Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!hayes.fai.alaska.edu!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request
From: dmr@csli.stanford.edu (Daniel M. Rosenberg)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: PollenTrak
Message-ID: <9948@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 19 Jul 90 17:34:39 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 500, Message 12 of 12


In <9891@accuvax.nwu.edu> cybrspc!roy@cs.umn.edu (Roy M. Silvernail)
writes:

>john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) writes:

>> An OTC pharmacutical company is sponsoring something called "Pollen
>> Trak" [ uses ANI, etc. ] ... It gives me a Sacramento area report;
>> that's hardly useful since San Jose is somewhat outside Sacramento's
>> geographic sphere of influence.

>I just had to try it. The recorded voice asked me to punch in my area
>code and phone number. (So much for ANI!) Then, it was kind enough to
>give _me_ the Sacramento pollen report, too!

And so I did the same thing, and gave it my "phone number" at work --
really the number to an auto attendant. And the Pollen Trak thing
balked and said "Not available."

So, I called back and gave it the number of the {San Francisco
Chronicle's} Classified Ads department (same area code, different
exchange). And got the SF Bay Pollen Report fine.

And then I gave it the number of the inbound modem pool at AT&T Bell
Labs in Murray Hill, NJ,(with the old 201 area code) and correctly got
the pollen report for the Newark area of New Jersey, same woman's
voice.

Strangely enough, the pollen report seemed (except for place name)
identical in San Francisco and Newark ("bad but not so bad -- buy some
Benadryl").


# Daniel M. Rosenberg  //  Stanford CSLI  // Chew my opinions, not Stanford's.
# dmr@csli.stanford.edu // decwrl!csli!dmr // dmr%csli@stanford.bitnet