StarHub hosts hackathon to build new apps

SINGAPORE — StarHub is organising a one-day hackathon event to educate developers on its newly-launched SmartFoundry, an application programming interface (API) platform, the company announced today (Nov 8).

SmartFoundry allows software developers, enterprise customers and institutes of higher learning to tap on its APIs to create and deploy products and services for businesses and consumers in Singapore.

APIs are software interfaces which provide easy access to network capabilities, allowing software developers to easily incorporate communications features into their apps and services. It is as simple as adding a few lines of code in popular programming languages such as PHP and JavaScript.

StarHub will offer its initial beta release of its voice and SMS APIs at no cost. Additional APIs that allow access to other network capabilities will be deployed in the near future, with the full suite of APIs available by the second half of next year.

Mr Stephen Lee, StarHub’s Head of i3 (Innovation, Investment, Incubation), said: “We are excited to make available our voice call and SMS capabilities as APIs to the developer community, to promote innovation, growth and productivity in app development, as well as to support tech start-ups and savvy individuals to fast track their ideas to enterprises and consumers in Singapore.”

He believes that SmartFoundry can help software developers gain the competitive edge by implementing communication features quickly in their offerings for customers, without the need to learn specific programming languages, master different softwares or invest in costly hardware.

With SmartFoundry’s voice and SMS APIs, a software developer can build rich voice and SMS features in to their apps and services. For example, restaurants can have a personalised interactive voice app to help greet customers. Other exciting features includes call recording, conferencing and text to speech.

StarHub has adopted the Telephony API set from Tropo. Mr Jason Goecke, CEO of Tropo, said: “We are excited and honoured to be part of StarHub’s SmartFoundry initiative. Developers have shown a great interest to embed telecom APIs in their mobile and web apps. StarHub’s SmartFoundry has made it easy for them today.

“At Tropo, our goal has always been to collaborate with mobile carriers to make telecom APIs simpler and help developers to create successful new services quickly and easily.”

Mr Peter Kua, CommGate’s Chief Technology Officer, said: “There are just so many reasons to fall in love with SmartFoundry and to integrate it into our CRM platform. From a simple click-to-call to the more sophisticated workflows like responding instantly to incoming leads, SmartFoundry’s simple-but-powerful API is a delight to our developers. And the best part is we don’t need to acquire, operate and maintain our own telecommunications network.”

The hackathon focuses on building innovative apps using StarHub’s voice and SMS APIs. Developer evangelist Mr Johnny Diggz from Tropo will mentor at this event.

This one-day event will be held on Nov 16 at The HUB Singapore, National Youth Council Academy. StarHub is looking to incubate innovative ideas or software projects that it can bring to market. To sign up, please go to http://tapi.starhub.com/hackathon.