Valentine's Day is coming up and both love and machine learning are in the air. Some would use flower petals to determine if someone loves them or not, but developers might use a tool like TensorFlow. This post will go over how to perform binary text classification with neural networks using Twilio and TensorFlow in Python. Text +16782767139 to test out this text classification.

Prerequisites

• A Twilio account - sign up for a free one here and receive an extra $10 when you upgrade through this link
• A Twilio phone number with SMS capabilities - configure one here
• Set up your Python and Flask developer environment - Make sure you have Python 3 downloaded as well as ngrok.

Setup

Activate a virtual environment in Python 3 and download this requirements.txt file. Be sure to use Python 3.6.x for TensorFlow. On the command line run pip3 install -r requirements.txt …

IVR stands for Interactive Voice Response system. It's a way for you to communicate with your users over the phone. IVR is operated by voice and by the DTMF tones that phones produce when pressing keys on the keypad.

Just like your web site, mobile app or chatbot, IVR is another way for you to interact with your users. IVR holds a unique set of features that makes it ideal under some circumstances:

• Visual impairments: Users that rely on screen readers to navigate websites and mobile apps are used to interact with voice based interfaces.
• No Internet access: Users in remote areas or in places where an Internet connection is not constantly available or very expensive.
• Technologically challenged: Users that have trouble dealing with websites and apps, like the elderly, often find IVR much easier to operate.
• No access to smartphones or a computer: Users that …

The mobile penetration rate in the world is currently estimated at 4.68 billion mobile phone users and according to a report by Statista, the number is projected to increase even further in 2020. This increase coupled with other factors, such as the advancement of Artificial intelligence, particularly Machine learning, and the underlying technologies such as natural language processing, has made chatbots become very popular and necessary.

What is a chatbot and why is it important?

A chatbot is a software or program that is designed to simulate conversation or chat with human users through text messages, virtual platforms integrated into websites, applications, and instant messengers.

Chatbots help to streamline and automate customer support by getting rid of tedious tasks, thereby enhancing customer experience. They also give companies room to implement new marketing ideas that can improve customer conversion rates.

In this tutorial, we are going to learn first hand …

Welcome to the Twilio Startups 7 (TS7, for short) where we feature exciting founders from around the world to share their inspiring entrepreneurial journeys through seven quickfire questions. Today we would like to introduce you to Sean Pour of SellMax. Read on to learn more about how Sean founded the company as a teenager and grew it into a national business. Check out tips for creating meaningful campaigns, setting realistic expectations with investors, and beating imposter syndrome.

• Company Name: SellMax
• Founder Name(s): Sean Pour
• Industry: Automotive
• Stage/Funding: Early-stage
• Location: San Diego, CA

From the founder of SellMax

We reached out to Sean at SellMax to get insight into launching your first business and building out your own custom call center to make better data-driven decisions.

Describe your company in 160 characters or fewer (the original length of a text message)

We are a company that makes selling …

Every day, hundreds of thousands of people turn to crisis hotlines for support during some of the hardest moments of their lives. With suicide rates in the U.S. at their highest since WWII, and so many Americans succumbing to "deaths of dispair" (drug overdose, alcohol-related illness, and suicide) that life expectancy has decreased the past 3 years — demand for these life saving intervention services is increasing. In fact, calls to the National Suicide Lifeline Network have more than doubled since 2014 — with that number expected to climb even more significantly once the new 3-digit suicide hotline number (988) is rolled out nationwide.

This growth in demand is making it increasingly challenging for already resource-constrained crisis centers to provide help to everyone who so desperately needs it. Unfortunately, many people in crisis today abandon their call after experiencing long wait times or simply never reach out in the first …

In my last tutorial, I showed you how to add chat to a Laravel app using Twilio Chat. In this tutorial, I’ll be showing you how to enhance the app by adding media support to it using Twilio Programmable Chat. That is, allowing users to send media files as message.

Prerequisites

In order to follow this tutorial, you will need the following:

• Composer installed on your local machine
• Basic knowledge of the Laravel Framework
• Basic knowledge of Vue.js
• A Twilio account

Getting Twilio Credentials

Login to your Twilio dashboard and copy both your ACCOUNT SID and AUTH TOKEN.

Before you can start using the Twilio Programmable Chat, you need to first create a chat service:

Take note of your SERVICE SID.

Lastly, you need to create an API key:

Also, take note of both your API SECRET and API SID.

Getting Started

To make …

Stripe is a payment gateway that provides developer APIs to help you receive payments from your application/website.

The Twilio API for WhatsApp provides a platform that helps you send any type of business message via WhatsApp through a streamlined API.

In this tutorial, we will be exploring how to send payment invoices and notifications to our users via WhatsApp when they make payments on our website.

Pre-requisites

To follow along with this post, you will need the following:

• A Twilio account (Sign up for a free account now)
• Composer, Ngrok and Laravel CLI installed on your machine
• Knowledge of the Laravel framework
• A Stripe account

Getting Started

To get started, create a new Laravel application and assign the folder name.

Next, install our application dependencies using composer. These dependencies include the Twilio SDK and the Stripe PHP library (to …

The Web Speech API has two functions, speech synthesis, otherwise known as text to speech, and speech recognition, or speech to text. We previously investigated text to speech so let's take a look at how browsers handle recognising and transcribing speech with the SpeechRecognition API.

Being able to take voice commands from users means you can create more immersive interfaces and users like using their voice. In 2018, Google reported that 27% of the global online population is using voice search on mobile. With speech recognition in the browser you can enable users to speak to your site across everything from a voice search to creating an interactive bot as part of the application.

Let's see how the API works and what we can build with it.

What you'll need

We're going to build an example app to experience the API, if you want to build along …

Packages primarily provide a way to add functionality to your Laravel applications and can serve as a great way of decoupling your application. The great thing about building packages is that they can easily be reused. In this tutorial, we’ll be looking at how to get started with building a Laravel package. We’ll be building a package that allows you to generate random fake data specifically in the first names, last names and email fields for a user; a simpler version of the popular Faker PHP Library. Interestingly, down the line we will make use of the same Faker Library to generate seed data.

Technical Requirements

To follow along, you’ll need the following:

• PHP Development Environment
• Composer globally installed

Setting up a New Package

To get started setting up a new Laravel package, we’ll be using Composer. From the terminal, cd into your project’s directory and run the following …