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Best Practices for Integrating Application Development

2012-02-03T19:46:00.000-08:00

Introduction

With the emergence of new technologies for hosting infrastructure as well as platform and software across locations (which includes on-premise, managed, and cloud based data centers), enterprise application integration remains a very demanding and complicated challenge. Unfortunately, the challenges of the changing needs of businesses are not being met by traditional application integration approaches. This is causing the agility and flexibility of organizations to be threatened. However, if application integration is done the right way, with the correct choice of technology, as well as with the best choices of practice can deliver tremendous value-both strategic and technical. With this in mind, it is clear that the methods which are used to pursue application integration can make the difference between success, and failure.

Goals

One of the key steps towards successful application integration is to define the goals of that integration. Here are a few things which stakeholders need to know:

Business drivers for integrating applications.
Information under management.
Existing applications and services under management.
Core business processes and their dependencies.
Integration scenarios...these would include Application to Application (A2A), Business to Business (B2B), and Cloud-based applications. (Software-as-a-Service or SaaS)

Once they have knowledge of their goals, stakeholders should then define what their high level objectives are. They will also need to figure out the requirements which address the actual near-term, midterm, and long-term integration needs of an organization. The road map of which features and functions should also be deployed.

Integration Approach

After your goals have been set, the next most important step is to choose the correct integration technology. Instead of choosing multiple ad hoc point to point solutions, pick and Integration Platform. There are many things which these solutions will do.

Give you a one stop solution for all of your integration needs.
Provide fast and simple deployment options.
Need very limited IT support.
Offer improved adaptability and agility.
Support functional re-usability.
Have an independent Change Management system.
Deliver Interoperability, or loosely coupled framework.
Help to orchestrate instead of just integrating.
Meet the needs for enterprise class security.
Support multiple versions of the same tool or application.
Easily accommodate the replacement of any application or addition of new applications to the ecosystem of your own application in a plug and play mode at any time in the future.

You will need to select an Integration Technology which is based on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). It will also need to be built around Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) with a hub-like architecture which connects applications through Adapters or Connectors. Your Integration Technology should be supported with Open APIs for Adapters. With these, organizations can build the adapter for their homegrown tools, or contract them out to third parties.

You will want an Integration Technology which is extensible and configurable through drag and drop visual interface without coding. It should be easily maintainable, and capable of providing or governance through business rules and workflows. You will also want your Integration Technology to be Cloud compatible. This is for Cloud to Cloud, Cloud to On premise and On premise to On Premise. It is also vital that it is mobile ready.

Technical Considerations

Before you begin your implementation, stakeholders of the Integration project should consider and analyze a few specific technical requirements. Here is a list of these vital subjects:

Semantic and Metadata Management.
Validation of data for correct structure and format.
Standard and Advanced Transformations.
Information Consumption, Processing and Delivery.
Intelligent Routing.
Connectivity and Adapter Management.
Governance across all applications.

Functional Requirements

There are also functional requirements which project stakeholders need to identify. You need to know which applications or tools should be integrated, and which information or data has to be synchronized across tools. Stakeholders should also identify mapping of meta-data between applications or tools. You should avoid meaningless data replication if it does not address any needs which are specific to your business. The relationships between different information entities should be synchronized, and there are specific rules to follow.

One should always identify which tools and items need bi-directional data integration and which ones will need one way integration. Identify the conditions for which data will need to flow from one tool to another, and identify your data latency requirements. For some tools, it may be sufficient to synchronize the data every day, and for other tools, you may need to synchronize every sixty seconds.

Non-functional Requirements

There are non-functional requirements which need to be considered also. These requirements include the following:

1. Performance

For performance requirements, you will need to determine the data volume that would be transported on a regular basis, and define performance metrics upfront. You should also determine the permitted latency limits, and also determine the growth of data over the years. It is important to plan hardware configuration to support probable data volume up to at least two years.

2. Scalability

You will need to understand the scalability options, and plan for load balanced servers based on your data flow load.

3. Security

It is important that shareholders understand and document security requirements as they ensure compliance with organizational data security policies, as well as encrypted storage and transport of security credentials.

4. Reliability

It is vital to understand and document reliability measures needed, and check whether the integration framework will provide the required reliability measures.

5. Availability – Failover

Shareholders must understand the availability and failover options, and plan for configuring these options based on your availability needs.

6. Migration

You will need to define your data migration needs, as well as check with the vendor on how to implement data migration.

7. Monitoring

Shareholders need to watch for failures and faults at the services/ adapters level, as well as failures and errors at the data synchronization level. You should always monitor Notifications/Reporting for failures/ errors and watch the Integration Health Dashboard.

Project or Template Management

Literally hundreds of projects are dealt with by organizations. It is vital for the success an Integration Platform deployment that the configuration setup, which is done for integrating several applications across projects, is reusable. The following practices are best for integration setup, and should always be followed by an Integration Platform:

Automated Integration Setup for large numbers of projects.
Integration Templates for different project types. This includes the sets of applications to be integrated, the metadata mapping between objects from different applications, and the Set of Integration Flows or Rules.
New projects inherited from the above templates are based on the project type.
Templates administered by Process/ Tools Group.
Project specific Integration Setups which are managed by Project Managers.

Adapters

Stakeholders need to identify the use of integration upfront, and make sure that the adapters can support the implementation of those use cases both easily and effectively. In order to be able to do this, they will need to identify the tools, both 3^rd party and homegrown, which will need the Integration Adapters. For standard applications, there are ideas which need to be discussed and defined.

One of these is the Common Use Cases. For example, Unidirectional and bi-directional synchronization. Also, support for different field types will be needed, types such as simple text, rich text, number, date, single/ multiple select lookup list, cascade select list, choice list and others. Support for field data type size and validation is important, as is the ability to detect new custom, or user defined field created in a tool, and mapping to field in other tools for data transfer.

For Homegrown applications, you should discuss and document integration use cases, and API availability for the homegrown tool. You should also consider Data Storage for the homegrown tool, whether Database or File System based. Adapter development and testing options are also important. The option for building the adapter in case the API is not available for the homegrown tool should be provided by the Integration Platform. Stockholders should also establish a deployment road map for different adapters.

Tool Versions

Often, organizations need to deal with several versions of the same tool. In addition, as the tool vendors come up with newer versions, upgrade is done. Integration Platform may need to provide upgrades for the newer versions of the tools. Managing and planning for these upgrades is essential to maintain the integrity and stability of your integrated tools ecosystem. Here are a few important steps to take.

Document a list of different versions which need to be supported. This list should be tool-wise.
Make sure that you properly plan so that the support for newer versions of tools and adapters is brought and ready on time for the deployment.
New objects from the tools may be exposed by newer versions of the Adapters. You will need to plan well in order to use those features in your integration scenarios.
Standardized tool versions should be used across the entire organization. These should support many versions of the same tool across the organization as rarely as possible, since this will make the integration scenario more complex and harder to maintain.

Deployment

In order to deploy any integration platform, these standard best practices should be followed:

Staging Environment: Sets up the Development environment, and sets up the Test environment.
Testing: You should configure tests to verify your Integration Use Cases. Tests should be executed on Development and Test servers. Performance of load testing is important, as is the performance of security testing, reliability testing, and availability and failover testing. The reliability testing should be done when the tools are down or offline.
Production: Integration platform and adapters should be deployed on Production servers after successful testing. Be sure that the failure and exception alerts are sent to the correct people. You will also need to set up a regular back up of the relevant integration components.

Squariz a Foursquare friend finder

2012-01-27T23:10:00.000-08:00

I build Squariz as a demo for an upcoming presentation, Squariz is a Foursquare friend finder by phone application with voice recognition powered by Tropo build using the YII MVC Framework and the Twitter Bootstrap toolkit!

This Application is designed to give you a way to find the last know location of one of your friends by phone using Speech Recognition. We are using Tropo for all the voice call handling and speech recognition and the Foursquare API to locate your friends.

Please note that this app was written in only a few hours as a quick demo, so there may be bugs, and it's just a starting point that could be developed further.

Requirements

Bootstrap, the Twitter Bootstrap toolkit
Yii MVC Framework
PHPFOG Account
Foursquare Account & Application
Tropo Account

Setup

As you know from previous post we really like MVC so we build the whole thing using the Yii MVC Framework. Yii is a high-performance PHP framework best for developing Web 2.0 applications. Yii comes with rich features: MVC, DAO/ActiveRecord, I18N/L10N, caching, authentication and role-based access control, scaffolding, testing, etc. It can reduce your development time significantly.

So to make it a little more interesting we decided to also use Bootstrap from Twitter. Bootstrap is a toolkit from Twitter designed to kickstart development of webapps and sites. It includes base CSS and HTML for typography, forms, buttons, tables, grids, navigation, and more. A little late we figured out Yii now also has a Yii Twitter Bootstrap extension a Yii integration for Twitter's web development toolkit.

PHPFog

If you don't have one, create an account on PHPFog and create a new PHP App and set the CNAME for the app. Then grab the source code for this app from GitHub, you will have to make few small modification to the code to make things work with your Foursquare App so on to FourSquare first.

