The Voice(XML) of the People

This is a copy of a website that I maintained for many years where I shared details of phone and voice-based technologies for use by governments. This site is no longer active, and the content is retained here in the hope that it will be useful to others. The source code for this website can be found on Github.

Posts

• Evolution of an Open Data Program (March 16, 2011)
• Witnessing the CfA Effect in Philadelphia (February 26, 2011)
• Interactive Screen Pops with Asterisk & XMPP (October 28, 2010)
• How to Build a Telephone (October 16, 2010)
• Building Voice Applications with Tropo and Node.js (October 01, 2010)
• Make the Cloud Listen (and Understand) (August 13, 2010)
• What Matters in Cloud Telephony (August 12, 2010)
• Building Cloud Communication Apps with Tropo: Part 4 (July 05, 2010)
• Building Cloud Communication Apps with Tropo: Part 3 (June 21, 2010)
• Building Cloud Communication Apps with Tropo: Part 2 (June 14, 2010)
• Building Cloud Communication Apps with Tropo: Part 1 (June 06, 2010)
• eComm 2010: San Francisco (April 13, 2010)
• The American Cell Phone Gap (April 11, 2010)
• Upgrading to CouchDB 0.11 (April 07, 2010)
• Tropo Goes Global (March 25, 2010)
• Classic Dilbert (March 22, 2010)
• Cloudvox: Cloud Telephony Applications Made Easy (February 25, 2010)
• XHP for VoiceXML (February 14, 2010)
• Relaxing on the Couch with Tropo and CouchDB (January 06, 2010)
• Building Voice Applications with Tropo and CouchDB (January 04, 2010)
• Classic Dilbert (December 11, 2009)
• User Agent Sniffing for Multi-Channel Apps (December 05, 2009)
• Getting Conferency With Asterisk (November 23, 2009)
• Book Review: Asterisk 1.6 (November 23, 2009)
• Next Steps in the Evolution of Multimodal Applications (October 29, 2009)
• Drupal Notifications Framework (October 27, 2009)
• Cloudvox: Building Phone Apps in the Cloud (October 21, 2009)
• Migrating to Drupal (September 29, 2009)
• Philly IT Chief Talks Vision / Savings (September 03, 2009)
• Joining a New Team (August 03, 2009)
• Odd Tweet of the Day Award (June 05, 2009)
• It’s the Little Things (June 04, 2009)
• Automatic for the People (June 03, 2009)
• VoiceGlue 0.10 Released (June 01, 2009)
• Talk to the BOT (May 28, 2009)
• The Answer to Government XP Woes (April 17, 2009)
• Shoring up Asterisk Security (April 07, 2009)
• Book Review: AGI 1.4 and 1.6 Programming (April 06, 2009)
• Voxeo Announces New Tropo Hotness: COBOL! (April 01, 2009)
• New Project: Hear Me Say This (March 31, 2009)
• Bad Week for Public Sector CIOs (March 17, 2009)
• Ides of March (March 03, 2009)
• VoiceGlue Up And Running (February 28, 2009)
• Ubuntu Asterisk Oddness (February 27, 2009)
• Behold the Power of the Command Line (February 23, 2009)
• The Penguin Loves Obama (February 19, 2009)
• Command Line Twitter (February 17, 2009)
• Facebook Drama in Maryland (February 11, 2009)
• Why Does Twitter Rock So Hard? (February 11, 2009)
• Audio Control in VoiceXML: Redux (February 04, 2009)
• Twitter 2.0 for the Public Sector (January 29, 2009)
• Learning to Cook… From a Cell Phone (January 22, 2009)
• Extension Methods vs. Prototype (January 21, 2009)
• Using Twitter to Respond to Natural Disasters (January 20, 2009)
• Wireless Carriers to Sing Inaugural Blues? (January 19, 2009)
• Customizing Caller ID with CiviCRM and trixbox (January 15, 2009)
• Spread the Love (January 14, 2009)
• Comcast Breaks the Mold With Twitter (January 14, 2009)
• Federal Government Goes Social (January 13, 2009)
• Twitter and the Public Sector (January 12, 2009)
• New VoiceObjects Developer Edition Available (January 12, 2009)
