Program that answers phone calls??

[Muck]

I'm trying to get a little streaming internet radio show going for our website. We're all set, except that we need some way to answer the phone with the computer.....which along with the hosts' voices over microphone would be transfered to our server and broadcast out. We're using Shoutcast for that.

Anyway, does anyone know of a good program that will do the job?? I know XP has a phone dialer. But I've never used it. Is it capable of what we want to do?? Anyway, I have no phone line. So I can't test it. And this phone stuff won't be happening at my place. I'm just trying to get info for the other guys

Anyway, any suggestions and or tips??

Much appreciated.

 

[drag]

Well, I wanted to make a computer into a answering machine, also so that I could dial in from a remote computer via a modem and have it dial a special code to give me internet access.

That way I could have it do cool stuff like play death metal music for telemarketers that call in and can't hang up right away. Also have seperate places to store phone messages at better quality and be able to have it e-mail me voice recordings.. that sort of stuff.

But my roomates didn't want me messing with the phone to much and they already had a messaging machine they liked. (they have no IMAGINATION. ) So I never got to far with it since I didn't want to fight with them in order to make a machine that would take a few weeks to work the bugs out anyways.

So I know the just of it, but a little short on the technical details.


I don't know if you want anything as complicated as having people get the "press 1 to leave a message" "press 2 to talk to the host" "press 3 to find out show information" sort of thing.

But if all you want is to be able to easily mix in phone conversations into the sound mixer, and the ability to edit and put people on "hold", then that shouldn't be to complicated.

Just get a nice modem with voice carrier capablities(IE a voice/fax/modem). Any good quality modem can be made into a PPP or Voice or Fax server or client. You just need a nice program to control the audio feeds from it.



For linux most phone stuff is handled thru vgetty. This creates a terminal, but instead of a login prompt and text stuff, it responds to commands from a phone dialer (like press #1 for stuff) and then can direct voice stuff around.

there are plenty of other programs on top of that that do the actual messaging and voice stuff, but thats the basis.

But I don't know anything for windows stuff, though.

 

[Muck]

LMAO!! Telemarketers love the death metal.

Yeah, all we really want to do is be able to mix the conversations live and let them stream out to the server (and then to our listeners) via Winamp/Shoutcast.

It'd be one thing if I had a phone line and a modem to try this out for my partners. But I don't. So I'm kinda deadwood I guess.

 

[BlueWeasel]

I used to use an older program called Bitware that could do faxing, voice mailboxes, and answering system. I haven't used it in several years, but it may be something worth looking into.

 

[Wolfie]

Have you tried posting a thread over at winamps shoutcast forums? They would have a better idea of what you are looking for.

Wolfie

 

[Muck]

Damn, why didn't I think of that. I'm going to use the "it was late when I posted" excuse.

 

[Wolfie]

Originally posted by: Muck
Damn, why didn't I think of that. I'm going to use the "it was late when I posted" excuse.

I guess we can take it.


THIS TIME.

Let us know how it all works out.

Wolfie