FourSquare

Setup a new application on Foursquare, this application will be used to retrieve your friends latest checkin information. If you don't have one yet set up a Foursquare developers account first.

When setting up the application you will be asked for a "Download/welcome URL" enter http://XXXXX.phpfogapp.com/ and for a "Call back URL" enter http://XXXXX.phpfogapp.com/index.php?r=site/auth replace the XXXXX with the corresponding CNAME value you setup on PHPFog.

Now for a code update, in config/main.php you need to update the lines:

'clientId'=>'FOURSQUARECLIENTIDGOESHERE',
'clientSecret'=>'FOURSQUARECLIENTSECRETGOESHERE',

with the clientID and clientSecret from your Foursquare app.

While you are at it, also set the 'canonicalDomain' under 'params' and the'connectionString', the ‘username’ and ‘password’ under ‘db’, these are required and you can find the database information in the PHPfog App Panel under database. Optionally set the ‘FromName’ and ‘From’ in the ‘mailer’ section.

Tropo

Next you will have to create a new application on Tropo, point it to a new WebAPI application and set the URL that powers your new Voice application and the SMS application to: http://XXXXX.phpfogapp.com/index.php?r=tropo/incoming, again replacing XXXXX with the CNAME your set for your app on PHPFog.

You can add a local phone number or just use Skype or connect to the app via SIP or Phono. You might want to update the phone phone number/skype number in /view/email/registration.php with your numbers.

Now that the Tropo step is done, check out the other files in views/site you might want to update some of those but it's not needed.

That should be about it, call or SMS your app and see if it works!

Pasta al Pomodoro Secco

2012-01-27T13:40:00.000-08:00

I love to write code, building cool integrations using services like Tropo, Twilio, integrating Foursquare or Facebook API's, or using a Universal Devices ISY-99 to remotely turn on the lights in my pool.

But I also love good wine and great food so I figured I'd do something different and write a couple of blog posts about my favorite pastas and tonight that is "Pomodoro Secco".

After a nice afternoon in Temecula wine country, we stopped at Barons to pick up some ingredients for this great pasta dish.

If you want to make Secco you will need the following:

Sea salt
Fusilli or Penne
Sun dried Tomato Puree
Capers
Parsley
Red Pepper Flakes
Garlic
Parmesan Cheese
Cream
Gorgonzola
White Wine

Making a decent pasta is not that hard, just don't overcook the pasta, el dente is really the way to go! So first grab a big pot an bring plenty of water with a little sea salt to a boil.

While your bring the water to a boil prep all the ingredients for the sauce, use a garlic press to press, per person, about 2 cloves of garlic. Next, per person, scoop a table spoon of capers out of the jar and two table spoons of sun dried tomato puree.

Cook the pasta for about 8 to 10 minutes, about a cup of pasta per person should be enough, stir it regularly so it doesn't stick the pot and check regularly to make sure you are not over cooking it, as I said earlier, el dente is really they way to go.

Making the sauce should take just a few minutes so let the pasta cook for a little bit before you start on the sauce. Once you are ready to go, put plenty of olive oil in a big frying pan, make sure to grab a large enough pan so you can toss the pasta with the sauce once the sauce is done.

Check that your oil is nice and hot, just drop a couple of drops (a couple of drops, not a whole spoon full) of water in the oil if it burns off quickly and splashes everywhere the oil is hot! Drop the garlic and the sun dried tomato puree in the pan and mix it up well, add the capers and dilute it quickly with some white wine, no worries if the pan catches on fire, the alcohol should burn off, resulting in a nice thick liquid.

Next add the cream and the Gorgonzola and allow it to melt at a medium heat. Toss it with the pasta and add some Parmesan cheese to dry up any liquid and add some red pepper flakes to give it some spice.

Garnish it with parsley and some more Parmesan cheese and you are ready to eat!

A great customer experience starts with a great IVR

2011-09-24T12:06:00.000-07:00

Don't you hate it when, after entering a ton of information into an IVR systems, you get hung up on while on hold for a support agent? You have to call back, fight your way through that IVR again and hope that this time you won't be hung up on.

Last Friday while traveling, I ran into an issue with my Macbook Pro and called Apple support, after fighting my way through a couple of menu options, I was asked to enter the serial number for my Macbook Pro and was placed on hold only to be disconnected - thanks AT&T - a few minutes into my estimated 5 minute hold time.

I called back and, low and behold, the IVR automatically identified me and transfered me to the support queue without asking any additional questions. Smart IVR's like these have been around for quite a while, are fairly easy to implement, in most cases are very cost effective and dramatically increate CSAT.

Good work Apple, use what you already know about your customers, wished more companies would follow your example!

Forgot to close your garage door? Close it by SMS.

2011-09-04T00:31:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I forgot to close the garage door when leaving home, fortunately when I returned home a few hours later everything was fine. That is, besides my wife not being all to happy about the fact that I forgot to close the door!

I decided to figure out how to get a notification on my cell phone when I leave the garage door open again and come up with a way to remotely close the garage door. In this post I am going to talk about how to setup the notifications piece and, in an upcoming post, I will show you how you can use SMS messages to actually close the garage door.

In a previous post I have talked about how you can send SMS notifications using the Tropo API from an Universal Devices ISY-99, for the notifications piece I am reusing most of that. In order to get the ISY-99 to detect that the garage door is left open I am using a kit from Smarthome, the I/O Linc - INSTEON Garage Door Control & Status Kit.

The kit comes with decent instructions although they forgot to put page two of the instructions in my kit, luckily Smarthome has the QuickStart Guide and the Users Guide available online in PDF format.

Everything you need to sense if your garage door is open and remotely close it (presuming you of course have an automatic garage door opener) comes in the kit. That is besides a couple of screws to mount the magnet on the garage door and the sensor on the garage floor, a quick trip to Home Depot resolved that.

The guys at Universal Devices wrote a nice post on how to setup everything in the ISY99, there are numerous other posts out there but most of them are not very accurate, so if you are going to try to do this too, read the post from Universal Devices! There is also a lot of confusion online about how to setup the program on the ISY99 to actually trigger notifications properly, so here is a setup that actually works!

If
Control 'GarageDoorSensor' is switched On
and Control 'GarageDoorSensor' is NOT switched Off

Then
Wait 20 minutes
Resource 'SMSWarning'

Else
- No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action')

Only a small modification in the ISY99 to call the Tropo Scripting application was necessary, I replaced the temp variable with the generic isysays variable and added the text I want to send to my cell. If you are sending text with spaces in the message, don't forget to the check the "Encode URL" box otherwise the call to Tropo will fail!

Take a look at my previous post on how to send SMS message from an ISY99 using the simple Tropo API. For this project all I did was change the script to send SMS message slightly, it's still only 2 lines of code:

call("+1".$number, array(
"network" => "SMS")
);
say ("Isy says: ".$isysays."!");
?>

That's all, check back soon for more information on how to send SMS messages to an ISY99 using Tropo and the ISY99 REST API, to actually close the garage door!

Voice Biometrics with VoiceVault and Tropo

2011-08-28T14:28:00.001-07:00

Using your voice to verify who you are!

In this post we will review how your business quickly, easily and cost effectively can implement a simple Tropo andVoiceVault based solution to use voice biometrics, the uniqueness of the voices of your customers, to verify a claimed identity.

If you want to read more about why to use VoiceVault’s voice biometrics system check out this excellent page on their website!

To simplify using the VoiceVault API we, at Disruptive Technologies, created a PHP library that can be used with Tropo for both the enrollment and the verification of voices prints. The library is available on Github as part of our sample WordPress Plugin.

We have created this sample implementation to show you how voice biometrics can be used in real life. For the sample implementation we build a WordPress plugin that you can add to any WordPress site to enhance the user Signup and Password Reset functionality with voice biometrics.

The Disruptive Voice BioMetrics WordPress plugin is available on Github and on wordpress.org in the next few days.

After installing the plugin, when a customer registers a new account they will receive a phone call on the phone number they provided during registration, to enroll their voice for authentication. We have also added functionality to give the customer the option to request a password reset and provide them with a temporary WordPress password by calling a phone number and verifying their identity using their voice.

If you want to checkout how the plugin works, first browse to this Sign Up Page and sign up for an account. You will receive a phone call asking you, a couple of times, to speak a 4 digit code, this is used to enroll your voice. After enrolling your voice you can call+1(818) 533-9824 to receive a new temporary password to login to WordPress. Make sure to call from the phone number you registered when you signed up for the WordPress account!

You can install the WordPress plugin in your own WordPress site directly from within WordPress or by downloading the plugin from Github. For the Tropo part of the puzzle we are using a Tropo Web API application that is build using the YII framework. YII is a simple but very powerful application framework with a very short learning curve. Its component-based design allows you to customize it for your needs without directly modifying it thus maintaining upgradability.

