With PhoneFloater 1.0 installed, your AV or Power Macintosh with GeoPort Telecom Adapter can now be used as a powerful communications tool. The PhoneFloater 1.0 package you downloaded contains all you need to get started with Telephony on your GeoPort equipped Mac. Below you will find some useful information on using PhoneFloater to create a more productive, exciting computing environment to work with.
Table Of Contents
1. What's In PhoneFloater 1.0?
2. Requirements for operation
3. Using PhoneFloater 1.0
4. Speech Recognition gotchas and other notes...
5. Other software by MUSI Computer Products, Inc.
6. How to reach us
7. Copyright and distribution information
1. What's In PhoneFloater 1.0?
PhoneFloater 1.0 is a very robust application which allows you to use your Macintosh as a speakerphone and telephone dialer. With it, you can place telephone calls from a variety of different applications, and from a variety of different sources, including PowerTalk business cards. You can also keep track of all calls placed with your Macintosh through our innovative Call Log mechanism, and even redial numbers from that log. Below is a list of features available in PhoneFloater 1.0.
• Full-Duplex speakerphone
• Drag and Drop telephone dialing
• Speech recognition for dialing numbers, executing commands, and navigating dialogs
• Speed dial list for easy access to recently dialed numbers
• Call tracking capabilities for logging all calls, and dialing previously dialed numbers
• Ability to create and save phone files for future telephone calls
• Low memory footprint (requires only 500k for complete operation)
2. Requirements for operation
PhoneFloater has modest requirements for normal operation. For basic functionality, you must have the following hardware/software on your Macintosh :
• AV or Power Macintosh system with a GeoPort Telecom adapter
• 8 MB RAM (minimum 500k free for application)
• Apple Telecom 2.0 or later software
• System 7.5 or later Operating System software
• Macintosh Drag & Drop v1.1 (comes with System 7.5)
• Espy Sans typeface (available with eWorld software, or on Apple Web sites)
For extended features, such as dialing from PowerTalk business cards or speech, you should have :
• 16 MB RAM (required for Speech Recognition and PowerTalk)
• Speech Recognition 1.4 or later software (previously called PlainTalk™)
• PowerTalk 1.1 installed and enabled
3. Using PhoneFloater 1.0
PhoneFloater is really a simple program to use. There are, however, a few features which may not be obvious to you the first time you use the application. Take a minute out to read the tips/instructions below to familiarize yourself with the operation of PhoneFloater and you will be benefitted by constant telephone bliss!
Dialing the phone
There are a number of different methods of inputting a phone number into the PhoneFloater window. Among these are :
• Drag and Drop of a Text phone number from another application
• Drag and Drop of a PowerTalk business card with a phone number attribute (favored)
• Drag and Drop a previously saved PhoneFloater file
• Speak out the telephone number you wish to dial (ie 9,4032550794). This is cool, but slow.
To actually dial the displayed number, you can either press the Dial button, Command-D, or just tell the computer to "Dial".
You can also dial digits while you are using the phone. To do this, just press the digit buttons (ie. 1 through 10 and modifier keys -- #*,!)
Answering the phone
When an incoming call is detected, PhoneFloater creates a new telephone window with an Answer button in place of the standard Dial button. The status area of the window will tell you that an incoming call is available in this window, which you can choose to answer or ignore. When you answer the call, the phone window becomes a normal phone window with no added features.
Hanging Up
Hanging up a call is just as simple. Press the Hang Up button (the Dial button changes to Hang Up when you are using the speakerphone), or Command-H. Speech recognition does not work for hang up, because the sound source is being used when using the speakerphone.
Muting the Microphone
The little speaker button mutes the microphone so the people on the other end cannot hear you (good for saying "nasty" things about them).
Speed Dial
Everytime you make a phone call with PhoneFloater, it saves the number in the global Speed Dial listing. This listing is available under the little popup menu on the phone window. It can store ten different numbers (it will not store the same number more than once, unless it is entered differently). This is a nice convenient way in which you can dial your frequently accessed numbers without having to save a file for each one.
