Using Windows Azure & Twilio to Impress the Ladies, with CIA Pickup

June 15, 2009
Written by
Danielle Morrill
Contributor
Opinions expressed by Twilio contributors are their own

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Move over pickup artists, there’s a new game in town and it uses… you guessed it… Twilio to enable what might be the most clever geeky pickup tactic I’ve seen yet (and I’ve seen a few).  As Steve Marx of the Windows Azure team explains in his blog, the story is simple.  You want to tell a girl that you work for the CIA to get her number, but you need a way to prove you’re actually an agent.

The_cia_pickup
Enter The CIA Pickup.

With this service you give out one Toll Free number (866) 961-1673 powered by Twilio, and your unique Agent Identifier Number (AIN).  Then, when she calls the number you’ll receive her number by email.  Check out this deni Steve made, to show how it works:

<p>&lt;p&gt;&amp;lt;a href=&amp;quot;http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-US&amp;amp;playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:5ba226a3-c3ba-452d-9baf-9a10b083ffd4&amp;amp;showPlaylist=true&amp;amp;from=msnvideo&amp;quot; target=&amp;quot;_new&amp;quot; title=&amp;quot;The CIA Pickup – a Windows Azure Sample&amp;quot;&amp;gt;Video: The CIA Pickup – a Windows Azure Sample&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&lt;/p&gt;</p>

Here’s how it went for Kevin and I:

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Download the Code

Download the source code here: http://smarxblogstorage.blob.core.windows.net/files/TheCIAPickup_source.zip

Steve wants you to note
that to run the sample, you’ll need to get your own storage account,
Twilio account, Windows Live Application ID, etc.  All the
configuration settings you need to fill in are located in ServiceConfiguration.cscfg.