While waiting on our shortcode to be enabled by the carriers, we are putting the finishing touches on the interface, and marketing web site. While writing marketing copy, I decided to put myself up to a challenge.

If I was a developer who wanted to provide stock quotes via SMS, how long would it take to set the whole thing up?

The answer, less than 15 minutes.

First I signed up for the Mobivity service, and secured the keyword ‘QUOTE’ on short code 95495.

I then opened Microsoft Visual Studio and created a simple handler that would take the input from the Mobivity Service. The service simply sends 2 parameters to the destination web address. P1 and P2. The first word after the keyword is p1, and the second word is p2.

I then located a free stock quote web service. From my .NET handler, I made the call to the web service, pulled the current price and change from the XML, and printed it to the web page.

The last step was to go back to the Mobivity control panel, choose the keyword ‘QUOTE’ and put in the web address of where messages should be forwarded.

I sent ‘QUOTE IBM’ to 95495, and quickly received the quote.

We’re very excited about the service, and plan to open up the beta testing to outside develpers soon. Please let me know if you are interested.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 15th, 2006 at 10:04 am and is filed under General. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.