Congratulations to Michael who’s the winner of our Heroku+Twilio Developer contest. Michael got seriously busy, and submitted not one but two projects for the contest!

The first is a handy app that tells students, faculty, employees, and visitors at Duke University which places on campus are currently open. Simply call in, and it’ll read you back a list of open restaurants, libraries etc. There’s even a keypad-based search option. Seriously cool stuff! You can try it on the Twilio sandbox by calling (866) 583-6913 and entering 4456-8772 when prompted for a PIN.

If that wasn’t enough, Michael also hammered out a suite of Ruby development tools for Twilio, including...

Not too long ago building telephony apps, such as interactive voice response systems, was far out of reach for most web developers. Now, an exciting crop of new startups is rapidly changing that, making it easy to incorporate voice capabilities into any web app, or even build standalone voice apps.

Twilio is emerging as one the leading companies in this area, offering a a REST API for building voice apps.

The model is simple: sign up for a number with Twilio. When a call comes in, Twilio makes an HTTP request to URL of your choice, containing information about the phone call. The processing logic resides entirely inside your web app, and instructions are passed back and forth using XML....