visit my site, and you get a phone call.

how could it be done?

[httpwebwitch]

scenario:

someone enters their phone number in a form.
Immediately, their phone rings and they can listen to a pre-recorded message. This is done automatically, triggered by the server. Since it is a paid-for service using a deal with the telephone company, it has to be delivered by telephone, not with a sound file on the computer.

How does one do this?

[Macguru]

Hi httpwebwitch,

Since most of them will use a regular modem the line will be busy. Also, you wont get much people to enter their phone number, so you can call them. Is the goal collecting phone numbers?

>it has to be delivered by telephone, not with a sound file on the computer.

Why? If you want them to listen to something, why dont you put some clickable MP3 online?

[HughMungus]

Macguru, I can think of a few reasons. One is to verify that a phone number works.

I think I can tell you how to do this. I'm doing computer/telephony hybrid stuff right now on a service I'm running. Basically you'd use a voicemail program that can do outbound calls and set it up to make a call based on a certain trigger from the computer then either hold until you pickup or play an existing .wav file or let the person on the other end record a message or whatever.

[SethCall]

what you want to do here can be done in a number of ways, and of the ways I know, none are trivial ... you really need to be more descriptive than that ... for instance, do you have access to some sort of telephony hardware? I could think of some ways in which a single computer/ single phone could do it ...

the first question u must answer is in what way do u have access to the PSTN ( public switched telephone network ); the examples I gave above are the two common ways

[jatar_k]

[webmasterworld.com...]

I had that happen, it was for verification while purchasing a secure cert.

[HughMungus]

Actually, Seth, I think it can be done with a regular 56k voice modem. That's what I'm using to receive phone calls.

[moltar]

I am sure it is possible to do with a voice modem. I found an interesting article [ibrado.com] on implementing your own Interactive Voice Response System with Linux and Perl. That might get you started.