Web Dial

This is a little system to let you easily dial phone numbers off a web page in Firefox through your touch-tone phone.

1. Download and install the unix dtmfdial utility. (It's rather hard to find; I ended up hacking the FreeBSD debian package)
2. Grab this script: dtmfhelper, change it to point at your local area code, put it in your PATH, and make it executable. (Test it out by running it, typing a free-form phone number, then hitting return.)
3. Bookmark this link: Make Dial Links
4. Go to a webpage w/ phone numbers on it and pull down the Bookmark
5. When Firefox asks you what to do with the application/x-phone-number link, tell it to run that dtmfhelper script you installed, always, without asking
6. Take your phone "off hook" (you can't do this w/ most cell phones, but for home cordless, usually you just hit Talk or whatever until you get a dial tone), hold the microphone up to your speakers, and click a phone number link.
7. Voila!

You can try it out on this page (assuming you're in area code 510) by using the bookmark or just clicking the link above:

The number for time is: (510) 767-5555.