Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncr-sd!hp-sdd!hplabs!decwrl!labrea!agate!ucbvax!ucsd!nosc!humu!uhccux!cs313s03
From: cs313s03@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (.)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Teleflex & Coffee Pots (Was Re: Hit "n".)
Keywords: AutoDial, Autoanswer, Speech, VoiceMail, Modem, Remote Control
Message-ID: <2886@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: 24 Dec 88 08:01:44 GMT
Reply-To: cs313s03@uhccux.UUCP (.)
Followup-To: comp.sys.mac
Organization: .
Lines: 106

In article <66184@ti-csl.CSNET> holland@m2.UUCP (Fred Hollander) writes:

|>>        There is a new product for the Mac, called "Teleflex".
|>>        It let's your Mac speak, dial the phone, and answer your 
|>>        telephone calls, issue Voice Mail and turn on your coffee pot.
|						^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
|...I don't even drink coffee :)
|
|   Fred Hollander

	   Hi Fred!  
	      Ok, perhaps I worded that a little too facetiously there. :-)
	      The idea is that it can do remote device control. How about
	      this instead:

		o Have the Teleflex Mac in your Machine Room attached to an
		  emergency telephone and a halon system. If there is
		  a fire in your computer room so that people cannot
		  enter safely, you could call your Teleflex equipped
		  Macintosh from a telephone in a different building.
		  Via touchtones you could instruct your Macintosh to
		  activate the Halon system to extinguish the fire
		  (hopefully before it got the mac!) then you could
		  have it automatically call the Fire Department and 
		  (in digitized human voice) have it report the fire 
		  including the location and an alternate number to
		  call where a human could confirm the emergency and
		  provide furthur instructions. 

		o Equip your Mac at home with a Teleflex. Program it to
		  turn your central heating on 1 hour before you rise
		  in the morning so that your house is nice and comfortable
		  when you wake up.  Have the timer set so that it turns
		  your heater off after you've left for work for the day
		  so you don't waste money heating the house when no one
		  is home.  Then the timer will turn on the heat again
		  before you are due to arrive home.  If you happen
	   	  to stay late, you can telephone home and instruct it to
		  delay turning on your heater and instead tell it to have
		  the lights on your porch and walkway lit for you when 
		  you arrive home after dark.  In rough neighborhoods it
		  might also offer safety.  If you suspect an intruder is in
		  your house, you can call from a neighbors phone and 
		  listen to what is happening in the area surrounding the
		  Teleflex equipped Mac. Using your touch-tone phone, you
		  could instruct it to play a digitized voice message 
		  out the Mac's speaker to cause the Burglar to flee.
		  ("Boo!") haha :-) 

		o You might find similar uses in controlling laboratory
		  equipment or scientific instruments, electronic
		  gear, devices in hostile environments (nuclear or
		  medical labs) or something like that.  

		  Better? :-)
		  NOTE: I just thought of these scenarios off the top of
		  my head.  Of course there might be better ways of doing
		  these things, I just wanted to say that it doesn't only
		  turn on Coffee Pots :-). Despite these neat abilities,
		  this is not really what the Teleflex thing's strength is.
		  In fact, the remote control stuff is just an option
		  that you can use if you want to.  You need to get some
		  extra stuff like the little control module boxes that you
		  plug your gear into at the outlet (~$10) which receive the
		  instructions from the Mac. GE makes 'em and you can also
		  pick them up at Radio Shack or from DAK or wherever...

		  You can do other stuff with it as well.  Like use it as
		  a business voice mail system.  If a customer calls, it
		  could answer the phone and say hello, then tell the person
		  to type a key on their phone depending on who they want
		  to speak to ("Type 1 for tech support, 2 for sales, 
		  F-R-E-D, to speak to Fred."  or whatever...) F-R-E-D
		  turns out to be 3-7-3-3 on the phone. Then it could 
		  try your extension to see if you're in.  If not, it
		  can say "Sorry, Fred's not in at the moment, if you'd
		  like to leave a message for him, press 1. Or if you'd
		  like to speak to someone else, press 2."  

		  If your friend did leave a message, you could have the
		  thing automatically place an outgoing call to a number
		  you entered previously (home, main office, or wherever)
		  and announce over the phone that you had received a msg.
		  You could then tell it to play the msg to you over the phone.
		  Of course you could simply call in periodically and check 
		  to see if you got any messages. 

		  Another nice thing though, is if the message was something
		  of interest to your colleague "BILL", you could send a
		  copy of the voice msg to Bill since it is stored as a
		  digitized sound file.  If you wanted Bill to hear the part
		  about the meeting being cancelled but not the part about
		  your Mother-in-Law, you can edit that part out before you
		  send it. You can cut and paste and edit pieces of sound
		  files together if you wanted to. 

		  It accepts e-mail (data) as well as voice. Via modem 
		  or over your network. And it works ok under MultiFinder. 

		  Check out the note in comp.newprod if yours is still in
		  there and hasn't gone away yet. Otherwise you'll have to
		  call the (808) 955-2758 number to find out anything else
		  about it.  

		  By the way... Why don't you like coffee??  :-)