Voicemail retrieval application

Posts: 476 · Last edited by blakadher on Wed May 31, 2006 10:52 pm; edited 1 time in total

Hey folks, I wrote a small application to retrieve voicemail from the Vonage website. It sits in your system tray and checks for new messages at an interval you specify. You can optionally allow the application to download new messages to your PC. If you'd like to give it a look (it's completely free) check out http://vonage.luthertech.com. It uses the .Net Framework v2.0 in case that's an issue for you (not sure if there's any ABMers around Wink

).

Posts: 25 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Jul 19, 2005 Posts: 25

I'll give it a try. One thing that I would like to see implemented, is instead of closing the app when clicking on the X in the right corner, make it minimize to the tray.

Or even give a check box, that allows a person to check to minimize instead of closing the app.

Posts: 476 · Posted: Wed May 31, 2006 10:50 pm Post subject:

brownizs wrote:

I'll give it a try. One thing that I would like to see implemented, is instead of closing the app when clicking on the X in the right corner, make it minimize to the tray.

Or even give a check box, that allows a person to check to minimize instead of closing the app.

That would be easy to implement. Right now when you minimize it goes to the system tray. There's two schools of thought on using the X to minimize: One says that you shouldn't change the expected behavior of core Windows functionality. The other says it's OK to change it if the new behavior makes sense and won't confuse the users. I'm still undecided on which is right in this particular situation.

Posts: 13 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Mar 21, 2004 Posts: 13

I'm not a Vonage user yet but plan to get onboard soon. I think your app is a great idea and look forward to giving it a try.

I had to respond to the idea of clicking on the X to minimize versus closing an application. My opinion is the default behaviour should be to fully close the app.

I have an FTP app that minimizes instead of closes and it bugs the life out of me. The most annoying thing is I KNOW it minimizes instead of closes, but because I tend to work quickly and click here and mouse there, I sometimes intuitively get ahead of myself and click the X before my brain can recall it's not going to do what I want.

My recommendation is to establish closing as the default behaviour (the one a user is most likely to expect) and allow through some options/preferences setting for the user to modify the bahaviour to minimize if that's what they wish.

Thanks.

-adm
http://www.imadm.com/

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: May 31, 2006 Posts: 3

This sounds like a great application! I plan on installing it tonight.

There are a lot of folks out there who will love this as a way to integrate Vonage into thier HTPC. I see a request for this alot on XP Media Center websites.

Could be a real opportunity for you if you can find a way to integrate this further into XP Media Center.

Great Job.

Posts: 42 · Full Forum Member Joined: Sep 27, 2005 Posts: 42

Although this sounds like a cool app, I'm not following why it is needed. I get my voicemail emailed to me and it pops in seconds after the caller finishes recording the msg. Why would you need to setup an app to check for voicemail?

Posts: 476 · Posted: Thu Jun 01, 2006 9:53 am Post subject:

caralmar wrote:

Although this sounds like a cool app, I'm not following why it is needed. I get my voicemail emailed to me and it pops in seconds after the caller finishes recording the msg. Why would you need to setup an app to check for voicemail?

The answer is: you wouldn't. This project was born of two things:

I wanted to see if I could successfully create an encrypted SSL tunnel to an HTTPS site using .Net
I was tired of having to log on to the website or call *123 and listen to the whole message just to delete a voicemail that I had already had emailed to me.

Personally, I think getting voicemail via email is the best bet. I will be adding an option to automatically delete voicemails (after downloading just in case something happens to the email) from the Vonage website which was the real end goal of this little project.

Posts: 42 · Full Forum Member Joined: Sep 27, 2005 Posts: 42

Ah... You're one of those "challenge" types... lol. Good stuff!

I was an avid programmer back in "my day"... but this .Net stuff is over my head. Now, if only you could come up w/ a cool app that lets you route a call to a Level 2 Support engineer in less than 90 min, you'd have GOLD!

Posts: 476 · Posted: Thu Jun 01, 2006 10:05 am Post subject:

caralmar wrote:

Ah... You're one of those "challenge" types... lol. Good stuff!

I was an avid programmer back in "my day"... but this .Net stuff is over my head. Now, if only you could come up w/ a cool app that lets you route a call to a Level 2 Support engineer in less than 90 min, you'd have GOLD!

Some would say "glutton for punishment", but yeah. Smile

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: May 31, 2006 Posts: 3

blakadher wrote:

I will be adding an option to automatically delete voicemails (after downloading just in case something happens to the email) from the Vonage website which was the real end goal of this little project.

Once you get this feature added, I would really like to have it. Will you post it to your website?