• Easier Doesn’t Always Mean Better (January 09, 2009)
• More Public Sector Asterisk (January 07, 2009)
• (Not So) New Voice Application Development Tools (January 05, 2009)
• Do Governments Need Standards for Microblogging? (January 03, 2009)
• Top VoIP Stories of 2008? You Tell Me. (December 29, 2008)
• Most Interesting Public Sector IT Story of 2008 (December 28, 2008)
• First Draft of VoiceXML 3.0 Released (December 27, 2008)
• How NOT to Manage an API (December 25, 2008)
• Screen Pops with Asterisk and XMPP (December 23, 2008)
• Steven Colbert on AT&T (December 23, 2008)
• Facebook Integration Enabled (December 23, 2008)
• Wanted: One IM/VoIP Client That Does it All (December 21, 2008)
• It’s Still All About the Phone (December 18, 2008)
• The Upside of the Downturn (December 17, 2008)
• How Will Technology Change by 2020? (December 15, 2008)
• What’s up with the VoiceXML Forum? (December 15, 2008)
• My Favorite Linux Commands: find (December 14, 2008)
• More Governments Using Twitter (December 11, 2008)
• Upgrade U (December 11, 2008)
• Thoughts on Gmail-SMS Chat (December 11, 2008)
• Voxeo Keeps on Rolling with VoiceObjects Acquisition (December 09, 2008)
• CCXML, XMPP and PHP (December 05, 2008)
• Of Medicine and Broadband (December 03, 2008)
• Behold the Power of Twitter (November 30, 2008)
• Building a Custom Stats Monitor for Voxeo Prophecy (November 05, 2008)
• DC Crime Finder (October 30, 2008)
• Apps For Democracy (October 22, 2008)
• Demystifying VoiceXML Subdialogs (October 03, 2008)
• Voxeo Offers Advance Peek at Prophecy 9 (August 21, 2008)
• Verizon Launches Hosted VoiceXML Platform (July 16, 2008)
• The State of Talking Computers (June 30, 2008)
• WebAnywhere: A Web-Based Screen Reader (June 27, 2008)
• Wireless Philadelphia May Survive After All (June 18, 2008)
• Android Developer Challenge Winners Announced (May 14, 2008)
• Wireless Philadelphia: is the dream over? (May 14, 2008)
• Accessing Web Services From VoiceXML (May 06, 2008)
• JavaScript Trick for Voice Applications (April 25, 2008)
• Virtualize Some Savings (April 23, 2008)
• Accessing Web Services From CCXML (April 21, 2008)
• Earth Day Special Project: GreenPhone (April 17, 2008)
• Government Technology Mistakes (April 16, 2008)
• Telephone Links in Web Pages (April 15, 2008)
• A Look at Google’s FCC Auction Strategy (April 06, 2008)
• Why I Like Gizmo (April 02, 2008)
• Yet Another Voice Plugin for Facebook (April 01, 2008)
• Phone Jamming and Other Dirty Political Tricks (January 07, 2008)
• What’s MIME is Not Yours (January 01, 2008)
• Mitigating SQL Injection Vulnerabilities in VoiceXML Applications (December 28, 2007)
• A Good Year for Open Source (December 27, 2007)
• Google to bid on Spectrum (November 30, 2007)
• Verizon to Open Cell Phones? (November 29, 2007)
• The State of the X+V Standard (November 29, 2007)
• W3C Publishes Revised Standards Plan (November 27, 2007)
• IVR Systems Strengthen Democracy (October 16, 2007)
• Fonality announces trixBox Pro (August 14, 2007)
• Wireless Philadelphia (May 23, 2007)
• Die Zombies Die! (May 16, 2007)
• Top 5 Things to do after intalling Trixbox: #2 (May 16, 2007)
• More on the need for patent reform (May 15, 2007)
• Top 5 Things to do after intalling Trixbox: #1 (May 13, 2007)
• Public Sector Asterisk (May 13, 2007)
• Expensive != Secure (May 04, 2007)
• Good stuff from the W3C (April 30, 2007)
• Patent Reform and the Future of VoIP (April 26, 2007)
• Building Better IVRs (February 15, 2007)
• Audio Control in VoiceXML (December 22, 2006)
• New Version of Vocal Democracy Released (November 28, 2006)
• Using SoX on Headerless (VOX) Audio files (November 16, 2006)
