Caller ID Made Simple

http://rdegges.com/im-working-on-a-startup?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rdegges+%28rdegges%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

by nantes • 14 years ago

152 64 14 years ago

rdegges.com

savrajsingh• 14 years ago

I've wondered why twilio doesn't have this feature. Good stuff!

taf2• 14 years ago

They do provide caller id information, but not in a query interface like this. You either get the caller id information after making a call or receiving a call. Assuming you have the number configured and it costs 1 cent per lookup with the associated call.

chime• 14 years ago

This is the first API that I've encountered that works with cellphone numbers. I can see this being integrated into Android for incoming calls from unknown cellphone numbers.

mikeknoop4• 14 years ago

My thoughts exactly! I easily get less than 60 calls per hour so this would be perfect. Interestingly, the caller ID for my number is tied to the first owner of my account before it was transferred to me (which happened many years ago).

mwally5• 14 years ago

An Android app is currently in development, and will be released free of charge. We are having an issue, however, because non-GSM carriers rarely allow data transmissions during a voice call, including the ringing state of incoming calls.

saurik• 14 years ago

We actually have this on iOS: it is called IntelliID; that said, the concept doesn't work very well, because by the time the phone gets its data connection warm enough and is able to do the minimum two round-trips over the incredibly high-latency cellular connection to get the data (and have to wait for the lookup itself, which seems to be an entire half a second for this API), you are pretty much fighting with the call timing out and going to voicemail.

huhtenberg• 14 years ago

The drawing - is that Goemon from Rupan/Lupin series by any chance?

asciident• 14 years ago

I tried 6 numbers of friends and only one returned a result. Are many numbers not callerid-able, or is the api just bogged down?

mikeknoop4• 14 years ago

I had to refresh the page a few seconds later to get my ID information to show up after the first request.

b14ck8• 14 years ago

Hi there. So, I'm the author of this article. Anyhow, for our free-tier users we don't provide realtime lookups.

Basically, we'll only return a result if we have a caller ID in our cache. So, if you get a 404 (no output), then try again a few seconds later after we've had time to do the lookup via our backend.

Sorry about that! Realtime lookups are currently restricted to API key users only.

mikeknoop4• 14 years ago

You might make this more obvious. Also, you might state how to distinguish between "sorry we need more time to look this up" and an actual 404 or error.

HTTP code 202 Accepted seems appropriate for this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes)

ars• 14 years ago

Is there any way to tell the difference between "try again" and "no data available"?

And you should have made this MUCH more visible on your website. I initially tried your service, got zero results and dismissed it as a failure.

Only after reading here did I realize your service actually does work, I just have to try each query twice.

kappaknight• 14 years ago

I can see why you want to do this, but this just makes people send 2 requests instead of 1 for each number they look up.

Not sure if this is the better way.

samirahmed• 14 years ago

> you can't get something working within 5 minutes of vising our website, we've failed our mission.

It took me five minutes on the website ... and I had to come back to HN and read the comments to get this working. Don't want to be discouraging, but maybe you should provide this information in the blog/website otherwise you have failed (for me atleast).

steveh73• 14 years ago

Please make it more obvious that this only works for US phone numbers

mwally5• 14 years ago

It's not restricted to US only, but all of the NANPA. North American Numbering Plan Administration covers everywhere that uses the country code +1. This includes all of Canada, many islands and territories, and a few other exotic locations.

inghoff• 14 years ago

I just tried it for some numbers around Montreal. Apart from the delayed results issue, it works.

narcissus• 14 years ago

I just tried my home number and the name it came up with was 'Nova Scotia'. My landline provider is based in Halifax, but I'm in PEI. I'm kind of used to that, though :)

AdleyEskridge• 14 years ago

Randall,

This looks remarkably easy to use. Just a small tip: On opencname's home page, you suggest users try the following API call:

  $ curl https://api.opencnam.com/v1/phone/2024561111
  US GOVERNMENT

I tried it and received a different result:

  $ curl https://api.opencnam.com/v1/phone/2024561111
  DIST OF COLUMBI

Perhaps you should update your home page to reflect this?

b14ck8• 14 years ago

Hey Adley, thanks for the comment! I'll update the page shortly.

lisper• 14 years ago

When I tried it I got this:

"Sorry, not implemented yet. Please append "?format=json" to your URL."

When I did that it worked.

krrose27• 14 years ago

I definitely find it interesting.

As somehow it pulls up my (not) apparently unlisted home phone; also, it pulls up family members names for cellphones which are under my name on the contract.

So I am definitely interested in finding out where this data is being taken from?

b14ck8• 14 years ago

Hey krrose27, we basically pull the information from a variety of sources, all publicly available. If we can get the caller ID name information, then it means any call made from those numbers to a caller ID capable phone (with caller ID service) will be able to see it also.

sashametro• 14 years ago

I wonder if the providers of this service have thought about crowd-sourcing the caller-id information, like http://mrnumber.com/ whose free tier harvests number->name mapping from users address books...

gruntle8883• 14 years ago

This would not work because of the sheer number of users who store nicknames, particularly uncomplimentary ones. Would you want your name displaying as "that douchebag" or "bar slut"?

sunsu• 14 years ago

I would ONLY be willing to use this if it returned better data than Twilio's CNAM lookups (costs $0.01) for a cheaper overall price.

So far, I've tested my number, and a few others, that I know have CNAM data that this service only provides a STATE for. Hopefully it will get better but it's not there yet for me.

fenesiistvan• 14 years ago

NANPA (US+Canada) only :(

b14ck8• 14 years ago

There are some other small countries / territories also on NANPA, but yeah, sorry!

TazeTSchnitzel• 14 years ago

Well, I guess it might be useful in Jamaica.

infinitivium• 14 years ago

This is cool, but fix the double request thing if you're going to have a free version...

EricR23• 14 years ago

This is awesome! I had a couple of free hours, so I hacked together a little Ruby app that validates a telephone number and full name pair. This could be used for sign-up security, etc. You can find the repo here: https://github.com/EricR/sinatra-cnam-lookup

stillinbeta• 14 years ago

It seems odd that it only returns a province/state when just the area code provides more information than that. Example: any (647) or (416) area code will always be from Toronto, but numbers for both just return ONTARIO.

adityar• 14 years ago

This may be common knowledge but in the browser address bar do https://api.opencnam.com/v1/phone/2024561111?format=text

tocomment2• 14 years ago

It just says "wireless caller" for my number. Does it usually provide more information? I don't know how useful this is otherwise.

tocomment2• 14 years ago

Does anyone have any insight into this? Are you'all getting better results?

gruntle8883• 14 years ago

That's probably an intentional choice by your carrier, many wireless carriers do that rather than provide an actual name for each number.

joshaidan• 14 years ago

For what it's worth, and for all those asking questions about Canadian numbers, caller id name is handled differently in Canada than in the states. When a carrier sends an outgoing call, they include the caller id name in the SS7 IAM (Initial Message), unlike the states where the receiving carrier has to do a database lookup on the number to retrieve the name. This likely explains why a lot of Canadian numbers are not returning any results, or incorrect results.

Personally, I think the Canadian system of including the name in the IAM works a lot better than having to do a DB lookup.

guan• 14 years ago

I believe this is also the case for public switched telephone network in the US. On a landline, the name and number of the calling party is transferred by Bell 202 and a lot of phones will display this information.

gruntle8883• 14 years ago

This discussion is about how the name is delivered to the telephone company being called, not from that company to your phone. In the US, the calling telephone company sends the number, the called company looks it up in a database, then sends the name they get to your phone. Everything but the delivery to the phone takes place over the SS7 network.

Caller ID Made Simple

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