Brian sent me an email today about a simple HTTP API for making calls with vonage (our voice over IP phone service).

Third party call control allows third party developers to write their own software applications to initiate a call from their Vonage phone to any other phone in the world.

For example, an Outlook plug-in could be created that would initiate a call by clicking on a phone number in the Outlook contact list. Another example would be a browser plug-in that would place a call to a phone number on any web page.

- Vonage Third Party Call Control

I thought it'd be nice to be able to select a phone number in Apple's Addressbook.app (where I keep my contacts) and have it call that number. After a bit of looking around I found just such a script for skype. I did a couple of small modifications, and now it works for vonage.

Just save the following code as a script in "~/Library/Address Book Plug-Ins/", and modify the variable 'thispage' url to match your vonage username, password and phone number:

'username=vonage_username&password =***&fromnumber=15551212'

applescript:

using terms from application "Address Book" on action property return "phone" end action property on action title for p with e return "Dial with Vonage" end action title on should enable action for p with e return true end should enable action on perform action for p with e set phone_num to the value of e set prefix to "" set cutoff to 0 set taster to character 1 of phone_num set taster to taster & character 2 of phone_num if taster is "00" then set prefix to "+" set cutoff to 2 end if if taster is in {"01", "02", "03", "04", "05", "06", "07", "08", "09"} then set prefix to "+44 " set cutoff to 1 end if set new_num to prefix repeat with i from cutoff + 1 to the number of characters in phone_num set new_num to new_num & character i of phone_num end repeat set phone_num to new_num vonage_out(phone_num) end perform action end using terms from on vonage_out(phone_num) tell application "Safari" set call_string to phone_num set thispage to "https://secure.click2callu.com/tpcc/makecall?username=vonage_username&password=****&fromnumber=7125551212&tonumber=" & call_string make new document at end of documents set URL of document 1 to thispage end tell end vonage_out

Once installed just right click on any number displayed for a contact and select 'Dial with Vonage'.

All that picking up the phone and dialing crap, it was making me tired. Yet another great example of how the modern age has turned me into a lazy bastard.