Thanks, Kay. I think this mostly answers the question.
Batch processing isn't an option, though it could help if it was. I
probably should have done a better job at explaining the nature of the
task at the outset. That would have answered the question from Viktoras
as well.
The focus of this is on taking golf reservations. These reservations are
made on-line (and by cell phone) and can be made up to 15 minutes before
a tee time.... hence, the information has to be transmitted immediately
to the course. Many of the courses I am dealing with don't use computers
and/or are not prepared to integrate in an electronic reservation
system. Their business is done either by phone or by golfers who walk in
the door. That information is then written onto a tee sheet. That's how
they do their business. SMS texting is possible, but again would fall
outside of the way these folks do business.
With the telemessage solution, the tee time reservation comes in as a
phone call. A nice feature of telemessage (already built in -- as
opposed to a Skype solution), is that the recipient can replay the
message as often as they wish, giving them plenty of time to write the
information down. Fortunately, I've found the quality of telemessages
text-to-speech calls to be excellent. They appear to be using the latest
technology.
Thanks for everyone's help in sorting this out.
Richard
Kay C Lan wrote:
On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 1:51 AM, Richard Miller <w...@together.net> wrote:
I'd appreciate any comments regarding the issue of keeping Skype running in
the background (on a MacMini) and periodically (could be several hundred
times per day) using Applescript to generate a wav file, then directing
Skype to call the vendor and play the file. Do you think this can all happen
fairly quietly in the background while Rev is handling numerous cgi scripts
as the server's main task?
Couple of thoughts.
Firstly, if you are worried about cpu cycles, what about handling them as a
batch process - depending on how time critical these calls are. Create the
wav files as the orders are created and store them in a specific folder.
Every half hour get AppleScript to start up Skype, process all the files,
then shut Skype down.
Secondly, as far as the possibility of having people trying to Skype you,
I'm assuming this is a MacMini server that doesn't do anything else so it's
address book is not a necessary app. Set up a new Skype account, set it's
Privacy preferences so that only people in your Contact List can Call and
Chat. If your address book is empty, and you don't add any Contacts then you
should have zero web presence. I believe you don't need the phone numbers
you'll be dialling to be in your Contact List, you can do that all with
AppleScript. One other thing to look into is you can manually set yourself
to be 'Not Available', 'Do Not Disturb' or 'Invisible' so it might be
possible to do this via AppleScript, further ensuring limited net presence.
I guess a check of Activity Monitor will give you some clue as well. Whilst
I had my setting as 'Do Not Disturb' my AM showed CPU at a steady 0.1% for
Skype. When I changed the setting to 'On Line' it popped up to 3% before
dropping back to 0.1% with a very occassional spike at 1.6%
HTH
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