-5555
‘ \
-X POST \
https://lypp.com/users/{user_id}/conferences/{conference_id}/attendees

Mom likes to check in my Development meetings

The mashup doors are officially open. Come get some!

We are less than one day away from opening the doors to the 37signals VoIP Mashup with Lypp. Tomorrow at noon (Pacific) the contest starts.

Developers, build a mashup application or mashup your existing application using both the Highrise API and the Lypp API and win stuff. This is a great way to show off your Ruby-fu and win some great prizes.

Best app:

• $3000 Apple gift certificate
• 20,000 minutes of call time from Lypp (approx value: $1800)
• 12 months subscription for a Highrise MAX account (approx value: $1800)

Runner-up:

• $1500 Apple gift certificate
• 10,000 minutes of call time from Lypp (approx value: $900)
• 6 months subscription for a Highrise MAX account (approx value: $900)

2nd Runner-up:

• $500 Apple gift certificate
• 5,000 minutes of call time from Lypp (approx value: $450)
• 3 month subscription for a Highrise MAX account (approx value: $450

Here’s how to enter:

1. Fill out the Lypp partner sign-up form.
2. You will receive your Lypp API credentials soon thereafter.
3. Authentication for the Highrise API requires that you have an existing Highrise user account.
4. Start Mashing!

Here’s how to win:

1. Make it useful.
2. Make it functional.
3. Make it simple.

Submissions will be accepted up until May 10th. Winners will be posted here 3rd week in May. We will also try to interview the winners and post the recording here as well.

For assistance with the Lypp API please post your comments below. If you have any comments/problems/issues with the Highrise API you can post them on the 37signals API Forum.

Good Luck to all!

by erik | http://blog.lypp.com

I have created my fair share of podcasts and found that recording phone conversations for interviews was a must. I also found that recording conference calls was a brutal exercise in futility and frustrating to say the least.

Even Jason Calacanis of Mahalo asked the question.

Yes, there are plenty of conference call companies out there who provide recording now but it seems bizarre how many of them are still delivering actual CDs and Tapes!? Most of them do not even make the recordings available online after the call, you have to ask for it and it costs extra.

And yes, there are free conference call providers out there that allow you to use their service free of charge who do provide recordings, but you have to pay for the long distance toll charges.

With Lypp it’s as simple as a checkbox when you create your conference call online or if you are using the system in an ad-hoc reservationless fashion you can just enter “6#” on your phone to start or stop recording. Within a few minutes your call recording(s) will be waiting for you at Lypp.com.

I know I am tooting my own horn a bit here but the system works like a charm.

Next week, we are going to be interviewing a few of the Lypp Conferencing customers that use the Lypp recording feature and sharing those podcasts with our readers via my Lypp Recordings RSS feed.

+

We have had some great early  feedback on this mashup which has motivated us to make a few updates to the API prior to opening the mashup doors . We are improving upon a few things, including…

- Better user creation and management
- Updating conferences with single REST call with multiple variables, instead of multiple REST calls

Due to these and other updates we are pushing back the entry date for the 37 Signals Highrise and Gaboogie Lypp Mashup to April 15th. We will be posting another announcement here on that day inviting everyone who wants a piece of the action to sign up.

In the meantime, go check out the APIs: Highrise, Lypp
The original post.

Lypp - Mobile Unlimited

Unlimited Mobile Calling anywhere in North America for $59.95¹ per month from your Blackberry or Smart Phone!

Lypp Mobile is the simplest way to manage your long distance charges from your BlackBerry, Windows Mobile device or any phone that supports Instant Messaging (IM). Schedule your weekly calls, manage your phonebook and forget about it - we do all the dialing for you. Lypp Mobile also supports 3-way calling!

Here’s how it works:

To create a call from your mobile device using Lypp, you will need Instant Messaging software and an Instant Messaging account with Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger or AIM. Once you sign up with Lypp, we will supply you with your Lypp Buddy address to add to your IM contact list. The Lypp Buddy in essence is your mobile connection to our network and acts as your very own virtual operator.

Thats it, you are ready to start making calls. Don’t forget to take advantage of the Lypp Phonebook to store all your contacts. Just log in to My Lypp using the form at the top of every page on this site.

