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Comments and inquiries welcome.

Thanks,
Tony Gravagno
Nebula Research and Development
TG@ remove.pleaseNebula-RnD.com
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Hi Tony,

An interesting idea but am I understanding this correctly? You appear
to be suggesting that I can do all of the things listed in your blog
via a normal landline phone with no additional equipment. This seems
to imply that it is all by decoding DTMF tones which is in itself easy
but I have trouble seeing how I would use it.

Picking a couple of examples from your list...

Clearing locks.
I would need to be able to review the current situation to know that I
had a problem and which lock to clear. Are you suggesting that the
system would provide voice output of the current state?

Writing and running simple programs
Even more so I need to see what I am doing. Think of the havoc from
the odd typo if I am programming blind.

I like the idea but it needs a little more flesh on the bones to
understand how you see this working.

(I used to work with a system administrator who, after a power outage,
would phone the dial up line from home and whistle down the phone to
see if it responded. He hadn't quite mastered the protocol but
anything that the modem thought might be a signal worked fine to
determine whether he needed to go in and restart things).


Martin Phillips

Martin Phillips wrote:

Numeric keypad entry is mostly used for menu selections:
"Press 1 for backup and restore operations, 2 for system restart
options, 3 for system status, 4 for business operations."
It can also be used to enter order numbers, part numbers (where of
course this fits with the application), quantities, etc.

For this specific offering I'm not accepting voice for commands. That
can certainly be done but it's limited by available technology and I'm
not trying to break any new ground here. (Some people here might
remember that ten years ago I did a demos at the Pick Systems World
User Conference, controlling D3 by voice and getting voice responses
from a mock application.) However I can accept voice notes which are
transcribed for storage in the DBMS, and audio can be stored with a
link passed back to the application as well. (MV-based voice mail
app?)

How would you use it? All I'm doing is making it easy for MV people
to do exactly what everyone else is doing. Remember though that some
people might want to use this for Support and others might be
interested purely for consumer-facing end-user applications. I'd
guess that for every VAR interested in support there may be 50
end-users who recognize this as something they use every day and they
might want it for their own system.


Yes. How it does this would be DBMS-specific and modifyable by anyone
who has the package.

Yes typos need to be avoided. I did say "simple". And this would not
be an exercise to undertake by numbers-only keypad or voice.

Being able to write and run something simple by SMS is far better than
having no access at all. This is a just way to do something more
complex than a few command-line statements as part of some quick
support operation. It's not a mechanism to write application
software.

This is really quite simple. For providing Support, some operations
are well suited to quick commands, others are not. It's easy to
reboot a system with a single command. That can be issued by SMS or
voice. The raison d'être of this new interface is to give people a
mechanism for doing things that we can't do without a laptop, dialup,
VPN, going into the office, or getting someone who's in the office on
the phone. It's just another option, not a panacea, and not
stretching current technologies. But it is something that no one else
seems to offer - so here we are.

For end-user applications this is actually a spin off of some
development I've been doing. I'm using my phone as described every
day anyway, and giving ordinary consumers access to MV data by phone.
I figured other MV developers might be interested in that aspect, and
the system support aspect is just a bonus.

Best,
T

On Nov 9, 11:36*am, Tony Gravagno <nos... (AT) nospam (DOT) invalid> wrote:
For operations like those listed, I would get more frustrated using
the phone than I would with a PC or terminal. A phone application
with a clean, simple user interface that monitors the status of
services, alerts, and able to execute simple commands would be
better. I know there are times where, for whatever reason ODBC had
shutdown, and such an app would have been useful.

If you WERE talking about a "smartphone", or even an iPhone, I'd
probably just opt for RDP .... even if the RDP connection was back to
the office to a support server, and then from there access any client
(provided that no-one turned off the internet of course :-)

Like Martin, I'm not seeing how I could make a compelling business
case for this ...

Specific wrote:
Thanks for your comments but you're missing some key points:

Sometimes you don't have a PC or terminal, but people are rarely
without a phone. Have you ever tried to talk an end-user through
doing something simple, and it takes a half-hour to explain it to them
when it would take you a few seconds if you were onsite? Has this
ever happened while you were driving? with family? at the beach? at
dinner? at an amusement park...? This is just another tool in your
kit which can be used when others aren't available.

Again, there are some tasks that are best not done using this
interface. We can say the same for any number of tools. But this is
an excellent solution for many applications. It's been said many
times here: Use the right tools for the job.

Phone apps must be developed/supported for specific phone platforms.
While phone apps have been around for years, what I'm talking about
still doesn't exist as a phone app for any phone. But I do have the
software described now, for all phones. You can wait for a phone app
or you can think about how to use what's available now.

You may look at any of this and say "I don't think I'd like to use
this as a system administrator. That's fine. That's only one
application for the technology. There are browser-based sysadmin
tools too, but many people prefer the command-line. (Uh, and this is
a command line.)

I'm working on several projects now where consumers will be using
their phones for business and pleasure - as they already do for other
purposes. I want a piece of that action and now I have a core
interface to facilitates development of my projects. I'm telling you
folks about it in case someone else here has a vision about doing what
the rest of the world is doing. If not, that's OK. I've blogged
about this before - the telephone is just another user interface, like
the dumb terminal, the thick client application, and the browser.
This all dove-tails with the cloud, software as a service, and all of
these other modern paradigms that people are working with these days.
I'm just sharing what I'm working on...

T

Ross Ferris wrote:

OK

On Nov 8, 1:49*pm, Tony Gravagno <nos... (AT) nospam (DOT) invalid> wrote:

Heh. I remember playing with the C-lang SDK for a Dialogic board I
yanked from an old voicemail system. I was thinking along the lines of
an order entry status tool for customers. Then, the WWW exploded and
touch-tone phone services have since dwindled. Some institutions, like
banks, still offer automated phone services for transferring funds,
getting balances, and requesting call-backs. It really depends on the
user group and their level of technological sophistication. There is
still an audience that does not have a smart phone or they have one
and don't use the smart features of it. You would think, with the year
closing in on 2011, that all business processing systems would have a
DTMF integration framework for simple inquiries like getting a
tracking number for an order.

I would love to offer services for SMS and DTMF but the fact is none
of our customers are interested in it. I posted a company blog article
about SMS and the dust is collecting on it. I'll try posting a DTMF
order inquiry blog next time to see if there are any bites. I can't
spend the time without business justification. Many customers don't
use the e-commerce site fully as it is! Shoppers still fill their cart
and then call in with a session ID to place the order. Maybe that's a
DTMF ordering option for the people still paranoid about the web. As
far as support options, I can't really think of a case where DTMF
integration would be useful. I have the VPN covered from multiple
angles so the odds of me not having SSH access is very small. I'm sure
I could come up with a case to support it but it's not worth the
effort considering all the other projects that are due.

Glen

Funny that I found an article on the topic right after I hit Send:
http://bitsstation.com/2010/11/mobil...ion-dumbphone/

Field of dreams stuff .... you could always build it & see who
comes :-)