h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What I was thinking was, somethign that I might find relaly useful but I don't know if it is possible:

I invisage me having a digiatal phone, just an ordinary digital phone, plugged into my phone socket, and sitting next me here on the desk; In to this I invisage a 'hands free', doobry headset thing; all pretty easy and straight foward so far (I think).
Then what I invisage, is me having a database or Excell spreadsheet, or some other 'specialised' bit of software on me PC; in which would be list of people with numbers, somewhere I could make notes, details asscoaited with each entry; and when I cliced on the entry/individuals number, this would dial that number for me, on the digital ordinary telephone on teh desk; Is that possible?: how? Can you attach to the phone somehow a connection from the rear of the PC, say from teh dialup modum (which I don't use as we have cable modem), and that would dial the number on the phone, and then when the person I call answers I just use the phone as if I had dialed the number on the phone keypad? I've had a bit of a look about and haven't seen anything quite along this line, but maybe I've been looking in the rong places

dunno if it helps, but you can get PC telephony software that does this, but it uses the modem/pc as the telephone, no extra phone involved.

I probably can't post a link here, but searching for PC Answerhphones was how I discovered some.
My 56k modem has headphone and microphone sockets on it and all you have to do is plug in a call centre style head phone set with microphone on it and lo! you are can use it that way.

Also means you get pc ansaphone software which is very useful as it can be set to hang up/not answer on a 'number withheld' or 'number unavailable' so you can block all those marketing agency calls.

Similarly, a mate of mine wrote an app in VB which compared the caller ID with an internal list of known numbers and, if the number wasn;t on the list would hang up.

It is actually quite simple I believe as the caller ID (CID) is done by the telephony system between the first and second ring. It sends a query down the line for the number.

i'll go have a peek at the back of the PC, actually, I do hope* we've got a dialup modem on this machine So, its not* internet phone calling, as the modem is plugged into the regular phone socket, its with BT/NTL/whatever your phone provider is and you just plug the headset direct into the Modem, can you set the volume alright on the headset? I guess, thinking about it, you could even attach a regular phone reciever to the headphone/mic sockets on the modem, if you were not too bad at doing a bit of wiring on the handset to get it to have the right connections at th eend

hmm, not sure about phone to modem, haven't tried it. I nicked my headset off work. Erm. no, I didn't, they gave me a headset. Honest.

YEs, it uses the landline, it isn't VOIP or anything, and yes the headset does have avolumme adjust on it, as well as a mute. Standard call centre stuff.

The PC just controls the dialling.

I'll have to have alook into this, could be very useful I think with my new job you see save me fingers dialing all those numbers, if I can just do it from the PC; as it'l be calling a largeish but regular group of clients, I' can get them all put into the PC once, and then dial em easy when I need to call them again and again and again etc must have a peek a the back of the PC now If I can get to it

just did a check, mines a labtec (google labtec headset) most aren't cheap but you can get versions less than a tenner, and a 56K modem should cost peanuts these days. My haicom ne cost me about 20 quid over 3 years ago.
The cool bit about the software is you can use WAV files as the message. It can do answer phone messages and then store the messages on the PC with caller ID per messgae, it can do the atomated no answer message where plays the message and drops the line, it can do call centre stuff (Press 1 repeatedly if you are obsessive compulsive, press 'Gold' if you are dellusional etc).

My next project is to set mine up to play "This is the US Military Sile #9, please enter you access code for immediate launch" or somethig similar

and heres me wnating to use it for something serious!: that makes a change, useually its me looking for the daft uses of convential technology I just had a peek at the back of the PC, if what I think is the modem, then it has indeed two little 3.5 jacks next to it/on the same panel as what feels like a socket for the phone to plug into I might have to give it a go; thinking about it; we've several of those headset thinggies, laying aobut the place; think they came with soundcards or something, for using I guess chatting over the net, but they should work with this as well I guess hmm, I don't know though if the modem will be installed on the machine as its never been used, but I can investiage all that I'll have to see how good a quality the headsets are; it doesn't relaly matter how much they cost, as I can offset that against tax and I'd prefer somethign with a better quality, though the ones I've got might be fine Well; thats somethign new to begin playing about with on Monday I'lll have to have a search for the software to do it thanks!

check TUCOWS for "answer phone", mine was the IVM one, but I only used the free trial on it so can;t recommend it. But might be worth a look to see what else is there.