In the WordPress plugin we are providing a copy of the YII Framework so there is no additional setup you need to do for this, other then mapping a phone number in your Tropo account to the Application and a couple of config settings. If you haven’t setup a Tropo account yet, or don’t know how to setup a Tropo web app, take a look at one of our previous posts or checkout one of the great tutorials on the Tropo website.

To access the VoiceVault API, we use in the plugin, you will need to setup an account with VoiceVault. For development purposes you can create a free developers account on their website, for commercial use reach out to their sales team!

Installation steps:

Download the plugin and unzip the voicevault directory to your wp-content/plugins directory (if your downloading from GitHub make sure to only upload the voicevault directory)
Ensure that the uploaded directory has correct ownerships. Also make sure the server has read & write access to the wp-content/plugins/voicevault/ivr/protected/runtime directory, and the wp-content/plugins/voicevault/ivr/protected/data directory
Activate the plugin on your wordpress plugins page. After activation set up your Tropo phone number on the Settings -> Voice Vault page.
Set up the configuration settings in wp-content/plugins/voicevault/ivr/protected/config/main.php – the settings are around line 85, and there are two sets of settings in this file: for the wordpress db “wordpress_db” fill out your wordpress database information (Yii uses this to reset the users’ passwords). And, for the voicevault API fill out “voicevault” with your VoiceVault API information.
Set your Tropo application’s outbound call token in wp-content/plugins/voicevault/voicevault.php

That should be it, have fun!

DisruptiveTalk WordPress Widget for Phono and use with Tropo

2011-07-04T21:25:00.000-07:00

Checkout my new DisruptiveTalk Plugin, that you can add directly to your WordPress site, provides an easy and Proactive way for your site visitors to contact you or any voice application hosted on a service as Tropo directly from their web browser with one click of a button, and do that for FREE!

Check it out today and let me know what you think!

How to send SMS Notifications from a Universal-Devices ISY-99 using Tropo

2011-05-28T22:00:00.000-07:00

In this post I will show you how you can use the Tropo's SMS API to send SMS Messages from a Universal-Devices ISY-99 when a certain event happens. You can use this, for example, to send yourself an SMS message when someone trips a motion sensor or if the temperature in your house drops under a certain predefined level. In this post I will be using the latter as the example.

Wel here it goes!

First browse to the Tropo website and sign up for a Tropo Developers Account and once you are signed up, login to your newly created account.

Next create a new Tropo Scripting Applications, next give your app a name and select use a hosted file for this application, give it a name, something like DemoSMSApp.php and enter the following PHP Code:

<?php

call("+1".$number, array( "network" =--> "SMS")
);

say ("The Temperature downstairs is now ".$temp." degrees!");

?>

Save the file and in the Phone Numbers section of the settings for your application click on "Add a new phone number". This will add a phone number to your SMS application, you need this otherwise you can not send SMS messages! It takes a few minutes for the number to be activated on your account so be patient!

Now click on the link for the outbound messaging token and grab the link to the token, you can just right click on "click here to open the token URL in a new window." and select "Copy Link Address". If you paste the URL it will be something like:

http://api.tropo.com/1.0/sessions?action=create&token=1231231231312

Modify the URL adding the Mobile phone number you want to send the notification to (I used 5559998888 in this example but just replace that with your mobile phone number) and, for this example, the temperature that was reached (I used 75 degrees in this example). The updated URL will look something like this:

https://api.tropo.com/1.0/sessions?action=create&token=1231231231312&number=15559998888&temp=75

To test if it all works just browse to the URL and you should receive a text message on your mobile phone. If you don't check the Application Debugger on the tropo website to see what is going wrong. (The Application Debugger only shows info if you first open it before executing the URL)

Now login to your ISY-99 and go to the Configuration -> Networking -> Network Resources Tab. Click on Add to add a new network resouce, set the Protocol to HTTP, make it a GET request and for Host enter api.tropo.com, change the port to 443, set the Timout to 2000 ms and in the path enter the rest of the URL you created earlier, so something like:

/1.0/sessions?action=create&token=1231231231312&number=15559998888&temp=75

Save your newly created resource, you have to save it twice, once on the resource editor page and once in the Network Resources Tab. When you have that done you can click on Test to make sure it works.

Next you have to create a Program to actually execute the Network Resource. Go to the Program Details Tab and create a new Program. For the If Statement select condition Status, Thermostat, is, 76 degrees and for the Then Statement select Action Networking, Resource, SMSTempWarning (that is the name I gave the Network Resource).

Save the Program and make sure the program is active, for some reason in the current firmware version of my ISY-99 I have to manually enable each Program after I create it.

That's it, your ISY-99 will now send you an SMS message when the temperature in your house reaches 75 degrees.

Create a Personal Alarm System with Insteon, Tropo and Universal Devices!

2011-05-28T20:27:00.000-07:00

We have all seen the commercials on TV about the Personal Medical Alarm systems. "I can't get up and need Emergency Services". In this post I am going to show you how to build your own Personal Alarm System using a couple of Insteon devices from Smart Home, an ISY-99 from Universal Devices and Tropo. When you are all done you will be able to press on the button on a little wireless Keychain Remote and trigger an outbound phone call to a predetermined phone number to deliver a "I need help message"

Unless you already own some of the items needed you are probably going to need to buy some stuff to make this all work, so here is a list of parts you will need. Some of them are optional:

First you need a X10 RC6500 16-Device X10 Base Unit with Keychain Remote for 2 Devices, this will be used to trigger an alarm and optionally to unlock the front door or a gate.

You will also need a INSTEON / X10 Wireless Sensor Receiver.

This device will be used to convert the X10 signals from the Keychain remote to Insteon signals so our next device, the Universal Devices ISY-99 can interpret them. The ISY-99 is a cool device to control much more than just this Personal Alarm, check out the Universal Devices website and the Smart Home website for more information.

Optionally you can add a MorningLinc - INSTEON Morning Industry RF Doorknob/Deadbolt Controller and a RF Remote Controlled Keyless Entry Deadbolt or a I/O Linc - INSTEON Remote Control Door Strike Kit to unlock a door, a gate or both! (I might do a post later to show you how to use Tropo's SMS service and the ISY-99 API to send an SMS message to your ISY-99 to unlock that gate or front door remotely).

So now you have all these cool toys from Smart Home and Universal Devices, now what?

Well, first hookup the ISY-99 to your internet router following the instructions in the manual provided. Make sure to setup internet access to your ISY-99 and password protect it!

Once you have that done you should be able to browse to the web interface for the ISY-99 at the pre-configured IP address.

Plug in the X10-RC6500 and follow the instructions in the manual on how to connect the Keychain Remote to your ISY-99. The Keychain Remote will show up in your ISY-99 as a controller. After it has been added you can press the button on the Keychain remote to trigger an action on the ISY-99.

But before adding the action in the ISY-99 you need to create a little Tropo app to place a phone call.

To do that just go to Tropo.com setup a new account (or if you already have one just login to your existing account).

Developers accounts are free but when you start using this for real you will want to switch to a paid account. It's cheap, a couple of dollars per month for a phone number and a few cents per minute for calls. In this case there is no phone number associated with the application so all you are paying for is the call if you actually use it!

Next create a new Tropo scripting application and make sure it has an outbound voice token associated with it, you are going to need that later.

On the Tropo website is a great tutorial on how to make outbound calls, with some more details. Check it out, it will help you get a better understanding of placing outbound calls with Tropo.

I wrote the Tropo application, to make the outbound call, in PHP but Tropo supports many other languages too, so if you rather write it in Ruby or Java or so, go for it.

Here is my very simple PHP code:

<?php

set_time_limit(0);

// Max script time in seconds
$max_time = 3 * 60;
$start_time = time();

if (strlen($number) == 10)
$number = '1'.$number;
call('+'.$number);

while (1) {
say('I fell down and can not get up. I need emergency services at my residence at: one two three, Penny Lane, Los Angeles, california, nine two five six two. ');
if (time() - $start_time > $max_time) {
say('Goodbye.');
hangup();
} else {
say('I repeat, ');
}
}

I will leave it to your imagination to make changes to it, you could for example, in addition to the phone number also make the message configurable, add a smoke detector to the ISY-99, and when there is a fire alarm have it call your local fire station (no clue if that is legal so check that out first).

Now that you have some code to execute you can go back to the ISY-99 and setup a network resource. In your ISY-99 go to Configuration -> Networking -> Network Resources Tab and add a new resource.

In this case you are going to add a HTTPS GET request to api.tropo.com on port 443 and in the path you need to enter the variables you are passing to your Tropo app. Checkout the tutorial on the Tropo website for some more details but basically you have a URL that looks something like this:

https://api.tropo.com:/1.0/sessions?action=create&number=thenumbertocallgoeshere&token=youroutboundvoicetokengoeshere

This URL triggers the outbound dial request and "/1.0/sessions?....here" goes in the path part.

I also changed the Timeout to 2,000 as it didn't work with the default setting, that probably can be a lot lower but I didn't really test that. Once you have that all entered just press Save.

In order to actually trigger the outbound dial request you need to create an Application in your ISY-99 that executes when someone presses on the button on the Keychain remote. To do that go to the program details tab and create an application similar to the one in the screenshot below.

