🚀 go-pugleaf

I work for the Green Party of California. We have faced a problem that I'm  
sure many underfunded groups encounter: internal communications (ie.  
delivering messages inexpensively to our local members).

I figure the only solution is the telephone, since an unlimited local  
calls line can be had for $15/month; while US Mail can run  
$hundreds/month. Now comes the rub. A simple dial-up a central number and  
listen to the recorded message (like movie theatres) doesn't work, because  
a lot of people simply don't make the call. On the other hand many people  
are willing to receive a recorded message called to their phone.  
Especially if it's at a certain hour and their message machine will  
intercept it. Delivering messages by phone is too hard and unreliable for  
human beings to do (as in a "human phone banking/tree" system).

Thus what is needed is a computerized phone message delivery system that  
can also take incoming calls and play the same message (for those people  
who don't want their privacy intruded by computerized message delivery).

This system must minimally be able to:

1. Record a voice message. Obviously human voice recording is a minimum.  
However, being able to type in a message and have the computer generate a  
GOOD voice synthesis would be realy useful. This is because most people  
find recording a message an intimidating experience requiring many "takes"  
to get it right.

2. Take a list of phone numbers. Be able to recognize numbers outside the  
local free calling area and reject them.

3. Have an optional time/date-range field to go with the telephone number  
to custom control message delivery at specific time/date-ranges (the  
message subscriber's choice).

4. Be able to take at least two phone lines. One for incoming and one for  
outgoing calls.

5. Have a touch-tone menu up front that allows the user to choose between  
hearing the latest announcement/news, leaving a long message, or leaving a  
short message (telephone number changes or subscribe/unsubscribe for the  
auto message delivery subsystem).

6. A fairly sophisticated analyzer in the message delivery subsystem to  
detect whether the message has been delivered reliably or not. I suspect  
this is the tough part.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Man, a software package like the above should have tremendous sales  
potential. Does it exist on the Next already? Most local groups (like  
ours) have somebody with a Next (like me). So the software would be the  
only major exspense (wouldn't it?).

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Greg Colello
Carnegie Institution, Department of Plant Biology
Stanford University
gcolello@biosphere.stanford.edu