im-roberto

Send Google Voice SMS Push notifications to your iPhone using your webhost

Roberto — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 21:43:59 +0000

As I have promised, I created a little ruby script which can easily be translated into Perl, PHP, or whatever language of your choosing. You are required to somehow pipe the e-mail to your script which there are various methods to do so, I will be explaining it using Dreamhost because that happens to be my current web host as of this writing.

Let’s get started

The Process:
What we are doing here is we are forwarding SMS messages (theres an option in your google voice settings) to your GMAIL account. On your GMAIL account you are going to then forward the message using a filter to a domain name e-mail address, which will then be piped to the script. The script is going to parse the raw email (convert raw data into something readable) and finally send it to your iPhone using the Prowl API (you will need to have the Prowl App installed on your iPhone).

No that we got that out of the way login to your Google Voice account and click on the Settings link. Then select the Voicemail and SMS tab. Under the Voicemail Notifications section check the box that says “Email the message to:“.

Logon to your GMAIL account and click on the Settings link select the Filters Tab and at the very bottom click the Create a new filter link. In the From Field enter the following:

*@txt.voice.google.com

Click on Next Step and Check the following boxes:
Skip the Inbox (Archive it) Forward it to: THE DOMAIN EMAIL ADDRESS YOU WILL BE CREATING SOON Delete it

You have successfully completed the easy part of this!

As I have mentioned before this guide will walk you through using Dreamhost as your hosting services. It can easily be done by other means with your host just send them an e-mail or try to follow the general idea of this guide Incoming Mail and PHP.

Login to your Dreamhost Panel and go into the Mail -> Manage E-Mail section. You are going to create an e-mail address using the email address you added to the GMAIL filter that is going to only forward mails to your server mail. What I mean by that is say I used in my GMAIL filter SMS@YOURDOMAIN.COM then create that same address in your Email panel on Dreamhost but select the option to only forward incoming mails to this address to your local server email. Your local server email address on Dreamhost is your username@server.com for example the server im on is jebediah.dreamhost.com then I’m going to use DREAMHOST-USERNAME@jebediah.dreamhost.com. You can easily get the server address by logging in using SSH it will be one of the lines that appears when you login.

Next thing we will need to do is create a file named .forward.postfix with the following contents and put it in your root directory:

Also create another file named .procmailrc with the following contents and put it in your root directory as well:

The only thing you need to know here is that the last three lines matches the forwarding e-mail address we created on your host and tells it to forward that incoming e-mail to the ruby script. The reason why we are matching for “X-Forwarded-To” is because we are forwarding from our GMAIL and therefore the e-mail address we created on our webhost wont appear in the “To” field of the raw e-mail.

The Ruby script is very plain and simple create a file named mail.rb and put it the root folder or wherever you wish to just as long as you are properly specifying its full path in the .procmailrc file, with the following contents:

The script is pretty straight forward we are using the TMAIL gem and the Prowly gem. The Tmail gem basically takes the STDIN input (the raw email) and parses it to something more usable to send to the Prowl API.

Of course this is a one user scenario, if you wish to support multiple users and higher volumes you may want to look into using other means. I originally created a similar version of this script in PHP which just grabs the raw data and performs a post request to another script in order to keep things to a minimum on the piped script.

Once you have the raw e-mail parsed you can basically do anything you want. You can match the mail.to e-mail address to a local database and extract the Prowl API from there to support multiple users. Or even go a step further and send the message to your GTALK by creating a simple XMPP bot. This script is very much open source, do as you wish with it. I’m pretty new at writing things in ruby so if you have yet a more efficient way of doing this please let me know.

Useful resources:
http://www.evolt.org/incoming_mail_and_php
http://tmail.rubyforge.org/
http://prowl.weks.net/api.php
http://github.com/rafmagana/prowly

Google Voice Push Notifications on iPhone

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Google Voice Push Notifications on iPhone

Roberto — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 21:12:40 +0000

If you have not yet heard of google voice its basically a service that provides you a phone number that you can use to make phone calls, and send and receive text messages through google. In any case the best way to find out about the service is to simply watch the videos posted on the website at http://www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html.

Google Voice is a very convenient service because it can save you money on your cell phone bill by no longer needing to pay the extra $15 for unlimited text messages all you need is access to the web. This service is easily available on any phone that uses the Android OS. Unfortunately Apple did not approve the Google Voice app on the iPhone appstore and therefore there is no easy way to receive push notifications to your iPhone when you have received a text message or voice mail on your google voice number. The closest thing you have is the ability to receive e-mails that are forwarded to your phone (if you have your e-mail set up on your phone).

Luckily you still have some options if you are an iPhone owner. You do need to jump through a bit of hurdles if you wish to get this done though.

Things you will need:

An iPhone.. Duh!
Prowl (iPhone App)
Either an account at: http://googlevoice.ub3rk1tten.com/voicegrowl/ or with https://www.gvmax.com/

I have used the Voice Growl service in the past and works quiet well, with the exception that at times the service does go down for a few minutes. I have not tested or used GVMax but it does sound promising and the software is now open source as well which may be something you Java nerds may like to take a look at.

Sadly enough these services provide you with a means to receive Push notifications to your iPhone when you receive a message but still does not provide you with an easy means to reply back. You can simply use googles renovated google voice mobile site which works well but depending on how fast your connection may be can slow you down. Or if you have a jailbroken iphone you can always give the app found in Cydia.