As you can see in the screenshot I also added a line in the program to turn on the lights by my front door, I have a few more Insteon devices in my house and in this case I am using a Smart Home SwitchLinc Relay to control the light by my front door.

If you have decided that you also want to unlock a door or a gate when the alarm is triggered you can install the MorningLinc controller and Lock or INSTEON Remote Control Door Strike Kit devices and all you need to do is add them to the program in the ISY-99.

You could also program a different button on the remote to do this in which case you would create an additional program to trigger unlocking the door.

Now it's time to make the magic happen. Press on the button on your Keychain Remote and just wait for your phone to ring.

Browser to Phone Tropo Chat Client

2011-04-28T16:40:00.000-07:00

Mike and I are at it again! This time we wanted to create a simple demo to show off some of the really cool features of Tropo's API, using Node.js and Socket.IO for the programming. We began brainstorming, and then it hit us - wouldn't it be cool if users could talk to each other using a chat system, no matter if they were on the phone or on the web? So we started coding the application.

Setting up the app on Tropo

First we set up a phone number on the Tropo side (we already had an account on Tropo that we used a couple of days ago for our Empire Avenue SMS Stock Ticker app so we just used that account to setup an additional app/phone number for this new demo).

As we said in the last post, we won't go through a step-by-step on how to write the Tropo App itself, as there are tons of great tutorials you can look at on the Tropo website, but in this case we will make the source available for you on github.

More about the actual Tropo App later in the post!

The Web Client

The web front end of this Tropo application uses Socket.IO for the connection to and from the server side Node.JS piece of the puzzle. We created a simple chat client where a user can enter their nickname and send chat messages to all connected clients. Socket.IO makes creating realtime apps, like chatrooms, easy - and with Node.JS we can easily handle many concurrent connections.

When all the coding was done the whole application consisted of less than 100 lines of code, and that included the HTML. Curious what it looks like? You can see the browser client in action!

The demo for the actual browser client can be viewed online Here!

What else is needed

On the server side, the app will be written in JavaScript and we will use Node.JS and Express for the web framework. Tropo has a great post with more detail on this.

Setting up Node.JS (in our case on a Centos box) is fairly straight forward and there are numerous tutorials online for that. The Server side app will be written in Java. The following Node.JS modules are required:

All of these can be installed via Node.JS' standard package manager NPM.

We also installed Monit to monitor the Node.JS instance and start, stop or restart it as needed. Per the Monit website "Monit is a free open source utility for managing and monitoring, processes, files, directories and filesystems on a UNIX system. Monit conducts automatic maintenance and repair and can execute meaningful causal actions in error situations". Maybe we'll do a post about how to get that installed sometime soon too.

The Tropo IVR

Then it was time to code the real "meat" of the application - the Tropo IVR that will process the inbound call. To code this app, we used Tropo's WebAPI as that makes talking to the Socket.IO instance a lot easier. There are 4 steps in our IVR:

Welcome message: This is the root of the IVR, a simple welcome message is played
Hold music: Most of the time spent in the IVR will be here, we play hold music to the user so they don't get bored and hang up, while waiting for a "continue" event to go to the next step. This event can be initiated by either the user, or the Socket.IO instance using Tropo's Rest API
Record or Message handling: If there are messages in the queue, the messages are processed... if not, the IVR records input from the user, which is then sent to the next step
Transcription: The transcription is sent to this step, which is then processed and sent to the Socket.IO instances

The Demo

If you want to check it all out, first browse to the Web Client and then call the IVR by dialing one of the phone numbers below. You can either call the regular phone number or use Skype or a SIP phone to make the call.
After the IVR answers just follow the instruction in the IVR. (So after the welcome message press * to start recording the chat message you want to send, and when you are done speaking the message press # to send the message). Then sit back and relax and wait for the magic to happen.

The IVR app is looped so when you are ready to send the next chat message just press * again, and enjoy the music while you wait...

It's just a demo and there are tons of ideas we have for improvements but we just wanted to show off some of the cool Tropo features, so hack at it if you want. The full code for this little app is located on github.

By Michael Mackus and Cas Hoefman

Empire Avenue Stock Quotes by SMS

2011-04-25T19:10:00.000-07:00

What is Empire Avenue

This weekend we started playing around with Empire Avenue. According to their website, "Empire Avenue is the Social Media Exchange, where you can buy and sell shares in any social media profile, meet new people, unlock Achievement badges, and earn boatloads of virtual cash by being active and social online! Buy shares in your friends, your followers, people with similar interests, brands you love, celebrities – anyone! All using a virtual currency and all for free!"

Get Stock prices by SMS/TXT Message

In this day and age we all carry smart phones that are web enabled so you can quickly access Empire Avenue using a browser or one of the native mobile apps; but we decided we wanted to be able to get access to Empire Avenue using SMS Text Messages too!

So first, we looked at the Empire Avenue API to see what kind of access we could get. (You can check out the complete API Documentation online.) For this first prototype we decided to use the GET Request to get some info back on certain Stocks/Tickers. We wanted to be able to send a text message with our ticker "DISRUPTIVE" to a phone number to get back the most recent stock price.

Next we had to find a way to actually receive and send the SMS text messages. This is where Tropo comes into play. (Check out the Tropo website for more information about Tropo and how this all works.) According to their website, "Tropo is a powerful yet simple API that adds Voice, SMS, Twitter, and IM support to the programming languages you already know."

Using Tropo we can build the application to send and receive SMS messages. Tropo supports a slew of different programming languages including Java, PHP, and Ruby. We choose to use PHP. Writing a Tropo app in PHP is as simple as:

< ? p h p say('Yes, Tropo is this easy.'); // Yup, that easy ? >

So how did we build this thing? Here are some code examples:

First things first, we setup a Tropo account on Tropo.com, all you need is a valid e-mail address to register and there is no cost for development accounts! Wait for the e-mail conformation to activate the account and once that is done you can start creating Tropo Applications, in this case we opted for a simple Tropo Scripting Application where the app is hosted on the Tropo Platform.

To create a new Tropo Application you can just go to Your Application, select 'Create New Application' and setup a Tropo Scripting Application. We won't go through a step-by-step on how to do this, as there are tons of great tutorials you can look at on the Tropo website.

We also needed an Empire Avenue account with which to associate our new Tropo Application, so next we went to the Empire Avenue Website and setup an Empire Avenue account (you can login using your Facebook account). Once we were all setup on Empire Avenue, we went to the setting section of our profile and setup a new Application. This was needed because Empire Avenue uses both username and password for the account and API keys to authenticate third party applications.

Once we had the API keys we went back to writing the actual application. Not too complex. First we needed to be able to receive messages. Using the Tropo Scripting Language, you can use the "Ask Method" to do something like this:

< ? p h p if($currentCall->initialText=="Yes") {
say("Awesome, I totally agree.");
}
elseif($currentCall->initialText=="No") {
say("Well that's just too bad");
}
else {
say("That wasn't an option, sorry");
}
? >

And once that was done we needed to write something to lookup the Ticker info on Empire Avenue. Using the API keys and and username and password we wrote some code to hit the API:

< ? p h p // Fetch EAV function - gets the data for a ticker from Empire Avenue. function fetchEAV($ticker) { $ticker = trim(strtoupper($ticker)); // API Url $url = 'https://api.empireavenue.com/profile/info?apikey=API_KEY_HERE&username=EAV_USERNAME&password=EAV_PASSWORD&ticker='.$ticker; $ch = curl_init(); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); if (curl_error($ch)) { say("ERROR ". curl_error($ch)); die(); } $output = json_decode(curl_exec($ch)); curl_close($ch); if (strtoupper($output->data[0]->ticker) <> $ticker) {
// Debugging stuff:
//say($output->data[0]->ticker);
//die();
return false;
} else
return $output->data[0];
}

// Get the data from Empire Avenue's API
$result = fetchEAV($currentCall->initialText);
if ($result)
say("Last Traded Share Price: ".$result->last_trade);
else
say("Invalid ticker.");

? >

And does it work?

It really does, if you want to see a working sample just send a text message with DISRUPTIVE to (818) 900-2731 to get back our latest stock price or replace DISRUPTIVE with your own Empire Avenue Ticker Symbol to get your own latest stock price!

By Cas Hoefman & Michael Mackus

How your Small Business can harness the power of QR Codes

2011-04-24T12:45:00.000-07:00

For the last few years there has been a buzz building in mobile marketing circles around QR - or "Quick Response" - codes and now they are finally starting to pop up all over the United States, thanks in large to the adoption of smart phones.

While QR codes are definitely not mainstream yet, they are now starting to appear in magazines, on store fronts and even on the product price labels in your local Best Buy.

The question is how can you as a small business owner take advantage of this new technology? It won't be long before your customers will start recognizing and using QR codes...will your business?

Stay ahead of the curve and beat your competition to the punch! In this article, we will show you five easy ways you can start using QR Codes in your business today.

