Web 2 Voice

Another Mashup using IfByPhone and Yelp!

I am living proof that writing mashups isn’t as hard as you might think.  I am not a developer.  I do not specialize in voice mashups.  And yet, I can write a mashup that can combine three separate APIs and do something somewhat useful.

As you may recall, I recently posted about a mashup a colleage had written using IfByPhone’s hosted IVR service with Yelp! Yelp is a business review site.  It has a vast number of reviews for bars, restaurants, stores, etc.  It also happens to have an easy to use API.  The original mashup asks for the phone number for a business and reads back information on the reviews.

I decided to add on to the new level, adding in a geo-location aspect to it.  The new mashup takes a 5 digit zip code as input.  It then uses the Yahoo Maps API to turn that into a latitude and longitude.  We then feed that to Yelp, and we get 3 random bars nearby to that area.   You’ll hear the names of the bars, where they are located, and have an option to transfer to them immediately.

You can check it out by calling 866.596.8333.   The menu will ask if you want to get reviews for a business (press 1) or to get bars by entering a zip code.

Again, the main point here is that writing mashups for actual developers (as opposed to those of us who merely play developers on the web) isnt’ hard.   The mashup is written in PHP using IfByPhone’s hosted IVR service to interact withe the voice.

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