[misterhouse-users] vxml mh interface for tellme.com

[Bruce W. <br...@mi...>]

This weekend's upcoming release will have a new option of returning vxml
menus.  Voice XML is used in creating Voice Portals and is used at places
like http://tellme.com and http://bevocal.com .

The fine folks at tellme.com are currently allowing for others to create
vxml menus for use with their free 1-800  number.  If you want to give it a
try, you can talk to my house with these steps:

 After the advertisement (when you hear the 'tell me more' prompt), speak:
Extensions

 Key in 46630 (home0)

 Try any of the category/commands (listed if you speak 'help').  For
example:

  weather:  What is the temperature
  lights:   Internet light on
  internet: Display the top 10 list

The tellme.com guys have a BIG network, and the interface to mh is via
short/quick http requests, so don't worry about tieing up the phone line.
Lots of calls can be processed in parallel.

My next step is to allow for a password, so we can enable more important
commands to be run remotely.

This code is enabled with programmable user code.  I think we can use this
same approach to create more flexible menus for small footprint web devices
like WAP phones or wireless PDAs.  The code for the above tellme call is
here:

  http://misterhouse.net/mh/code/bruce/tellme_menu.pl

If you want to try it out, you will need this weekends code update.  I just
thought I'd let you guys know what was coming.

Also, does anyone know of stand alone programs the process vxml?  Having a
tellme like program running within the home would be pretty handy.  That
would probable be a bit more flexible than the VR we have built into mh
currently.  Maybe we could break that function out of mh and write our own
VR vxml interface.

Bruce