Get More Social Media Followers

You can use QR codes to send users to your own website site, but why not connect them with your social profiles instead? By sending them to your Twitter Stream or your Facebook Page, you give your customer the opportunity to "Like" or "Follow" your brand. As a result, they'll continue to receive updates long after they have walked out your store. Did you know it is now also possible to encode a QR code to automatically "Like" your Facebook page?

Put a QR Codes on Your Business Card

Including a QR code on your business card can be a way to move that last century relic into the next. We all know business cards still exist in paper format, and they won't be going away any time soon. We might as well turn them into an technology friendly format! Include a link to your company's Web site, your social media profiles or your contact data in a QR code and print it on the card. It might not overload your site with traffic, but it can definitely help reinforce the real-world connections you make by making it easiser for folks to download your contact information.

Use QR Codes in Your Printed Advertising

Yes you heard us right: printed advertising, magazines and newspapers aren't completely dead yet! A large number of advertisers have found that using QR codes in their printed ads is a good way to bridge the gap between print and online. Unlike other print ads, those containing QR Codes can be easily measured for effectiveness. This option may not make sense for every type of business, but your local service-based business and others may find it very beneficial.

QR Codes Turn a Walk-In Customer Into Web Traffic

The most obvious use of QR Codes is to drive real-world customers to your company's Website. This is great but simply sending people to your homepage isn't always going to be particularly effective. Instead you can send them to a specific section of your site. For example, build a simple, mobile-friendly customer survey. You can enter people who fill out the survey into a giveaway and at the same time collect their email addresses you can use for future marketing messages.

Get Creative With QR Codes: Games & Scavenger Hunts

There are a large number of examples where scavenger hunts and other real-world games have been played using QR Codes. Simply put, the organizer places a series of printed QR Codes throughout a physical space and offers participants prizes - either digital or physical - for locating them. Small, local businesses can easily adopt this model for promotional purposes, even if it doesn't directly generate any revenue, it will get people further engaged with your brand as well as creating buzz and excitment.

Want to know learn more about QR Codes? Contact us today and we'll be more than happy to sit down with you and explore ways your business can start using QR Codes tomorrow.

Local Listings and Social Searches, where to list your business online.

2011-04-24T12:14:00.000-07:00

So you started a new company, congratulations, the first step to bigger and better things! Is it perhaps a restaurant, a gym, or maybe a consulting company? Regardless of the type of business, if you have a brick and mortar location you need to get your business listed, and even if you don't have a real brick and mortar location you probably want to get yourself listed too.

This becomes really important if you want to have your business show up in local search results from services such as Google Map's Business listings, Mapquest, Yelp, or other local online search services specific to your area.

There is a good chance that your business already is listed in some online databases or directories, but, as the owner of the company you will want to be in charged of what information is being displayed about your business to your clients or customers!

Below is a list of a few common places where business owners should start and make sure they have accurate and current listings.

Citysearch

Facebook

Foursquare

Google

GoWalla

Mapquest

Navteq

Truvo

Where

Yelp

For you as the business owner, taking ownership of those listings within these directories is crucial. As the owner you will want to maintain accurate, update-to-date and complete information within you listings. You also want to monitor via location based services who is checking into your place of business, what they are doing and what people are saying about you.

But, you are not done once you have yourself listed in the directories, keeping the listings up-to-date, regularly adding notes, promotions, coupons or specials and simple things like updating your seasonal business hours need to become second nature if you want to be found in the directories.

A parting thought, if you are not claiming that business listing chances are that the crowd is adding your location to the directories and the chances are high that incorrect or incomplete information is being shared with your potential customers!

Knowledge is power!

2011-04-24T12:11:00.000-07:00

Social Media exploded in 2010. As 2011 starts, you now should have more than enough data at hand to show you which Social Media Channel is working for you and which one is not.

Everyone told you early last year to add Twitter to your Social Media Portfolio, and you did. In the second half of the year all the hype around location-based checkins made you jump on the FourSquare bandwagon and you now have an even larger set of Social Media Channels you broadcast on, but are you getting the payback you are expecting?

If one of the many Social Media channels you are using isn't working well for you, perhaps now is the time to increase your efforts; or perhaps focus your efforts on a different Social Media Channel. If Twitter is outperforming the other channels, should you reassess your spending on that channel?

It's all about Analytics...

In order to answer those questions, you will need analytics of some sort; and to run analytics, you need data!

Rich data for the various Social Media Channels is available through many sources. Of course we are all still waiting for Twitter to complete the roll-out of their analytics tools, but for now there are other tools you can use.

You have, of course, been using a URL shortening service, and the analytics data associated with that service is visible in your online account. This provides you with very valuable data on which of your posts got a lot of clicks in 2010 and are perhaps good topics to focus on again in 2011, and what to avoid!

Several online services provide detailed information on clicks of your links in your various posts, the number of retweets, mentions and other information. There is also support for Facebook, FourSquare, LinkedIn, Myspace and WordPress streams. These are great tools to analyze your small business Social Media Campaigns.

Your trustworthy Facebook Page Insights (you gave up on that Facebook profile a long time ago, right?) also provides you with a lot of valuable data. Take a look at last years data and review that "Daily Active Users" number. Did it go up, down or was it stable? It again will help you identify what works and what doesn't in Social Media Marketing. Did that campaign you ran in July really create as much buzz as you thought it did?

Now is also the time to start integrating all this data and take the next step. Start using Goals and Funnels to get even more insight into the paths your followers take, improve the Funnels, and make sure you lose less potential customers on the way to them becoming one of your paying customers...

A word of wisdom!

Although it might sound great to have the most followers or friends, and although it's important to have clout, it's also important, maybe even more so, to focus on the quality of the relationships you form. It's easy enough to get to 10,000 facebook fans or 50,000 Twitter followers, but if they are not engaging with you and if none of them are converting to paying customers, your efforts have gone to waste.

If you are not doing this today, have questions about how to better collect and analyze data, or still need to get started with Social Media Marketing, contact me and I'll be more than happy to point you in the right direction!

The New Advertising: “It’s about creating movements”

2011-04-24T12:09:00.000-07:00

Once in a while you come across a video that makes you laugh but secretly also makes you a bit jealous because of it's perfect execution of a brilliant idea. Enter Canadian advertising agency John St.

Their 2 minute "Pink Pony" video shows just why advertising is no longer about campaigns but about creating a movement and the importance of Social Media Marketing. And all of that at the hand of birthday girl Chelsea and a pink mini horse.

Fun with Phono

2010-11-02T17:11:00.000-07:00

Spend some time the last week with playing around with Phono. Phono is a simple jQuery plugin and JavaScript library that turns any web browser into a phone; capable of making phone calls and sending instant messages. You can even connect to SIP clients; all with a simple unified API.

To keep things simple I first took a look at the WordPress plugin that allows you to embed a phone on your blog. It gave me some good insight into what you can do with Phono.

Figured that I'd create a little project for myself and wrote a little bit of code to embed phono into my facebook fanpage tab. Couple of lines of code in the tab to call some PHP Scripts and a couple lines of "phono code" in the PHP Script later and and I had a working Call Me button on my page!

This is cool stuff! It's all still in infant stages and graphics look bad, need to work on alpa numeric inputs and perhaps just build the whole thing into a reusable Facebook App instead of using the PHP pages. But you know what, it was satisfying to be able to get that first call working!

Lots of potential with Phono and you can also integrate it with your Voxeo Tropo app. If you want some more info on how I hacked this together, send me an e-mail!

Callaway Vineyard and Winery

2010-10-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

This week we visited Callaway Vineyard and Winery. Callaway is one of the larger wineries in the Temecula Valley and offers a considerably large selection of whites, rosÈs and red wines. We started off with lunch at the Meritage Restaurant. We had not made reservations and had to wait about 20 minutes for a table, so if you head out to Callaway and are planning on having lunch, make reservations.

The waiter's description of the lamb special (which was a lamb burger) sounded really good but unfortunately they had run out of it so I opted for the Kobe Beef Cheese Steak Sandwich with Caramelized Onion, Mushroom, Provolone, Peppercorn Aioli & Fries instead. I did see the lamb burger however, and it was not a burger as described, but more a pattie of meat precariously placed on two balancing pieces of bread. The presentation was beautiful, the ease of consumption, not so much. There were five of us there, so between us we tried a few things. One of the salads was pretty good, and the hanger steak was nicely prepared. We all seemed to enjoy our meals, and they were easily paired with the Callaway wines.

After lunch we headed over to the large tasting room. It has a view of the valley and although it was a busy Sunday afternoon we quickly secured a spot at the bar for our group. We purchased our six 1 ounce tastings and the large selection of whites and rosÈs had me excited. I started with the 2009 Special Selection Sauvignon Blanc which was a very dry citrus white with hints of melon. I then continued on with the 2008 Winemakers Reserve Chardonnay with pineapple flavors and notes of caramel and apricot. Both whites were okay, but nothing spectacular.

