May Thinkup Talk posted
Build “Call Me” Web Widgets for Any Web Page
“Call me” buttons have been around for a long time but still have not taken off. Zingaya enables voice calls through any computer, right from a web page without downloading anything. The button for your page is built on line in a few minutes. Using Zingaya’s user-friendly interface you can leverage some great features:
- Cost-effective, rapid deployment
- The button has the text you wish, size and color are adjustable
- The widget can be limited to use on particular sites (domain names)
- Call recording can be enabled and automatic
- Voicemail can be used, playing a file you upload to your account
- A single widget can call several phone numbers at once
- A complete call history is available
- Multiple widgets and multiple lines on an account
- Calls can be routed via SIP or Skype, or to regular telephones or cellphones worldwide
- e-commerce sites can implement “Call us now” buttons in minutes
Call me buttons would be a good addition to existing customer support/sales channels for any website doing business on the Internet. They allow you to support customers worldwide, where toll-free and callbacks are usually country/region specific and can be costly and time-consuming to set up.
Zingaya technology is Flash-based, which brings up a few caveats: It will not work on mobiles without Flash (notably iPhone and iPad). Flash sometimes causes problems on Linux and the Flash player must be a recent version. Adobe’s Flash Privacy Settings.
Using SIP for Online Conferences
Here is the fastest way to start calling conference free using SIP technology.
Go to the Blink web site and download Blink available for Mac, Windows and linux platforms.
To use Blink with Talkshoe, see this video.
Talk About Thinkup Conference
Here’s our initial live conference to discuss Thinkup with users, developers and anyone who is interested.
Conference start time in your time zone - Thinkup Talks Talkshoe Page
Two ways to participate in the live phone meetup: (note that if the conference is not in session, you’ll get a polite message telling you just that)
Method 1: Use a SIP client such as Blink (available free for Windows, Mac and linux). After downloading and installing Blink, click on the plus icon at the lower left of the program and create a new contact with this information:
Here is a Blink install video tutorial.
SIP Address : 7463#31431#1@proxy.ideasip.com
Display Name : Thinkup Talks
Group : Talkshoe
The SIP Address is the only important information you need. The other two are just names you will see on the contact list. In the SIP address, the #1 part is a an anonymous guest id. If you’d like to be easily identifiable – which makes it easier to have a coherent discussion, you can join Talkshoe free and use a PIN. The PIN is seven digits long and can be a phone number you can easily remember. NO ONE can see your PIN.
You can also just type in the SIP address in Blink or another SIP client you may already have, such as X-Lite, SJ-Phone, Telephone, or SIP Communicator: 7463#31431#1@proxy.ideasip.com
Note that “Bonjour” needs to be the account you call from. (Top left below the colored LEDs)
Change 0123456789 to the PIN you set for your Talkshoe account, or to 1 if you want to be anonymous.
Method 2: Regular phone. If you have unlimited dialing or another inexpensive way of using an ordinary phone, call
425-906-3916
If you have a Talkshoe PIN, you might prefer to call Talkshoe directly. In that case, you’ll need to enter all the codes:
Dial (724) 444-7444 then enter code 31431# then YOUR_PIN # (or 1# to remain anonymous)
Questions? See you on IRC #thinkup
What is a Hosted pbx?
Hosted pbx is a service several companies (called ITSP, Internet Telephony Service Providers) offer to give any individual or business a professional telephony presence using the Internet. Software running on the ITSP network offers to deal with voice and fax calls (and sometimes SMS) in a way similar to what a mail server does for your email.
You can add a normal or a toll-free DID (Direct Inward Dialing) number to a hosted pbx in order to ring multiple phones, accept voicemail messages, faxes or text messages (SMS) from those to whom you provide the phone number. You can also progrtam service with relation to time of day, for example routing calls outside opening hours of your business to voicemail boxes.
Many interesting services are available on a pbx, such as forwarding calls according to time, busy state of a particular phone or decalred availability of an extension. For example at night and during holidays, calls can be automatically routed to a different extension, forwarded to a mobile number or to voicemail.
Pbx, hosted or running on local hardware, are often used a switches, a way to route calls.
IVR, (Interactive Voice Response) can be used to route calls or collect authentication information. On a local pbx, you can require the caller to enter digits or route the calls according to the caller id information they are sending.
What is a SIP Phone and Why Would You Want One?
I can vividly recall the confusion in my mind when I was first introduced to VoIP through Free World Dialup and other early sites. In the following short article, I’ll try to avoid explaining the underlying technology and simply answer the question in the title. If you have any questions, ask me on Twitter: @voipusers
Polycom Provisioning using HTTP
Although I have had HTTP running on my local box to provision my Polycom 650, I was always wanting to use the server to update the phone directory and also to be able to see log file. Without PUT capability, I could not write to the server. Here’s how I got that working.
Problem: allow Polycom phone to PUT log and updated directory via HTTP.
After some investigation using telnet (the only real value of telnet
these days) and some help from #vuc I came up with
this:
To see if PUT is working on your server, enter these lines from a terminal on the same box (or change the ip address):
telnet 127.0.0.1 80
PUT /path/file HTTP/1.1
Host:127.0.0.1
(CR an empty line here)
If PUT is working read no further.
If you have a problem it is probably because the file mode needs to be
changed either of the file you are putting or of the directory, or PUT
isn’t working. The error message you see should tell you which it is.
Anyway, I needed to install WEBDAV in order for the Apache 2 server
installed on this box would handle the PUT method. I was getting a 405
(METHOD NOT ACCEPTABLE).
To make this happen,
1) Load the webdav module in the load section of httpd.conf
LoadModule dav_module libexec/apache2/mod_dav.so
2) Add this line somewhere OUTSIDE any Directory or Location entities:
DavLockDB /tmp/DavLock
Make sure
3) Create the directory
mkdir /tmp/DavLock and
chmod 777 /tmp/DavLock
4) Add the line
Dav On inside the Location or Directory configuration section you want to use
Dav On
5) Make sure any
directives are not disallowing the PUT or add
an .htaccess file with a specific
Allow from 192.168.1.xxx
#Your Polycom IP address
6) Close httpd.conf
7) sudo apachectl restart
Start testing and look at the eror and access logs. One test would be
to call up the phone’s directory and add an entry while watching the
Apache access log and or looking at the date of the directory file
itself.
Apache Errors:
Unable to PUT new contents for /Polycom/0004f09099858-app.log. [403, #0]
403 = the file mode isn’t allowing you to modify that file.
Could not open the lock database. [500, #400] The directory you
specified in the DavLockDB directive isn’t right or isn’t writable
If I say anything dumb or wrong, please comment and correct it