To create a call, simply send call commands to the Lypp Buddy. For example, if you want to call your friend Erik who is a contact in your Lypp phonebook, send the following IM message to the Lypp Buddy: call 6046297990 or call erik

It’s as easy as sending a text message.

As of today, Lypp is now offering a full suite of Web Conferencing and Desktop Sharing services for Canadian Businesses.

When combined with Lypp Teleconferencing, Lypp Web Conferencing becomes a very powerful and useful service for collaborating on documents, desktop sharing and supporting customers remotely in real-time from your own desktop.

This new web-based service from Lypp does not require any software installation and works with all Windows and Mac computers.

Now all Lypp Conferencing customers (existing and new) have access to Lypp Web Conferencing and our “only pay for what you use” model makes Lypp Conferencing one of the most cost effective conferencing services out there.

If your company is already using WebEx, Lypp Web Conferencing will look very familiar. Lypp Web Conferencing is powered by WebEx. Lypp offers the same services at nearly 30% less than WebEx.

Try it for yourself. Lypp Web Conferencing is available as part of Lypp Conferencing, for more info go to: Lypp.com/WebConferencing.

I am happy to say that just a month after opening the doors, momentum is building and Lypp Conferencing is experiencing some great new user growth. Clients are signing up for service daily, more importantly they are using the service daily.  It’s also great to see that the redundant network architecture is doing it’s job in delivering the call quality and reliability clients are looking for in a conference call service.

One thing that I have noticed is the users are barely scratching the surface of the full capabilities of the service. This isn’t much of a surprise though, our initial research on the conferencing sector showed us that this would likely be the case. It takes time for users to step outside of their comfort zone.

The bulk of the clients that have signed up are using the Reservationless Conferencing component of the Lypp service, which again is to be expected given their experience with other conference call services and CSPs (Conference Service Providers). With Lypp, every new user gets a Toll Free Number, Attendee and Moderator PINS they can share with anyone at anytime. 24/7 access to their own conference bridge.

The second most popular component is conference call recording. Yes, many other providers are making this a standard feature as well. The feedback we are now receiving suggests that the painless way in which a Lypp host/moderator can enable call recording and then access that same recording, almost instantly without any extra charge, seems to be a big hit with our clients.

IMHO, Lypp Conferencing does a great job of delivering a 24/7 reservationless conference bridge and call recording but I think our clients are really missing out on the vast potential of time savings the service can offer.

For instance, the dial-out and scheduling capability of Lypp would allow clients to set up their calls and quite literally forget about them. The Lypp service will first notify and then call all of the participants, even the moderator, at the time of the call. Lypp will even penetrate through corporate phone systems by allowing hosts to add attendees with extensions numbers. Setting up a months worth of calling is a no-brainer.

Soon I will be posting a weekly recorded conference call (LyppCast) with customers and partners so you can hear some of their experiences in using the Lypp service. My Lypp RSS feed will also be published so those who wish to subscribe to all of my recorded conference calls can do so using their favorite RSS reader. <- another standard feature of Lypp

Well, that’s another week gone.
From all of us here at Lypp, have a great weekend!

Building a click-to-call or click-to-talk “call button” application is not hard. In fact, it’s so easy it would likely take you less than a day to build it using the Lypp API but I am saying 7 days, I too can be a lazy-ass.

If you want to go head-to-head with the likes of Google, Jajah, Jaxtr, Jangl, Skype, eStara or anyone else in this game you can literally do it overnight using the Lypp API.

Below is a description of these elements:

scheduled-to-start-at
The time the conference should start at. Can be in many different forms, below are some examples:
Relative Times

* now
* thursday
* november
* friday 13:00
* mon 2:35
* 4pm
* 6 in the morning
* friday 1pm
* sat 7 in the evening
* today
* tomorrow
* this tuesday
* next month
* this morning
* this second
* tomorrow at 6:45pm

If you saw the reference to “conferences” above you will likely have guessed that our API can handle not just click-to -call for a one-to-one callback scenario but could easily serve as a click-to-conference call button. This could be used for weekly team meetings where the same people are in the call all the time but the time for the meetings vary.

Get coding already!