I then moved on to the rosÈs. I tried the Nebbiolo Bello, a rosÈ with a bouquet of raspberry and cherry that has flavors of red currant and a strawberry finish. The 2005 Special Selection Sorella, a 40-30-20-10 Sangiovese, Cab Sauvignon, Dolcette and Merlot blend has some hints of licorice, pomegranate and strawberry. Like the whites, both were ok. I preferred the Nebbiolo with the meal much more than alone in the tasting room.

I also tried the award winning 2009 Special Selection Muscat Canelli. This Muscat has hints of jasmine and cherry blossom and was very easy to drink. I finished with the 2009 Winemakers Reserve Late Harvest Cab Sauvignon. It is a very sweet but easy to drink fruity wine and you can really taste the berries. These last two, although a little too sweet, were my favorites of the day. Since there were several people there, here is a run down of a few of the other wines...

The 2006 Winemaker's Reserve Cab Sauvignon was very dry. It also has a very weird smell. It was a little hard to get over the smell to actually drink it and it was likened to a dry musty basement. The 2008 Bella Blanc Sparkling Wine was good. It was very light and refreshing. I can definitely imagine sitting back and toasting a summer wedding, while relaxing and enjoying the bubbles. The 2009 Special Selection RosÈ of Sangiovese is a top winner for Callaway and you will definitely see why after tasting it. It is a drier rosÈ that is crisp and fruity yet almost soft, making it very drinkable.

Leaving Callaway, we had tasted many of the wines, but with such a large menu, there were still many left to try. I have noticed at the larger wineries, this one included, that I feel more like a dollar sign than at the smaller wineries. You do not get the personal service you get at smaller tasting rooms. Here you have a ticket with 6 stubs on it. With each taste, the pourer takes a stub and moves on. There was no talking about which wine they like best, just a pour and then they move on down the line. It was not necessarily their fault, as there were about 3 pourers and 60 or so people crammed in the tasting room. The wine and food are adequate, some of the food is pretty good, but the atmosphere seems rushed and hurried with not much attention to the consumer. All in all, we may be back for lunch, or at least to taste some of the remaining wines.

Next weeks we will visit Stuart Cellars. This family owned winery is located at 33515 Rancho California Road in the Temecula Valley. Marshall and Susan Stuart harvested their first grapes back in 1999. Now at full capacity, the Vineyards are expected to yield about 150 tons of grapes which will produce about 16,000 cases of wine. You can read more about Stuart Cellars on their website and they can be reached by phone at (951) 676-6414.

Gershon Bachus Vintners

2010-10-10T22:37:00.000-07:00

This week we headed over to Gershon Bachus Vintners, located at 37750 De Portola Drive. This winery is tucked in the hills of the Temecula Valley, giving it some lovely views of the surrounding vineyards and gorgeous homes (much like many of the other wineries in the area).

We arrived a bit early while Joe was still cleaning up from a big wedding the night before. He was finished setting up the tasting area so we sat down and waited for Joe to join us. Joe is extremely knowledgable and has worked in the area at wineries and in vineyards for almost a decade. He promptly provided us with ice cold water and some Italian breadsticks (for palate cleansing) and proceeded to walk us through the list of wines like a pro. It was nice to have a seated wine tasting for a change. It made us feel as if we were welcome to stay as long as we would like and not just standing around at a bar, only to be rushed out the door.

He had us try the 2009 Villa Vino Bianco 5225, a White Melange blend of Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay and Viognier. It is nice and easy to drink with hints of melon and honey, which was fantastic and cool on that hot, fall day. The 2006 GBV 442 White Melange, a blend of Pinot Grigio, Sauvignon Blanc and Viognier, has some hints of citrus, which I really liked. It was a great example of a local, refreshing, white wine.

Next, we moved on to the reds in the "Bachus" series. We started with the NV Villa Vino Tutto Rosso, which is a rich, smooth and fruity 2006/2007 Blend (he will not tell you what grapes are in the blend, as they are having a contest to guess the percentage of which grapes make up this blend to benefit the American Cancer Foundation). The next wine was the Zephyrus. This a 100% Zinfandel, Limited Edition Winds Series, aged in 100% Hungarian oak barrels for 18 months. This Zinfandel is uniquely fruity and mellow with very subtle spice accents.

The last two wines on the list are Cabs. The first, a 2005 Aquilo, 100% Cabernet Sauvignon, is a full-bodied, fruity red with hints of milk chocolate and coffee. This wine was also aged 18 months in oak barrels making it the lighter of the two Cabs and easier to drink. The last wine, a 2005 Aquilo MMV Napa Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon from the North Wind Vintners release, is a strong Cabernet. This red is aged in oak for 21 months and the added 3% Petit Verdot adds a lot of extra flavor. I enjoyed its blackberry undertones and hints of dark chocolate. I loved this wine so much, in fact, that I brought a bottle home.

The tastings will cost you $15 for the six wines, but Joe's pours are generous and we "retried" a few of the wines while leisurely chatting about the winery, the other wineries in the area and the Temecula Valley in general. We also chatted about Northern California, as many of their grapes still originate from the Napa and Sonoma Vallies, while they wait for their harvests to age. We enjoyed our wine, chat and atmosphere at Gershon Bachus Vintners and highly recommend it. Winemaking is their hobby, not their full time job, so they are only open on the weekends. Also, if there is a wedding or special event booked, they will close the tasting room for the day. Be sure to check with either their facebook page, or call them ahead of time before you head out.

Next week we will be visiting Callaway Vineyard and Winery and are looking forward to trying their 2008 Nebbiolo Bello rosÈ, the 2008 Special Selection Bella RosÈ and the award winning 2009 RosÈ of Sangiovese! (You can see someone has a problem with rosÈ wines). Callaway is located at 32720 Rancho California Road in Temecula, and for questions you can reach them at (800) 472-2377. Callaway also features Meritage at Callaway, one of the Inland Empire Magazine's "Hot 100 Restaurants in the Inland Empire", where Chef Mike Henry uses local, sustainable, and organic ingredients to produce tapas, salads and entrÈes with a Mediterranean flair.

Leonesse Cellars Winery

2010-10-03T09:00:00.000-07:00

This week we visited Leonesse Cellars Winery. Located on the De Portola Wine Trail at 38311 De Portola Road in Temecula, Leonesse is nestled in the rolling hills of the Temecula Valley and its views of the surrounding vineyards are amazing.

Our visit to Leonesse was definitely one to remember. We purchased both the standard tasting for $12, which includes 6 tastings of the standard whites and reds, and the premier tasting for $15, which allowed us another 5 tastings of the premier reds. Though I think somewhere along the way, we may have tried a few others.

We started off with a set of five whites and a rosÈ. The 2009 Melange de Blanc, a Roussane, Viognier and Marsanne blend, was a great start. This crisp, not-to-sweet white with a hint of lemon would be great on a hot summer afternoon. We continued with the 2008 Viognier, which was fine, but nothing special. The 2008 Roussane, on the other hand, had the advertised floral aromas, with hints of lemon and the obvious apricot, and was my winning white of the day! It was very easy to drink and very easy to love.

The Chardonnay was, well, a Chardonnay. (You may recall me mentioning my dislike of all things Chardonnay.) But the White Merlot was yet another good example of how the American rose\'s are improving exponentially!\r\n \r\nWe finished our set of whites with the 2008 late harvest Muscat which was rich and fruity, with hints of apricot and pear. It was a great example of a sweet and not too heavy wine that would compliment any dessert or fruit plate. We really should have brought a bottle home

Moving on to the reds... We tried the light-bodied Cinsaut and thought it was just that, light-bodied and sort of bland, nothing very exciting. Our wine consultant, Norma, who was fantastic, tried to move us past it, but we insisted we try it anyway. Norma did a great job helping and listening to us, and steering us toward the better wines, in her opinion, and we delightfully agreed and followed.

The 2008 Melange de Reves, a Cinsaut, Grenache, MourvËdre, Syrah medium-bodied blend, with flavors of cherry and black pepper was for sure a step up but for me the the 2007 Cab Sauvignon, a berry-rich spicy red, was the winning red in my opinion.

The 2007 Meritage blend of Merlot, Cab Sauvignon, Cab Franc and Petit Verdot, was another berry-rich red with a hint of plums which we enjoyed. The 2007 Cab Franc Merlot with rich cherry and berry aromas, bell pepper, licorice and spice. I have to say, this one was definitely at the top of the list. The aroma of this wine combined with the subtle tastes, really allowed you to catch the flavors.

Continuing through the 2007 Zin and a 2007 Syrah, we quickly sipped up the last of our wine tasting, as these two wines were also quite good. As we were finishing up with our tasting, we met a long-time member, David, who filled us in on the benefits of becoming a member of this winery. We shared with him some of the 2005 Cinsaut dessert wine that tasted nothing short of amazing with the chocolate David had brought. Alone, the dessert wine was good, but with the dark chocolate new flavors and nuances were brought about and another level was definitely apparent in the wine.

