What is email by Phone ?

email by Phone is the easiest way to check your emails. Imagine you want to go on a vacation and are faced with the dilemma of either lugging along your 7-lb laptop, or face the uninviting consequence of being disconnected from the rest of the world and not being able to read your emails. What do you do?

Instead of giving up your vacation and staying home so that you can keep up to date with your emails, or getting a backache from carrying around your laptop, imagine checking your emails by using any touch-tone telephone just as you would with your regular voice mail! This is exactly what email by Phone will let you do.

This project is done as a fulfillment for CS6998 Advanced Internet Services, and B9701 Entrepreneurship and Technology.

Features:

Due to the open architecture of Email by Phone and the powerful API provided with the system, this list of features can be easily extended to meet every user's particular needs.

• Easily Extensible and Fast Development

TCL is a popular scripting language that is easy to learn. All call logic in Email by Phone is implemented in TCL, which also has the added advantage of being an interpreted language so that no compilation is required.

• Similar Interface as Voice Mail System

Any experienced users of a voice mail system will be instantly familiar with Email by Phone, which has a voice-mail style menu system. There is minimal learning and training required.

• Interruptible Speech

Users can interrupt the speech at anytime by pushing a key.

• Auto-detect User Hangup

When the user hangs up prematurely, the system is able to detect it and resets automatically for the next caller.

• Reply to Emails

The user can predefine a set of responses such as "Will call back.", or "I am out of town until June 26th." and reply to emails with these responses. The user can also reply to messages by recording a voice message that will be sent as a MIME-encoded email.

Tools and Packages:

email by Phone uses proven technologies from major vendors to ensure the highest quality and advanced product possible.

• POP specifications
• Bell Labs TTS System
• Teltone T-311 DTMF System
• Tcl/Tk and C/C++

Due to the open architecture of email by Phone, you can mix and match different tools and packages as long as an interface file is developed for it. Such interfaces can be developed and deployed quickly due to the use of scripting language.

Architecture:

There are six modules in email by Phone as described below. Each module is independent and can be replaced without affecting any of the other modules. For example, when a better voice synthesizing technology appears, only the voice module needs to be rewritten in order to take advantage of the new technology.

The system is built from off-the-shelf components and will be geared towards the ease of use as well as transparent operations to the users.

• Control center

This will be the central command for the system and will provide all top level features.
• User Authentication

This will provide the initial logon verification for the users.
• Email Handler

This will retrieve emails from whatever source that the user specifies. It will also parse the emails so that it can identity the sender, subject, and body.
• Voice Handler

This will provide the voice synthesis required for the system.
• Phone System Handler

This will accept inputs from the incoming call and decode DTMF signals. It will also mix in voice inputs.
• Administrative

This will allow the user or the system administrator to change the preferences and attributes of the system. It will have a graphical user interface and be point-and-click based.

Development Team

Jack Hsu
Columbia Business School
New York, NY 10027
jsh50@columbia.edu

Jeff Stutz
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Columbia University
New York, NY 10027
jzs2@columbia.edu

Management Team

Johnny Yee
Columbia Business School
New York, NY 10027
jy138@columbia.edu

Last updated May 5th, 1998.
Updates, comments to jsh50@columbia.edu or jzs2@columbia.edu