Michael Ofori Amanfo Boateng

In its effort to take over the SMS Message world, Clickatell earlier this week hired Chuck Drake as Executive Vice President of Global Marketing, and Bill Wolfe as Executive Vice President of Research & Development to help steer the affairs of the mobile company.

Clickatell has also upgraded all its servers and if you are an existing client, you will realise there are now many IP Addresses available for use in sending SMS Text Messages.

With over 8,000 active customers worldwide, including Barclays Bank, BBC, CNN, FNB, and Oracle, Clickatell has proven itself as the leader in providing mobile messaging solutions to large enterprise organizations and delivering online SMS services for small to medium businesses.

With the explosion of cell phone usage, mobile messaging is fast becoming a ubiquitous and cost effective way to communicate directly to customers, partners, and employees.

Clickatell is bolstering its worldwide facilities to meet the growing demand for SMS messages being sent globally for a multitude of applications. Having expanded coverage to include an additional 85 networks, Clickatell supports more networks and carriers than any other messaging provider in the world. Clickatell has further upgraded its enterprise-grade facilities to include hosted services, receiving the SAS 70 stamp of approval, a widely recognized standard used as a proof point used by Chief Security Officers to examine the due diligence process needed to assure data security, safety and integrity.

Within its existing 24×7 system, Clickatell has significantly extended its customer support capability by enhancing Quality of Service (QOS) and reliability of its IT infrastructure, which is built on the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework, a set of industry guidelines and best practice techniques for managing IT infrastructure, development, and operations. In addition to these enterprise-grade additions to its facilities, Clickatell has added network support in Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, and Guam, and has also increased reliability in China, Hong Kong, and Japan.

In addition, Clickatell has hired Chuck Drake as Executive Vice President of Global Marketing, and Bill Wolfe as Executive Vice President of Research & Development. These two executives are poised to bring a strong focus in the financial services sector and building large infrastructures to support millions of mobile transactions.

Chuck joins Clickatell from MarkMonitor and Corillian where he led both companies to achieve market leadership status in their respective Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Enterprise software markets serving Financial Services, Retail, Manufacturing, High Technology, CPG and other verticals worldwide.

Bill joins Clickatell from VeriSign and Openwave Systems where he was responsible for managing critical business cycles to provide complex, intelligent, highly secure, and reliable enterprise infrastructures to deliver core communications services targeting the Entertainment, Technology, and Telecommunications markets.

Via Clickatell

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Today is Blog Action Day for the Environment …. Hurray!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What is this day About?
This is generally a day where real bloggers who Blog To The Banks (LOL) write articles on their blogs to promote environmental safety and quality.

What can we do as bloggers?
We can serve as an ambassadors by blogging to help to protect and improve the environment. Bloggers can also take it upon themselves to make sure that air, land and water are looked after by everyone in today’s society, so that tomorrow’s generations can inherit a cleaner and healthier world.

In Short this is what you can also do to help

• Post on your blog relating to the environment on Blog Action Day
• Donate your day’s earnings to an environmental charity
• Promote Blog Action Day around the web

What did i do on this day?
Well instead of my normal 3 Plates of my favourite Fried-Riped-Plantain and Beans, I decided to forfeit two of them and take just one in solidarity of this great day of celebrating the environment as a blogger. Hope you also did something interesting. Cheers.

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The first part of the tutorial on to retrieve two-way text messages from clickatell gateway was basically about creating a mysql database that will store data received from Clickatell Gateway via the Callback Url.

This tutorial is will just show you how to create your “settings.php” which declares the main settings of your programme. It stores your mysql login details and the clickatell gateway api login details.

All you have to do is copy and paste the code below and save it as “settings.php”. Then you change all the xxxx in the code to the appropriate values per your mysql database and your credentials at clickatell.

settings.php

<?php

$baseurl =”http://api.clickatell.com”;

//User details @ Clickatell
$user = “xxxx”;
$password = “xxxx”;
$api_id = “xxxxx”;

//mysql details
$hostname_conn = “xxxx”;
$database_conn = “xxxx”;
$username_conn = “xxxx”;
$password_conn = “xxxx”;
$conn = mysql_pconnect($hostname_conn, $username_conn, $password_conn) or trigger_error(mysql_error(),E_USER_ERROR);

?>

User Details @ Clickatell
//$user = This is the username assigned to you by clickatell
//$password = This your clickatell api password;
//$api_id = The api id can be generated on your clickatell control panel

User Details @ Clickatell
// $hostname_conn = This is your database hostname
//database_conn = Change this to the name of your database
// $username_conn = This is the user logon to ur database
// $password_conn = Change this to your database password

Part 1 | Part 2

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In an earlier post, I wrote about what a two-way (2-way) or bidirectional messaging is and the sms messaging provider to consider if you are considering building a 2-way sms application.

This tutorial shows you how to retrieve your two-way messages from Clickatell’s Gateway using their HTTP/S Protocol. It is fairly simple and almost the same as using a Callback URL to retrieve SMS Message response from Clickatell gateway.

Before using this tutorial, make sure two things are done

1. REQUEST for your Clickatell two-way number.
2. Set the callback URL at your control panel on Clickatell’s website. eg. (www.mboateng.com/2way/callback.php)

Once these two things have been done, you will need to create a mysql table which will store data sent to your web server by Clickatell’s Gateway API. Below is the mysql script.