Just when we were about to head out for the afternoon, David suggested we join him and his friends for a tour of the vineyard and we ended up in the barrel room for another round of tasting. Good thing we had a designated driver to get us back home as we may have overdone it a little on all the great wines. We tasted mostly the same wines in the barrel room as we did up top, but some of the wine took on different characteristics, transformed by the cool, dark, oaky surroundings. This week was surely an experience to remember, and the 52 weeks of wine seems to be getting more exciting by the week!

Next week we are planning on visting Gershon Bachus Vinters, located right next to Leonesse on the De Portola Wine Trail. Back in the 1920's, Gershon Bachus immigrated from Europe to the United States with his two daughters and wife. He continued to make wine for family and friends after arriving in the US, working toward a dream of owning his own American vineyard. It took 84 years and two generations for Gershonís dream to be fulfilled. The family's winemaking tradition lives on with Gershon's grandson Ken, and his wife Christina who now own the Gershon Bachus Vitners Winery in Temecula! We are looking forward to this weeks visit.

Baily Winery

2010-09-26T09:00:00.000-07:00

This week we visited Baily Vineyard and Winery. Baily, family owned and operated, was established in 1986 By Phil and Carol Baily, and specializes in wines mostly made from Bordeaux varietals. As with most wineries in the area, the location is breathtaking. The adjoining buildings are castle-themed with large, grey brick walls, and inside they are decorated with tapestries, gargoyles and small suits of armor.

Baily's wide variety of grapes are grown on 32 acres spread out over 4 different vineyards in the Temecula valley. The vineyards are named Mothers, Brenda, La Serena and Los Amantes, and the grapes grown are Riesling, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon, Malbec, Sangiovese, Chardonnay and Muscat Blanc.

We started this week's tour by visiting Carol's Restaurant, which is located just behind the tasting room at the winery. The restaurant is open for lunch Thursday and Friday, 11:30 to 2:30 and 11:30 to 3:00 on Saturday and Sunday (Starting on October 15th, 2010 Carol's will also be open for dinner on Friday and Saturday nights from 5:00 to 8:30).

While listening to the live music, we tried Carol's most popular sandwich, the rueben, and a turkey and provolone croissant with an order of hand cut fries, while sipping a glass of the award winning 2007 Baily Montage, Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon blend. The wine was light, sparkly and refreshing and complimented the sandwich quite nicely. The sandwiches were both quite tasty, though the croissant could have used a little 'spice', and the fries are some of the best ever. (Also, we have been here before, and the tri tip steak skewers are incredible.)

After lunch we made our way to the tasting room where we tried the 2007 Baily Riesling. I really enjoyed this slightly sweet white wine with a hint of peach. Next up was the 2007 Baily rosÈ of Cabernet Sauvignon, a European sweet, gold medal winning rosÈ with hints of strawberry. Looking back, I probably should have brought a bottle or two home.

Moving on to the reds, I tried the 2004 Cabernet Franc, a great oak-aged and berry rich red, and the 2003 Vintage port. This intense and spicy port was my favorite of the day. It was heavy and sweet, but so easy to drink, without that burn you can sometimes get with other ports. I also tried the 2007 Serenity dessert wine. This sweet, late harvest Sauvignon Blanc has some hints of apples and we agree with Baily that it would pair really well with some apple pie, as it almost tasted like liquid apple pie.

The Baily family also operates two restaurants in Old Town Temecula; the Front Street Bar and Grill and Baily's Fine Dining, both located at 28699 Old Town Front Street in Old Town Temecula. The building also houses the Town club, a members-only business lunch club, and on Friday and Saturday night they turn the place into "Eleven after dark" the hottest nightclub in Temecula.

We chose Baily's Fine Dining and really enjoyed dinner and the personal attention from our waitress. She suggested we opt for the four course dinner menu for only $5 more than just the entrÈe. The Spinach, Bacon and Mushroom Crepe was almost perfect, the Butternut squash soup was ok (though a little bland), the Ceasar salad was fine, but the steaks we had as our entrÈes were juicy and perfect (also perfect as leftovers) and the dessert was even better! Chocolate soufflÈ and crËme brulÈe yes please! We will definitely go back, if not just to try the other two desserts! There is also a chicken dish that looked amazing, so we have more reasons to return.

Next week we will be visiting Leonesse Cellars. This vineyard was founded in 2003 by Mike Rennie and Gary Winder and produces Chardonnay, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Riesling, White Merlot, Muscat Canelli, and Cinsault Port and also some small lots of specially selected varietals.Leonesse Cellars is located at 38311 DePortola Road in the rolling hills of Temecula, and is open seven days a week from 11.00AM to 5.00PM and offers a variety of tours and tasting. Check out their website for more information or give them a call at 951-302-7601 before heading over.

Foot Path Winery

2010-09-19T09:00:00.000-07:00

This week we visited the very small, family owned and operated, Foot Path Winery. Located at the east side of Temecula's wine country on Glen Oaks Road, Foot Path Winery is also a Certified Organic Farm that produces a variety of fruits including figs, limes, grapefruits and tangellos.

At Foot Path Winery we were greeted by Deane Foote and his winery cats with his standard opening line "I hope you like red wine", in his barn that doubles as a no frills tasting room. The barn is filled with barrels of fermenting wine waiting to be bottled, and really gives you a sense of being in the middle of a process.

We purchased the $10 tasting, a six all reds tasting, and started at the top of the list with the 2007 Petit Verdot. I really liked the smooth, fruity, rich but very easy to drink Petit Verdot. The Krazy Foote, a Cab, Merlot, Syrah, Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot blend, was also very nice, light and fresh. I continued with the 2008 Cabernet Franc. This full-bodied wine had an interesting after taste I could not quite put my finger on, but did enjoy. The 2007 Syrah was also a very fruity and was a berry-rich fresh red that was easy to drink.

Deane only has 10 cases left of the dry and very spicy Petit Verdot, Cabernet, Malbec, Cabernet Franc and Syrah blended 2007 Estate Left Foote and isn't sure when he is going to make the Right Foote yet. Definitely get some of the Left Foote while has some remaining. All of Deane's estate wines are made from 100% organically grown and certified grapes which really cuts down on the sulfites for those who are concerned.

We ended with the 2005 Zinfandel Port. This Bronze Medal OC Fair winner is a medium sweet light port with about 4% residual sugar and 18.5% alcohol. Deane insisted we also try the much sweeter 2006 Zinfandel Port, which he called "a Candy Bar in a jar". I really enjoyed this very easy to drink Port with about 10% residual sugar and 18.5% alcohol. It was a great finish to the visit at this nice and very friendly little winery. The wines here are definitely good. If you are headed out to the valley to find quality wine and not just little gifts and food, this is the place to go.

Next week we will be visiting Baily Vineyard & Winery. Baily offers a wide selection of reds, whites, rosÈs and dessert wines. Check out their website for coupon's and specials before you head over!

We are looking forward to visiting Carol\'s restaurant at Baily Winery and perhaps also trying out Baily's fine dining located on Front street in Old Town Temecula and the tasting room located just minutes away from the restaurant. Looks like it's going to be a busy weekend.

Proost!

Briar Rose

2010-09-12T09:00:00.000-07:00

This week we visited the small boutique winery, Briar Rose. Located off the beaten path, at 41720 Calle Cabrillo in Temecula, Briar Rose Winery is Temecula's first 'reservation only' winery. We made reservations online and received a confirmation promptly but you can also call them at (951) 308-1098 if you rather make reservations "in person".

The Briar Rose estate is very quaint, and the charming Old World Tasting Room is located in an enchanted, small and inviting European style cottage. After paying for our standard tastings, $15 for seven tastings of their standard wines, we were led into the tasting room and greeted by our "Wine Consultant". The standard tasting consists of three whites, a rose, two reds and a dessert wine. We opted for the standard tasting but if you are more into reds than we are, you might want to go with the premium tasting which costs $25 but includes some of the estate wines.

We started with a 2009 Estate Viognier, this great Viognier was my favorite wine of the day and I ended up taking a bottle home. We continued with Briar Rose\s version of a "Tincho", their 2007 Citronier. This Viognier based white is flavored with a uniquely formulated lemon extract. We thought they should have served it over ice, like a new age white, and later found out that is how Les (one of the owners) likes to drink it.

The next one up was the Gewurztraminer, which due to its early harvest, is not too sweet and was not bad at all! The Fume RosÈ wasn't bad but not our favorite. This wine is not a proper rosÈ. It is made from a white grape (Sauvignon Blanc) and aged in a seasoned Cabernet Sauvignon oak barrel giving the wine its signature pink hue. I am a little critical with it comes to rosÈs, so let me know what you think!

They were out of the dessert wine and replaced the 2009 Talking Frog - Hefe'N Vine Lager with a light tannin rich 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon. It was dry but very decent. The 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon we tried after that was more complex, with less tannins, and was easier to drink. The last wine on the list was the 2004 Cabernet Franc. This heavier, full bodied red, with some hints of berry, was my favorite.

Though not on our list, our friendly wine consultant insisted we try the 2007 "Katrina" Estate Zinfandel, as it is her personal favorite. This spicy and heavier, yet fruity Zinfandel was quite good but I still liked the 2004 Cabernet Franc best.

