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Let's Go Down To The Party Line
Sunday, April 27, 2008
The folks at Equals have come up with a neat application for Facebook: The Party Line. Here's how it works: you add the application to your Facebook profile, add up to five of your friends to a given party line, then when you activate the party line--either through Facebook or by calling 877 428 9963--all of the other friends on your party line are called.
Equals is using Voxeo's Prophecy Platform for the development and delivery of this new application. The Prophecy Platform provides support for standards such as VoiceXML, which makes it easy to bring a web interface to the telephone. It also supports Voxeo's CCXML (Call Control eXtensible Markup Language) engine, which made it easy for Equals to deploy robust conferencing and IP telephony capabilities using SIP, but without all the complex low-level coding.
Compared to typical conferencing solutions, this is fairly straightforward. There is no software. No downloads of any kind. PIN codes--typical for conference calling services--are not required at all. You either click on a button in Facebook or call 877 4 BUZZME (428 9963). The other participants are automatically called. The call--and the service--are free!
If you'd like to see how it works, here's a video demonstration:
Facebook users can immediately install “Party Line” at www.equals.com/partyline
While the service mentions mobile phones, I see no reason you could not also do this with landlines or VoIP services like voip.com, so long as the line transmits proper Caller ID. The service clearly uses Caller ID to authenticate inbound callers. Outbound calls could be made to any phone.