Mysql Table (tbl_messages)

CREATE TABLE ‘tbl_messages’ (
‘msgid’ int(10) NOT NULL auto_increment,
’sender’ varchar(50) default NULL,
‘recipient’ varchar(50) default NULL,
‘dated’ varchar(50) default NULL,
‘message’ text,
PRIMARY KEY (’msgid’)
) ENGINE=MyISAM;

//The sender field stores the number/ name of the sender
//The recipient of course will be your Clickatell assigned number
//The Dated field will store the timestamp of the sms message
// The Message fields stores the SMS Message

Part 1 | Part 2

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Are you planning to get your own SMS Number where you can receive inbound text messages direct to your system applications or Web Applications? Are you also planning to undertaking a two-way sms messaging application? Well the best place to consider is Clickatell.

Clickatell makes extending your messaging capabilities with two-way SMS simple. You can easily receive messages by making use of their HTTP, SMPP or FTP application programming interfaces.

What is Two-Way(2-Way) Messaging

A Two-Way(2-Way) SMS Messaging Service enables you to SEND and RECEIVE SMS Text Messages and Manage responses directly on your PC through an SMS Application.

For example a web advertiser can send out messages to all its web publishers (using say bulk sms) and receive replies from them directly to his PC.

Sending the SMS message could be easily done with your existing email client, server, website or a business application.

Two-way messaging requirements:

* Clickatell API account.
* Apply for a two-way messaging from inside your account

How two-way messaging can help you:

* Bidirectional Messaging
* Clickatell’s two-way messaging is currently available in over 100 countries.

Check Out More on Two-Way SMS Messaging @ Clickatell >>>

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I quite remember the hurdle I went through getting a good apache+mysql software to test my PHP Applications locally before I uploaded them onto the net.

My problem was getting a one-stop-software that could satisfy all the basic needs in hosting a php website.

I used quite a number of softwares but one that stood out amongst the rest was EasyPHP.

EasyPHP technically had all that I wanted to do my php coding from image processing, xml parsing to code encryption. It has an inbuilt phpmyadmin as well to help you build your mysql database.

EasyPHP is a complete software package allowing to use all the power and the flexibility that offers the dynamic language PHP and the effecient use of databases under Windows. Package includes an Apache server, a MySQL database, a fully PHP execution, as well as easy development tools for your web site or your applications.

The current version is EASYPHP 2.0 beta 1, and it contains Apache 2.2.3, PHP 5.2.0, MySQL 5.0.27, phpMyAdmin 2.9.1.1 and SQLiteManager 1.2.0.

Via Easyphp.org

Easyphp supports many languages including French and English.

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I have successfully completed my tutorials on how to Send SMS Message Using Clickatell API with a php script. The responses I have gotten so far are quite ok, so that means I am going to be moving to other topics in the subsequent weeks.

A friend of mine wants me to give more information about data maintenance and security in my subsequent articles and so in the next couple of weeks I will be doing more work on data handling.

Some of the vital topics I am going to be writing about are Continuous Data Protection, File Synchronization and Remote Access.

It will also include general tips on Data Protection, from backing up data to restoring data in all forms. Interesting features will also be given on the various kinds of Data and File Synchronization.

Whilst waiting for me to write on the above mentioned articles, you can check on Tilana Systems for the range of products they offer.

By the way have u heard of the current RSS battle between some top weblog monguls? More coming later

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After going through the first 6 parts of this tutorial, I realized I could do more to check the status of an sms message so i decided to add this part of the tutorial.

What this does is to check the status and charge of a message by your self just in case the callback url doesn’t give you the required feedback on time. Meaning this tutorial will help you to manual query the clickatell gateway to check the status of your sms message.

All you have to do is to create a page “status.php” and use the code below.

status.php

<?php
//*********************************************** //
// Send SMS Message Using Clickatell API – Part 7
// 23rd September 2007
// www.mboateng.com
// Michael Ofori Amanfo Boateng
//
//********************************************

echo “loading……”;

require_once(’settings.php’);

// auth call
$url = “http://api.clickatell.com/http/auth?user=$user”;
$url = $url.”&password=$password&api_id=$api_id”;
$ret = file($url);

// split our response. return string is on first line of the data returned
$sess = split(”:”,$ret[0]);
$sess_id = trim($sess[1]);

mysql_select_db($database_conn, $conn);
$result1 = mysql_query(”select * from tbl_outbox where status <> ‘004′ and dayofyear(now()) – dayofyear(dated) < 1 limit 10″,$conn);
$result2 = mysql_num_rows($result1);

while ($mydata1 = mysql_fetch_array($result1)){
$messageid = $mydata1['messageid'];
$api = trim($mydata1['apimsgid']);

//////////////////////////////////////////////
/////////////////////////////////////////////
// check charge
$charge_url = “$baseurl/http/getmsgcharge?session_id=$sess_id”;
$charge_url = $charge_url.”&apimsgid=$api”;
$charge_return = file($charge_url);

foreach($charge_return as $item){

$findapi = strpos($item, “apiMsgId:”);
$findcharge = strpos($item, “charge:”);
$findstatus = strpos($item, “status:”);

$length = strlen($item);

//Find the apimsgid
$part1 = substr($item, $findapi,$findstatus );
$part2no = strpos($item, $part1);

$api = trim(substr($item, $findapi,$findcharge ));
$status= trim(substr($item, $findstatus,$length ));
$charge= trim(substr($item, $findcharge, $findstatus – $findcharge ));

//find charge
$ret = $charge;
$sess = split(”:”,$ret);
$charge = trim($sess[1]);

//find status
$ret = $status;
$sess = split(”:”,$ret);
$status = trim($sess[1]);

mysql_select_db($database_conn, $conn);
$sql = “update tbl_outbox set status = ‘$status’ , charge = ‘$charge’ where messageid =$messageid”;
$result = mysql_query($sql, $conn) or die(mysql_error());
}
}
mysql_free_result($result1);

echo “Update Completed”;

?>

Download Tutorial >>

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

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