The grounds at Briar Rose are quite lovely and magical as they remind me a lot of the cottages in older Disney movies (by design), though I was a little confused by all the Snow White references throughout the grounds, as Briar Rose is actually Sleeping Beauty's name. But, either way, it is a peaceful retreat with its shaded gardens and spacious courtyards, tucked away behind the bustling wine trail. The architecture of the surrounding buildings are the perfect accent to the theme and feel of this winery.

We really enjoyed our time at Briar Rose and recommend it! On October 2nd, 2010 Briar Rose features "The Cheese Impresario" Barrie Lynn during the Briar Rose Wine & Artisanal Cheese Pairing Adventure. Checkout their website if you would like information in this event.

Next week will feature a very small family owned and operated winery that recently changed their name from Foothe Path Farms to Foot Path Winery. Located at the east side of Temecula's wine country, Foot Path Winery is also a Certified Organic Farm that produces a variety of fruits.

The winery, located at 36650 Glen Oaks Road in Temecula, is open Monday through Fridays from 12 to 5 and weekends from 10am to 5pm. Call them at (951) 265-9951 or e-mail them if you want more information before heading out!

Proost!

Palumbo Winery

2010-08-29T09:00:00.000-07:00

This week we visited the Palumbo Family vineyard and winery. Palumbo is a small winery, they have about 12 acres of vines and a winery located at 40150 Barksdale Circle in Temecula.

We were first greeted by Sarge, the very sweet and docile vineyard dog and as he returned to lay in the sun we strolled around the property for a bit to enjoy the lovely views before heading into the tasting room; a small and cozy space where Nick Palumbo welcomed us. We paid our $10 for the tasting and tried the 2009 Viognier. Nick calls it his best Viognier yet and I enjoyed its dry finish. I am a huge rosÈ fan and have been excited that in the last few years more and more American wineries are coming out with their own rosÈ. Palumbo's Rosato Secco is a great example of how a Temecula Valley winery can produce a great European style dry rosÈ instead of the more common sweet rosÈs. I just had to take a bottle home.

The next taste was from two complementary grape varieties originating in the Rhone Valley of France. The Mourverde/Syrah blend was my favorite of the reds. The 2007 Tre Fratelli "Meritage", Palumbo's most favorite wine and a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc, was a great second and the 2006 Merlot "Catfish Vineyard", although not bad, was my least favorite.

Nick Palumbo, no relation to the family that owns Palumbo Restaurant in Old Town Temecula, is an active member of the Temecula Valley Winegrowers Association and made our visit an interesting one. He is extremely knowledgable about wines from all over the world and we spent a lot of time talking about the growth of the Temecula Valley wine country. We also chatted with him about his past life as a musician in New York, his experience in the restaurant industry and about how he eventually ended up back in Southern California purchasing the first 7 acres of the Palumbo Family vineyard in 1998.

If you didn't join us this week, this small and friendly winery is absolutely worth a visit and if you are interested in becoming a wine club member at Palumbo, ask Nicolas about it when you visit the tasting room! Though space is extremely limited to keep up the integrity of the wine, he may have a couple spots available. If not, he does have a waiting list for prospective members.

Maurice Car'rie Winery and Van Roekel Winery

2010-08-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

This week we visited Maurice Car'rie and its sister winery Van Roekel Winery and we enjoyed them! We started at Maurice Car'rie, located on Rancho California just outside of the Temecula city limits a few short miles east of I15, where we purchased our wine tasting ticket. The cost is $10 if you just want to taste the wines at Maurice Car'rie or $15 if you want to taste another six wines at Van Roekel Winery too. If you plan to visit both, definitely get the package deal. You do not need to use them on the same day as there is no date stamp on the card.

We introduced ourselves to Jennifer, who took care of our pouring in the tasting room at Maurice Car'rie. She stayed with us the whole time, which was nice, because often times the people pouring tend to run around to many different people and there is no congruency. I tried the Pineapple Champagne and liked the fresh and fruity taste of it. The Chenon Blanc was nice and refreshing, and had a light sparkle to it. Cody's Crush is a red served chilled and was quite interesting. I am not going to pretend I am an expert wine taster, I tend to base my opinion on my taste and not much else.Sure, I can taste differences, such as oak or steel, or hints of different flavors, but really I just know what I like and what I don't. We were told not to expect too much of Maurice Car'rie's wines, but I must say I was rather impressed.

Although it was a hot day (the mercury went up over 105 degrees that day), the breeze outside on the patio made us forget how hot it really was. The baked sourdough brie also helped. We were told we HAD to try this, as the winery is famous for it, and ordered it for lunch together with the Wedge Salad, both were outstanding! We took most of the bread/brie home and had it for dinner. The waitress stated she had never met two people who could finish it in one sitting, and we were nowhere near proving her wrong. If you don\'t have time to stay for lunch, they also have it cold in the fridge inside, so you can take it home, bake it up and amaze guests from out of town.

After lunch we headed out to Van Roekel Winery which was less than a mile to the east on Rancho California. It's a newer property that sits a little higher up on a hill and provided us with some nice views of the surrounding wineries. The little windmill at the entrance to the property made me think of home (The Netherlands).

I was less impressed with their wines, the Chardonnay was ok, the Voignier, a Gold Medal winner at the 2010 Temecula Balloon and Wine Festival was a little too sweet for my taste and the Gewurztraminer was rather tart and I didn't really find the hints of apricots and pears in it. The Cabernet Sauvignon was pretty decent and the 2006 Grenache with its hint of plums and a little spice was good.

Overall we had a great time at both Maurice Car'rie and Van Roekel, and both are worth a visit in our humble opinion. Though I must say, we liked Maurice Car'rie better.

This coming week we will be visiting the smaller Palumbo Family vineyard's winery. They produce about 2,500 cases per year. Owned by Nick Palumbo, together with his wife Cindy and their four kids, they are committed to small lot, handcrafted wines and are located about 6.5 miles east of I15 at 40150 Barksdale Circle in Temecula.\n\nNicholas grows Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Sangiovese varietals on the original 7 acres of the vineyard, and has planted 5 acres of Cabernet Sauvignon at Sophia's vineyard, named after his daughter Sophia. He specializes in full-bodied reds both single variety and a couple of special blends. The tasting room is open on Friday 12:00pm to 5:00pm and on Saturday and Sunday from 10:00am-5:00pm. If you are planning on visiting them outside of these hours, call them at (951) 676-7900 first.

Using Tropo for access to an ISY-99 for Home Automation

2010-07-03T10:47:00.000-07:00

I have been playing around with Tropo for a while now but needed a project to actually use it. A couple of weeks ago we moved into our new house in Murrieta, CA and I finally broke down and bought an ISY-99 from Universal Devices. The ISY-99 has a pretty decent API and I figured it would be a fun project to control the ISY-99 using SMS and Voice!

My ISY-99 uses a PowerLinc Dual Band Insteon modem from Smart Home to interface with the Insteon devices in the house. I must say the Insteon devices are for sure a far improvement over the X10 devices I've used in some previous projects!

As budget allows I will be adding more Insteon controllers to the system but at this point I have installed controllers for the following devices in my house:

Thermostat downstairs
Back porch lighting
Pool lighting
Bedside table lighting in the master bedroom
Overhead lighting in the kitchen
Most of the family room lighting

This weekend I am planning on working on a couple of new projects. First I am planning on replacing the pool lighting dimmers with regular Insteon switches so I can use the dimmers for the remainder of the family room lighting and kitchen lighting. Then, I have to check and see if I have enough controllers, I will also try to install a couple dimmers and a scene controller for the formal living room lighting.

If time permits and there is actually a common wire to my upstairs thermostat I will also add the thermostat upstairs into the mix. That will keep me busy for a while. (and there is of course the World Cup match between Spain and Paraguay to watch at 11am Pacific today)

Well that is it for the Home Automation piece, back to the Voice and SMS piece using Tropo.

Last week I created a simple SMS application to check on some devices attached to the ISY-99. At this point I can send an SMS message to my SMS Enabled Phone Number and it will query the ISY-99 through the API for the temperature, cool point and heat point from the upstairs and downstairs thermostats, the pool water temperature and the state of some of the lighting controllers.

Unfortunately the pool water temperature is currently faked out until find a way to actually measure it, I am thinking about using the EZIO8SA from Simple Home Net with a Dallas DS18B20 1 wire sensor for that but have not heard a lot of good about that combination and I really don't want to run more wires if I can help it.

The Tropo Scripting made it super easy to build the SMS application and by responding to the initial SMS message with specific requests I can now increase or decrease the temperature in the house or turn some lights on or off.

The nice thing about Tropo's "Multi Modal" approach is that once I build the app for SMS it was really easy to make it work using the voice channel too. So now I can either send SMS messages or just call and interact with the system using voice. Pretty neat!

I am also planning on building a IMified bot so I can "chat" with my ISY-99 using Google Talk but I am pretty sure that is going to be a while, just too much to do and not enough hours in the weekend to work on it.

Well that is it for now, time to actually get something done!