Can I link to a Phone number?

Cuz I want to.

[Powdork]

With VoiP becoming all the rage I want to be able to have a phone number on my sites with a link that Computer phone users can click on that will intiate the dialing process. Is this possible?

[trillianjedi]

You always used to be able to do this with netmeeting, although I can't remember the protocol tag (something like "call://<URI>").

I would think a quick search would give you the answer.

TJ

[trillianjedi]

Added : it's "callto://".

Originally assigned in the Windows namespace to NetMeeting, now used by Skype if you install it.

It will probably be adopted by all other softphone/SIP connection agents anyway.

[msdn.microsoft.com...]

I have no idea what this will do on Linux, but it's just a namespace thing (like http:// or ftp:// - a protocol reference), so I'd be fairly sure that callto:// will be adopted by Linux applications, if it hasn't already.

TJ

[Powdork]

Thanks,
The information from MSDN is a bit cryptic. Would callto:1-800-555-1212+type=phone work or do I get rid of the dashes?
Would having the phone numbers on the web page lead to large amounts of VoiPSpaM for my clients?

[trillianjedi]

The callto: will make the users OS go and look in the namespace for which application on the users system deals with this information.

If I use WidgetPhone for example, and WidgetPhone is assigned in the system namespace to deal with "callto:" URL's then clicking on the above link will launch my WidgetPhone application, and pass "1-800-555-1212 etc" to it. If that variable is all WidgetPhone needs to dial the number, then it will work. Hope that makes sense.

Try putting this in a page and clicking it:-

callto:trillianjedi

... and see what happens. It will probably launch NetMeeting (if you're on windows) and will come back and say "who is trillianjedi?" or something similar.

Would having the phone numbers on the web page lead to large amounts of VoiPSpaM for my clients?

VoIP spam is known as as SPIT (Spam over Internet Telephony). It's going to be the major epidemic of 2007.

So yes, personally, I wouldn't do it. Imagine the capability of VoIP to auto-dial thousands of people and play them recorded messages..... and we think e-mail spam is scary.

TJ

[Powdork]

Thats kind of what I was afraid of. If that issue the VoIP link would dbe a pretty handy addition to a directory.