If you are one handy developer there are also many libraries written in various languages that you can use to your advantage for receiving and replying to messages. Prowl has various 3rd party libraries you can use to send notifications to your iPhone. I have found the php library found at github to work well for all my needs http://github.com/Fenric/ProwlPHP. Aside from that there are also various third party libraries for Google Voice (aka unofficial google voice api) in many languages all you need to do is perform a google search, I currently use the PHP library found at github http://github.com/aaronpk/Google-Voice-PHP-API. If you are a developer with a little creativity and a bit of time you can come up with a good solution for your iPhone Google Voice needs.

I will soon be posting my own code as well as I currently use Google Voice -> My Dreamhost Procmail -> Prowl & Gtalk to receive messages and currently working on an XMPP format to send messages back.

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LA Ruby Meetup

Roberto — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:44:16 +0000

A few weeks ago I attended my first LA Ruby meet up. Basically it’s a group of Ruby enthusiasts getting together and talking about Ruby and Ruby on Rails. I was rather surprised the community was more of an older mature crowd than. I would have expect various to be young web entrepreneurs or something of that liking. There was a speaker at the meetup from Heroku showing off their product and how awesome their dynamic cloud services work. It’s basically a cloud within a cloud which makes for interesting ultra dynamic services. Along with Heroku we also had another guest speaker who spoke of marketing and pitching your web product to the masses. It’s been a while since I blog and thought id share my wonderful experience with the LA Ruby group earlier this month.

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Glimpses of Egypt Vimeo Video

Roberto — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 17:25:37 +0000

Lately it has been my passion to really try to get out and travel as much as I possibly can. I’ve actually been considering a long backpacking trip in the middle east and end somewhere in Asia be it India or Thailand. Watching this really beautiful video of Egypt and all of its ruins makes me want to leave on my trip as soon as possible. Although there is much left, I’m only at the stage of brainstorming and seeking information I have been moved and motivated on my travel idea.

It seems like lately I’ve found Vimeo to the home of most of my entertainment seeing that the videos found on the site have far better quality than the videos found on Youtube. Aside from that I have found many gorgeous travel videos from a span of various places across the world.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Video clips from my weekend at Seattle

Roberto — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 01:20:18 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

I took a rather short vacation in late May early June to Seattle. It was a long time since I last get to see a few old friends whom I actually met online (that story is for another day). We went out camping to a salt water lake or canal area a few hours outside of Seattle. There I met some new people, had a few drinks, ate tons of new foods to me, and just plain out had a blast. It has been over a year since I really take any time off and get to really travel and explore another country. I still aspire in getting to know the world. Hopefully that will come in time, be it traveling in luxury or vagabonding my way through the world.

Glimpses of Egypt Vimeo Video

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Kuroshio Sea Vimeo Video on 5DMK2

Roberto — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 02:35:11 +0000

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Ever since Canon showed off some of the sample videos recorded on the 5D Mark 2 camera I fell in love. The quality and clarity is amazing. This video was recorded in Japan in Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium. This Aquarium has one of the worlds largest tanks, holding whale sharks and various other rare sea species. Seeing that one of my friends is going to be studying Marine Biology and watching this video I begin to understand what she finds so fascinating about sea life.

It’s best if you watch it in HD on full screen mode to really appreciate it:
http://vimeo.com/5606758

Glimpses of Egypt Vimeo Video

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The Pillows 20th anniversary contest!

Roberto — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 23:57:58 +0000

My friend Manuel has entered the Pillows 20th anniversary Youtube contest. Basically they have to make a cover to one of their songs and the winner will be picked based on Views. So far based on what I’ve seen they have the best video. Good Luck Elmmo hope you win and get to go to Japan!

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Happy 4th of July

Roberto — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:28:50 +0000

Happy 4th of July

I just thought I’d share a humbling moment I had yesterday while doing some market research at work. This is something I posted on my Facebook status and I will try my best to pursue a more modest outtake on my daily life based on this, and not take so many things for granted.

Today I spoke with 3 musicians from Congo, and they told me that we take all that we have for granted here in the US. We live in wonderland. I must say that after that conversation they really opened my eyes to how blessed we really are. Everyone have a Happy 4th of July Weekend

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Just Learning

Roberto — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:11:08 +0000

Ever since I came across the Youtube Edu site I’ve been watching a whole lot of programming videos and have picked up a whole bunch of concepts that I would have never learned on my own. Personally I see this as a very good resource to those who really want to learn the concepts of software engineering as well to those seasoned programmers that just need to refresh and get a quick reference to some concept of some kind.

Beginning Programming in Java :
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=84A56BC7F4A1F852

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Free Universities Courses on Youtube!

Roberto — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 08:17:23 +0000

Just recently I’ve ran across the Educational side of Youtube, more specifically the section that includes various videos from many well known universities. Today I sat down and watched through a few beginner programming courses, from the Stanford University Computer Sciences department, and beginner courses in Electronics Engineering. This is mind blowing and amazing all at once because most of these videos were recorded inside of the classroom of that University and if you can dig deep enough in the Universities website you can probably get a hold of other classroom handouts and other useful materials from that specific class. I won’t even speak of the MIT Open Course website because that alone is a gold mine of education. In any case I’m going to be cancelling all my dates and appointments and hide myself away from a few months while I sit and go through these classes online for free.

http://www.youtube.com/edu
http://ocw.mit.edu/

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