A little while back we were lamenting (well, some of were) the lack of a
"Dial" button next to the phone numbers in the Address book. Someone
mentioned a shareware program called "Acid Jazz" that dials numbers. (No one
that I know of has a clue what the name of the program has to do with
telephones, but hey! What does "Entourage" have to do with E-mail?) Several
of us, myself included, tried our hands at scripts that would run Acid Jazz
to dial phone numbers selected in the Address Book. None of them were really
clear-cut successes. They hang up the phone if you don't pick up fast enough
after the number dials, or else they DO NOT hang up when you want to. My
version, for some inexplicable reason, just plain stopped working at all,
and even when it did work, I had trouble implementing the need to dial the
area code for local calls, something new from Ma Bell this month in
Portland. Dialing ten digits is one of the reasons I want autodial! So I
gave up on Acid Jazz. Actually I was thinking of going back to TouchBase,
Jud Spencer's old contact database program that still runs just fine on OS
9. I even exported my Entourage address book and imported it to TouchBase
after some editing of fields in Excel. I didn't like having to use a
separate program, though.
Just now I ran across a little utility that does all we were looking for and
more. It is called PhoneTech and can be found at:
<http://www.ironsoftware.com/>
It is a $20 shareware program, so you have to really want this feature to
pay for it. However, this thing can be scripted to deal with voice mail
systems; it can keep numbers in its own database or use numbers from another
(like Entourage) with a system-wide hot key; it can keep trying if the line
is busy; you don't have to pick up the phone until it is answered; you can
toggle on/off a semi-speaker-phone, e.g., to listen without the handset
while you are on hold; it logs the time of your calls if you wish, and a lot
more. If anyone is interested in autodial stuff, take a look. It's a free
trial download.
--
Peace,
Allen Watson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> XNS name: =Allen Watson
A Mac family since 1984
My web page: <http://home.earthlink.net/~allenwatson/>
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