• Phoning up some controversy (November 07, 2006)
• Credit where credit is due (November 06, 2006)
• Choice is good (November 03, 2006)
• Vocal Democracy Released! (November 02, 2006)
• How to steal an election (October 26, 2006)
• Asterisk lowers phone costs (October 19, 2006)
• Vocal Democracy (October 17, 2006)
• Portable Rotary Cellular Phone (August 01, 2006)
• TellMe Offers Free SIP Hosting (July 20, 2006)
• A little knowledge = a dangerous thing (July 13, 2006)
• Some more 2-1-1 news (July 11, 2006)
• Arizona 2-1-1 (July 05, 2006)
• Life in the Call Center (June 10, 2006)
• Detecting Caller Frustration (June 10, 2006)
• Interpreting Spoken Input (June 02, 2006)
• On the demise of SALT (May 25, 2006)
• Changing VoiceXML Property Values (May 01, 2006)
• All About the Phone (April 07, 2006)
• Can you Stomach Some More? (March 27, 2006)
• Combating the “Alpha Bail” (March 27, 2006)
• The Skinny on Databases (March 08, 2006)
• The Human Factor (February 27, 2006)
• E4X in VoiceXML (February 06, 2006)
• Semantic Interpretation of Speech (January 24, 2006)
• Open Says Google (January 18, 2006)
• Voice as the “Killer App” (January 17, 2006)
• Visual AJAX != Voice AJAX (January 08, 2006)
• Mass. CIO Peter Quinn Resigns (December 29, 2005)
• Google to Takeover Opera? (December 18, 2005)
• Adventures in Extreme Phoning "“ Vol II. (December 13, 2005)
• Adventures in Extreme Phoning "“ Vol I. (December 13, 2005)
• VoiceXML 3.0 on its way (December 07, 2005)
• New World Order (December 05, 2005)
• Idaho 511 (November 30, 2005)
• Click to Call (November 29, 2005)
• More on N11 (November 22, 2005)
• NYC 311 Getting Bigger (November 15, 2005)
• Web 2.0 Talk (October 31, 2005)
• IP Telephony & Voice 2.0? (October 21, 2005)
• When Voice Applications Fail (October 10, 2005)
• New Tutorial Coming Soon (October 06, 2005)
• Reality Check for Voice? (September 30, 2005)
• Voice over IM and Constituent Service (September 22, 2005)
• AOL Gets in on Voice over IM Action (September 21, 2005)
• Opera is Free! (September 20, 2005)
• A Little BIT of Change (September 16, 2005)
• Click here for help (September 13, 2005)
• Texting ‘2HELP’ for Hurricane Relief (September 02, 2005)
• Waxing Nostalgic on VoIP (August 31, 2005)
• Cooking up Some X + V (August 30, 2005)
• IM Talking Now (August 24, 2005)
• What’s the N11? (August 24, 2005)
• Expectations of VoIP (August 19, 2005)
• Sweet X+V Tutorials (August 09, 2005)
• Tapping into VoIP? (August 09, 2005)
• The Ghost of Thomas Edison (August 02, 2005)
• Simplifying Voice Application Development (July 30, 2005)
• Regulating VoIP Services (July 26, 2005)
• Striving for a Standard (July 21, 2005)
• Making Web Pages Talk (July 18, 2005)
• Creating “Multi-Mobile” Applications (July 16, 2005)
• Driving while dialing (July 12, 2005)
• On the wire (July 11, 2005)
• Swiss Army Phone (July 08, 2005)
• A Lament for Stranded Data (July 07, 2005)
• Tool Time (July 06, 2005)
• Handheld Highs and Lows (July 04, 2005)
• Speak with Confidence (July 03, 2005)
• E911: Problem or Promise? (July 01, 2005)
• AJAX in VoiceXML Applications (July 01, 2005)
• Last Call Working Draft of CCXML (June 30, 2005)
• I Like the Sound of These (June 29, 2005)
• The Age of “Open” Telephony (June 25, 2005)
• SOAP up your VoiceXML Apps (June 24, 2005)
• Municipal Broadband to the Rescue (June 23, 2005)
• Who’s using phone voting? (June 22, 2005)
• VoiceXML and the Democratic Divide (June 20, 2005)
• Grammar Support in Opera 8 (June 17, 2005)
• On Premises Hosting vs. Outsourcing (June 16, 2005)
• Candidate Recommendation Status for VXML 2.1 (June 15, 2005)