The holiday season is officially in full swing, and Santa is prepping for his big night by offering phone calls to anyone who may need a little extra motivation to stay good through the end of the year (or who would just love to hear from the big man himself). To request a call, visit ChristmasDialer.com, where you’ll be able to choose from three possible voice greetings that can be directed towards any phone number.
The first call is free, while subsequent requests cost around a dollar each (depending on how many you buy at a time). Paid calls can also be made to international numbers, and can be scheduled to go out at a specified time. The site is based on the technology behind PrankDialer, and could probably be recreated fairly easily using Twilio, an API for phones that we covered last week.
Also be sure to check out The Santa Tracker on Christmas, where you’ll be able to watch him make his way around the globe in real time.
It’s amazing what people will pay money for. I’d just pick up the phone, adopt a jovial tone of voice and say ho ho ho followed by whatever I wanted…
And they say English isn’t a practical major…
Great writeup Jason – coincidentally enough, matt and I built iamsaintnick.com on top of Twilio, and have nothing but good things to say about their api and team. The webservices were dirt simple, and let us build the whole app in less than 4 days. We started last Thursday night, after their public launch, and launched Monday morning. Definitely wouldn’t have been possible without the Twilio api and their rockstar support guys.
Along the Christmas lines, here’s a shameless plug for a new site we’ve built, http://www.kids...antaletters.com You’ve always wondered what happens to all those letters to Santa, now you know!
good write up jason
Ok, so this is taking the commercialization of Christmas pretty far. But, that being said, this kind of service is great for the parent who wants to really convince his kid that Santa is real. Imagine having your kid get this call with his parents standing right there. This is the beauty of software applications, the right mind can come up with just about anything, and the right marketer can sell it to just about anyone.
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