A Phone Dialer That Rox

When I had Vonage VoIP, I loved its CallVantage feature. It integrated with Outlook and let me select a contact and instantly dial it. Within seconds, my phone was ringing with the call in progress. But when I left Vonage due to lack of a data centers in the 209 area code (which it still doesn’t have) for Packet8, I lost my beloved feature. Sure, there are phone dialers that work with modems, but lots of good that does me on a MacBook Pro. Thankfully, a guy named Jon felt my pain.

Not to be confused with SvenOnTech’s own contributor, Jon is another famous Jon that develops some neat applications for the Mac. You may have seen his Docktop the last time you visited an Apple Store. You know, the little collection of applications in the middle of the screen that you could launch much like the Apple Dock but it’s in the middle of the screen. Ya, it’s sweet. Well Jon has applied the same sweetness to JPT, short for Jon’s Phone Tool.

If you’re a lucky Vonage user, you’ll be able to use JPT with it much like CallVantage which is great for Mac users since Vonage doesn’t have a Mac version of CallVantage. But if you don’t have Vonage, as I don’t anymore, then you have other choices to get that number dialed from your Mac. This list is long, but I’ll be brief with it. Methods include Bluetooth (sends the number to your mobile or one of the handful home phones with Bluetooth), VoIP, touch-tones through your speaker, and good ol’ analog modem. If you’ve bought a Mac recently, then the latter won’t apply to you as it doesn’t for me. That leaves good times with those tiny speakers (or VoIP for you Cisco cats)!

I played with JPT for maybe ten minutes before I found myself at Kagi’s site making a purchase of this fine tool. Jon knows how good his dialer is since he not only mentions the competition but even puts links to them on his FAQ page! With its ease and power, it just was too easy not to even consider looking at the other dialers. For $15, ya, I’ll feel fine slapping out the credit card numbers via 1Passwd since it’s just that good.

A couple of things I do want to tell you potential dialer users before I conclude. First, its integration with various address books is great. It tapped right into my Entourage as well as Apple’s Address Book. Since I connect to an Exchange server, the dialer took a great amount of time to find my number I was searching for; however, Address Book was instant. Since Entourage now lets you sync with Address Book, I ended up just keeping JPT settings to use Address Book.

The other feature I wanted to let you know about is the ability to dial Mnemonics directly. For example, if you see a number that is, say, 1-800-GO-BEARS, you input that and off it dials. Very, very nice!

Again, you can’t go wrong with this dialer. It’s spot on. If you make frequent calls throughout the day and need a break on the dial-pad, let Jon’s Phone Tool help you let your fingers get a break. I did.

[tags]Jons Phone Tool, JPT, Dialer, Vonage, CallVantage, VoIP, Speaker, Bluetooth[/tags]