That gives me an idea. Instead of having the user hold the phone up to their speaker, what if the webserver dialed for them? If the webserver had a modem hooked up to it and this was for use by people in the office, it could dial the number and transfer the call to the person that requested the number as soon as it was dialed. Then the person who had requested it would have their phone ring and when they picked up, the phone on the other end would be ringing as well!
Though you'd have to have some way of figuring out the extension of the person that requested the number, either by having them type their own extension in (which could be prone to abuse), have them sign in to the phone number database, or give them static IP's and link each IP to an extension number. Don't know how practical it would be, but I thought it sounded interesting anyway. :-)
| [reply] |
and pay long distance charges from Outer Estonia to Brooklyn!
somewhat off-topic, but if you're in an office where you can transfer calls back and forth between phones then you have a PBX (Private Branch Exchange) of your own or are getting the same service from your Telco. in this case it's much easier to just tell the PBX to connect Phone A to Number B than to have a machine dial and transfer. you can find PBX cards form your PC for not much money that will do really neat things like mailboxes/transfers/menus/music-on-hold/just about everything. a couple hundred dollars and 2 POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) lines and you can have your own personal Operator, a bit more money and a fractional T1 or more and you can start doing really neat things.
IP phones are really really really cool over cool networks. i've talked to the middle of Africa from Southern California and it was cleaner than any other Overseas call i've been on before. the lag was minimal, less than your normal cell-phone conversation.
i'm in the process of setting up some IP phones for an I2 project to link various NOC (Network Operations Center) across the world. when we have a problem on The Net, pick up the phone, dial the AS (Autonomous System) number of the NOC you need to talk to and BAM connected.
| [reply] |