Has anyone looked into a voicemail/answering machine application for MCE?  Just something else I thought would be pretty cool...walk in from work, grab the remote and see who called and listen to the messages via MCE.

A nice little integration opportunity with TapiRexx, no?

 

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Ghostlobster
Very happy convert to SageTV! Finally, watching ESPN-HD in real HD on my HTPC without having to deal with the CableCARD fiasco!

I have thought about this too.  It would be a perfect companion to MCE....most already have the modem installed for caller-id purposes.  Anyone care to tackle this one?

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ED7

Believe it or not, I recently had a talk with someone from vonage and they said they are considering making a media center app for voice mail and such. This would be great!

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Vonage, huh?  Most interesting...as not just a Vonage customer, but someone who constantly touts the benefits of Vonage (I've got 4 referrals so far) I'd be most interested to see what they come out with.  Ok, while I'm on my pro-Vonage rant, last night was a classic example of why anyone with broadband should be on Vonage.  We had a power outage, which in the normal world would make you VOIP phone useless, right?  Well, Vonage to the rescue!  I had set my account up so that in the case where the VIOP converter was unreachable, for whatever reason, all calls would be transfered (free of charge, of course) to my cell phone.  Well, I had completely forgotten about that until my cell phone rang a few times more than usual last night and the lighbulb went on over my head...Vonage is doing what it's supposed to do...seemlessly and flawlessly.

But, I digress...yeah, a voicemail app would be cool! 

 

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Ghostlobster
Very happy convert to SageTV! Finally, watching ESPN-HD in real HD on my HTPC without having to deal with the CableCARD fiasco!

I've been wanting this for a long time. I finally couldn't wait any longer and wrote my own. Before anyone asks for it, I should tell you it's not really portable at this point. It's a web app and I run it from the web server on my home network. And since Vonage doesn't have an api to their voicemail system, I have to use an Outlook script to strip the voicemail attachments from their notification emails, put the files on my web server, and write the metadata for the VM to an XML file so it can be read by my app. But I have to tell you that we love it. I put a link right on the MCE start page and it's really nice to just be able to go to my MCE and check voicemail. I say all that to encourage the guys at Vonage to come out with something like this. It's really great!

(note that the data in the screenshot has obviously been changed to protect the innocent)

That is GORGEOUS!!!!  Man, find a way to make that portable and let us know your paypal address!!!  That's exactly what I'd be interested in!

 

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Ghostlobster
Very happy convert to SageTV! Finally, watching ESPN-HD in real HD on my HTPC without having to deal with the CableCARD fiasco!

Not having Vonage myself, it isn't exactly what I am looking for (although it looks very good!).  I would be more interested in an app where my modem actually answers the call after X rings and plays a greeting and then records a message and stores it along with the Caller ID information to be retrieved later.  I know it sounds like a little more work, but would be a killer App for the 98% of us who don't have Vonage.  Is this possible at all?

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ED7

OK, Billybob.    Cough it up.  You gotta get this thing out to the public.  I would love an app like this.  Thanks for all your efforts.

 

Samsonite

I need this too!  PLEASE make this available...

Jay

I wrote to Vonage to see if there is a way they can work with me to get secure access to the voicemail system through code. If we can make that work, then turning this into a "standard" plug in should be fairly easy. They do have an API into some parts of their system (3PCC for example), so maybe an API into the voicemail system isn't such a stretch. I'll let you know how I make out.

The best thing would be for them to just put the MCE web app on their servers and host it -- like Napster or Movielink does. Security and performance would probably be better that way. But first things first.

If the above approach dead ends, I'll noodle how to make this more portable. But I'd need to change quite a few things so no promises...

billybob... thanks for taking this on.  i do hope vonage is receptive to your request.  this is awesome.  i'd love to see it work out.

j

Billybob - Why does each person need thier own webserver?  Can't it be hosted on an internet server somewhere and then you can just pass user information to the internet server to return the appropriate messages??  Seems altering your server installation for multiple users would be easier than porting the server to each user individually.  Or maybe I just don't understand what you are doing as I don't have Vonage.

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ED7

You are correct. If I were to develop this for wider distribution you would not need a web server to run it. It would either be installed locally as any other plug-in, or it would run from a central web server (best case: the Vonage site).

Keep in mind I originally created this just for my use, and being a web developer I just took the shortest route to solving the problem. But it seems like there is enough interest here that I'm looking at how to take it to the next level.

I work as a Software Engineer and write applications for the Web all the time.  If you need any help, let me know...im strictly an ASP guy though. 

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ED7