2008-10-18

Yahoo! HackU + iPhone + GrandCentral = Visual Voicemail

I've had an iPhone since somewhere in July, and had GrandCentral since last September.... GrandCentral gave me visual voicemail on my BlackBerry and saved me minutes (since it used my unlimited data plan, but this doesn't really matter since T-Mobile now give unlimited minutes to voicemail). Sadly, Google never made GrandCentral's mobile (or other) site work on the iPhone, so I was left in the dark.

I quickly realized why Mobile Safari couldn't play what GrandCentral mobile returns, but I was too lazy to do anything with that knowledge. That is, until Yahoo! and God himself (creator of PHP) came to my school.

The Premise of HackU is "a day-long festival of coding, camaraderie, demos, awards, food, music and jollity (it’s a real word, look it up). It’s not about perfect code, just your creativity, a cool idea and a working prototype." [HackU Oct 18, 2008] Well, this isn't really a prototype... it's a full blown product! I owe any style (in the buttons and background), and the multiple message code to Jeffrey Sung.

If you have an iPhone and a GrandCentral account, try it out by going to http://rectu.ms/iphone on your iPhone! (Note: the site will only display properly on Safari, Mobile Safari, or Google Chrome) Also, I have submitted the WebApp to Apple for possible inclusion at their WebApps page.

If you're really interested, you can see the presentation I gave at HackU bellow... or even email me for the code (soon to be released under GPL).