ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
*****************************************************************************

>
>http://www.parliant.com/phonevalet
>
>http://www.ovolab.com/phlink/index.php
>

I've used both Phone Valet and Phlink and both will do what you're 
trying to do, after you jump through a couple of hoops. (I've also 
used asterisk and would be quick to admit that it takes some effort 
to get going quite like you want it and requires some additional 
hardware. Both Phone Valet and Phlink come with a USB device that 
hooks up to your *analog* phone line)

Allan's approach is along the lines I was thinking of.

You'll need to rip your subscription CDs into individual audio files 
-- if the tracks are individual tracks on the CD, you can just use 
iTunes to rip them to mp3s (or aac or other, you're going to probably 
use a mac mini for this, so whatever iTunes will rip, the mini will 
be able to play back in Phone Valet or Phlink).

I'm not at the office (at AAM in Chicago) so I can't poke at either 
Phone Valet or Phlink to suggest the best way to rotate the daily 
message, but my suspicion is that just some applescripting will do 
it. At worst, you could have a 5 minute manual process in which 
someone on staff just selected the new audio file as the welcome 
message each day.

Also, if you didn't do applescripting within Phone Valet or Phlink to 
change the messaging, you can do a wide variety of unixy cron jobs to 
do file renaming in the finder based on the date, essentially never 
touching Phone Valet or Phlink, just renaming the new file to what 
they both think the outgoing message file actually is.

I've used both Phone Valet and Phlink to set up a phone-in audio tour 
with some basic menus and different audio bits based on selection. We 
also capture audio responses in one portion of the tour. I've found 
Phlink to be a little less reliable than Phone Valet, although 
they're both pretty good products. We now use Phlink to answer an 
internal help line and email the phone messages to specific staff. 
Phone Valet runs the audio tour.

When I'm back in the office next week, I can take a closer look at 
both products and see if there's an incredibly obvious way to solve 
the problem that I'm not thinking of off the top of my head.

Oh, and let me reiterate -- both products are expecting an analog 
phone line (RJ45 jack).

-bw.
-- 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Bruce Wyman, Director of Technology
Denver Art Museum  /  100 W 14th Ave. Pkwy, Denver, CO 80204
office: 720.913.0159  /  fax: 720.913.0002
<[log in to unmask]>

***********************************************************************
More information about the Informal Science Education Network and the
Association of Science-Technology Centers may be found at http://www.astc.org.

The ISEN-ASTC-L email list is powered by LISTSERVR software from L-Soft. To learn more, visit
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html.

To remove your e-mail address from the ISEN-ASTC-L list, send the
message  SIGNOFF ISEN-ASTC-L in the BODY of a message to
[log in to unmask]