Call Tracking
Every call placed with PhoneFloater is logged in the PhoneFloater Log file, which is kept in the Preferences folder. You can place calls from this window as well, by clicking on any previous call in the list and pressing the dial button. This will cause a new phone window to be created with the requested number to be dialed.
4. Speech Recognition gotchas and other notes...
Note for AV Macintosh users -- Speech Recognition only works with Power Macintosh systems.
This is a really cool technology, and we have tried to implement a very basic recognition model for this application. There are many things to watch out for when using the speech recognition system with PhoneFloater.
When attempting to speak out a phone number, you must speak slowly, and in a very clear voice. It is best to wait for the phone window to display the number you have spoken before moving on to the next number. If the recognizer gets the number wrong, just speak "Undo" or use the menu or command-key equivalent.
Speech recognition can now be temporarily enabled or disabled. This can be done in two ways, both of which are initially accessed through the Preferences dialog (available under the Edit menu). You can set the preference for speech to be enabled or disabled here, and you can set a Command-Key combination which will allow you to enable and disable speech on the fly (this is really helpful in a noisy environment, or when listening to music on your Mac!). The one thing to note about the speech hot-key is that it does not work with any modifier keys (ie. Shift, Option, Control). The default is character is -` (notice the little accent).
5. Other Software by MUSI Computer Products, Inc.
MUSI Computer Products, Inc. develops and distributes software for Macintosh users only. Contrary to earlier statements, there will never be a version of BijouPlay for Windows (yeah!). Below is a list of software that is already available or soon to be available.
BijouPlay 2.1
BijouPlay 2.1 is the latest version of the acclaimed QuickTime movie player for Macintosh. BijouPlay is the smallest, coolest, fully featured QuickTime player available. Support for new QuickTime 2.1 media types is included in BijouPlay, as well as full support for Musical Instruments editing and playback. System 7.5 features include Drag & Drop, Thread Manager, and AppleScript. BijouPlay is currently the only QuickTime player application that is fully scriptable and recordable, using our Multimedia Apple Event suite, developed in cooperation with other multimedia developers on the Internet.
Version 2.0.3 is available now, version 2.1 will be available early fall 1995.
InterMail 1.0
This application is a free Internet mail solution for PowerTalk users on the Internet. It includes a PowerTalk mail enabled application with advanced features, and a PowerTalk PMSAM which allows you to send and receive mail through your Universal mailbox.
Available Fall 1995.
TeleNavigator 1.0
TeleNavigator is a suite of tools designed to help you communicate more efficiently using your Macintosh. Based around PowerTalk catalogs and GeoPort 2.0 software, it includes tools for electronic mail, data communications, full-duplex speakerphone, telephone answering, and video conferencing. All these tools are available under one consistent interface, with the ability to speak most commands rather than type or use the mouse, you have the most powerful communications suite available!
Available Winter 1996
InterNavigator 1.0
InterNavigator is a suite of tools designed to help you retrieve information from the Internet more efficiently. As plug-ins for TeleNavigator, or on their own, these OpenDoc parts help you access and retrieve information easier than ever before. A must for anyone on the Internet!
Available Spring 1996
6. How to reach us
You can reach us via electronic mail at the following addresses :
Internet : musi@cadvision.com
e•World : musi@eWorld.com
Or alternatively, you can send us mail at the following address :
PhoneFloater 1.0 is freely distributable through online services and bulletin boards. If you wish to redistribute PhoneFloater on a CD-ROM collection, you must contact MUSI Computer Products, Inc. for permission to do so. You may redistribute PhoneFloater 1.0 through any online service so long as there is no fee for download other than normal usage fees, and that the original binary is kept in tact.
PhoneFloater 1.0 is FREE! If you have paid for it, you paid too much, as none of that money has made it back to the original author. If you feel you have to pay for PhoneFloater, please pay us! We appreciate fine music and eating at good restaurants. If you are from a southern hemisphere ski area, invite us to come skiing!
We enjoyed creating PhoneFloater for you. Please do us a favor and tell all your friends what a great program it is, and that they should go out and buy a new Macintosh so that they may use it most effectively!
