Success stories

Phlink is key to many successful projects. Customers such as Graphisoft, in Germany, are realizing significant cost savings by using Phlink to answer support calls and automatically provide answers to frequently-asked questions.

And it's not just a business tool: even in art installations, in polar expeditions, when blogging from the road... Phlink can be an invaluable tool for your venture or project!
Read below, to see how some users have found creative new uses for Phlink, that we could have never imagined.

 

One World Expedition

Before departing for their polar expedition, the team at One World Expedition set up Phlink in their office in the USA. Instead of simply keeping a logbook, they wanted the public and the press to receive the information as the voyage developed. They wanted to share their emotions and describe their findings, while also making people more aware of the global warming's effect on the Arctic Ocean and on the polar bear.
During the journey, the explorers used satellite phones to call Phlink daily and record their experiences. Phlink would then automatically convert the recording to a podcast as well as send it to a radio station.

 

City of lights

In June 2004, a group of artists created the Etoile d'Aï: they installed a series of light projectors on top of a mountain near Lausanne, Switzerland, shining their light upon the city. By calling a phone number to which Phlink is connected, anybody can control the light's color - thus turning from spectator to actor. The light wavers and blinks, breathes and pulsates, while remaining visible from Lausanne and the lake of Geneva.

The interaction with the caller is entirely handled by Phlink, which plays a voice menu and changes the light's color based on the keys pressed by callers.

The system computes the times when the light must be switched on or off, based on sunrise and sunset times for that specific location, and controls the projectors through a DMX controller.

Since then, other installations have been set up in the Salève, close to Geneva; in Florence, Italy; and more are planned for the cities of Barcelona, Hong Kong, Rio de Janeiro.

 

Bikin' USA

Crossing the USA by bicycle is no easy task. And Phlink won't make it any easier for your legs. But at least, Phlink can let your friends hear your voice and your stories through a podcast: just set up Phlink to answer your own calls in a special way - by recording the message in a specific format and publishing it on the Internet.

This is what Paolo Varani did in August 2006, while riding his bike from San Francisco, CA to Washington, D.C. - both as a personal adventure, and for raising funds for the Sightsavers charity.

 

Advanced features

Phlink can serve as an advanced answering machine, but it is also capable of performing many additional tasks. It can play phone trees, it can be used to transfer calls, it can record messages and collect information from callers. Below are a few scenarios of how to set up Phlink for different uses.

Phone trees
In order to set up a phone tree using Phlink, simply create the same hierarchy in the Finder, using sound files for outgoing messages and folders for menu options that act as a submenu.
When the caller enters a code (a sequence of digits) that matches the name of a folder, Phlink will "enter" that folder.
After entering a folder, Phlink looks for a greeting inside of it - that's the outgoing message that Phlink will play.
When the code entered by the caller matches a sound file, the sound file will be played to the caller.

This is an example of a possible setup for the Phlink Items folder:

Phone trees are not restricted to static messages: they can also contain dynamically-retrieved information, such as weather information that is pulled from a web page or online service:

The menu of options can also be customized for each caller, by using caller ID:

 

Secret messages
You can set Phlink to play a confidential message when a secret code is pressed. Or it can provide information by looking it up on the web: ask it a stock quote, the status of a shipment, weather forecasts, and more!

 

Control your Mac
You can run any AppleScript, or launch any application, by pressing keys on your telephone's keypad - from any place in the world. Take a video snapshot and send it by email, turn filesharing on or off, restart a server. The possibilities are endless.

 

Scripts can also send audio feedback to the caller by speaking text, using Mac OS X's speech synthesis, in addition to playing back prerecorded sounds.