HELP

Thinphone help

Thinphone provides services like email to phone and email to fax which you use from your email address. Logging into this Thinphone web site provides the ability to modify your account, check billing, deposit funds for immediate use, and change passwords.

Using the Web Pages

Change Password	Click on "change password" and enter your new password twice
Add Funds	Click on "Add Funds" Make sure your billing address is correct, and select a dollar amount to add to your account. You can also change your outgoing name on this form. You will be taken to a secure credit card processing system for validation. Make sure you click the continue button at the bottom of the page to finish the transaction.
View Transactions	You can see the last 50 events which billed against your account

Using Thinphone

THINPHONE lets you send email to a telephone very simply. You can combine the Number and "@Thinphone.com" into a single email address: XXXXXXXXXX@Thinphone.com, replacing the X's with the 10 digits of a US phone number. The number should be a 10 digit number, no spaces, dashes, or parentheses.For example:

To: 8005551212@Thinphone.com
----
John,

I am going to be a little late to the meeting.

Within a minute or two, the telephone rings. First it announces the name you entered when you signed up or added funds. Then a human-like voice starts reading your message (or playing the media file). The receiver can interrupt or replay the message and can record a response to the message, which you receive as a link to a WAV file.

What will it sound like?

Our infrastructure uses the latest advance in Text to Speech from www.speechworks.com. You can use their demo tool to refine a message

Delivery Receipt

After the message is sent, you will receive back a short email that the message succeeded or failed.

Attaching Files

Thinphone allows you to send attached files (or Thinmail links) to a telephone. Currently it only converts DOC, HTML, and TXT files to speech, and plays 8kpbs WAV and MP3 files, with a short delay. Make sure the file-type is either "Audio/wav" or "Audio/mp3". Most PC's come with a "sound recorder" accesssory so if you have a microphone, you can record a file to attach. Make sure you set the file properties to "8k Bits/second whith "ULAW" encoding.

If you don't have a microphone, you can send a Thinphone to yourself, press 2, and record a file, which will be returned to you as a WAV file link, which you can forward to any Thinphone address.

Responses

If the receiver presses "2" they can record a response to your message. You will receive an email back with a WAV file if they do respond. On your desktop, you will be able to click and hear the response, provided you have a sound player set up. This is what a reply looks like:

To: You@your.email.address
From: 8005551212@Thinphone.com
Subject: Voice Reply from Telephone Call
----
The receiver has left you a message:

http://www.thinmail.com/tm/v/982798sd-fes/random.wav
Filetype: Audio/wav; Filesize: 33748

Because Thinmail lets you forward WAV links to a phone, even if you get a reply on a text pager, you can forward it to a phone to hear it.

Parallel Thinphoning

Now almost any phone (in the US) has an email address. You can put them in your address book. And, just like you can send email to several people with a single email message, you can send Thinphone messages to several phones with a single email message! It is a quick way to alert friends to a change in schedule, or to conduct a straw poll, or throw a last minute party! You can mix Thinphone addresses with regular email addresses, Thinmail addresses and Thinfax addresses for personal message blasting!

To: 'peters phone' <8005551212@Thinphone.com>,
'Pauls phone'<8005553344@Thinphone.com>,
'Marys phone'<8002215555@Thinphone.com>
----
Jam Session at my house at 9 O clock!

Extension Dialing

Use the "P" to make a 2 second pause in dialing. After the 10 digit number, the dialing system waits for an answer. Any more P's digits, or "#" or "*" are then played as touch-tones to the receiving system. For example

will dial the phone, and after it answers, will dial extension 777, and wait 4 seconds before reading the message.

Using Thinfax

Thinmail lets you send email messages and print many kinds of documents to any fax machine, simply by emailing to a ten digit number at Thinfax.com, e.g. 1234567890@thinfax.com. The body of the message becomes the cover page, and if there is a known type of attached file, it will also be printed.

Delivery Receipt

After the message is sent, you will receive back a short email that the message succeeded or failed.

Parallel Thinfaxing

You can use the 1234567890@Thinfax.com inside a list of email addresses! So, with a single email message, you can fax several people at once! You can mix Thinfax addresses with regular addresses, and thinphone addresses for a personal blast of messages.

File Types

Thinfax can currently handle many types of files as shown below. However, it depends on the EXTENSION to the file being correct, or you may get gibberish. This is especially critical to Macintosh users.

General: TXT HTM/HTML
Microsoft: DOC XLS PPT VSD
Lotus: PRE PRZ 123 LWP WK4
Adobe: PS PDF EPS
Corel: WPD WPG WB3
Graphics: JPG/JPEG GIF TIF PCX