An idea: a Grandcentral home screen applet
 

So, this may be in the wrong place, and feel free to move it if it is.

But, I was just thinking about VoIP, and, specifically, free VoIP, and how easy it is to like a Gizmo account to Grand Central and thus receive calls for free. It is also possible to make them for free, by calling from Grand Central and routing it through your Gizmo number, as has been discussed a great deal elsewhere.

That, however, is relatively inconvenient. It involves firing up the browser, going to Grandcentral (which can be hard to log into), and so forth.

So, my idea is this: a home screen applet that you enter a number into and it calls it through your Grand Central account.

Now, precisely because of how Grand Central works, I'm not sure how practical/possible that would be. I don't know enough about how their click-to-call buttons work, but I imagine it would be related.

So, this may be a ridiculous, stupid idea, but I figured I'd throw it out there. I doubt seriously that my very limited programming knowledge would be sufficient to make it, but if anyone wants to try, I imagine it would be widely appreciated.


Edit: I totally put this in the wrong section, I'm very sorry. Moderators, feel free to relocate it. I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing.

Re: An idea: a Grandcentral home screen applet
 

I thinks it's an awesome idea. I definitely want something like that.

Re: An idea: a Grandcentral home screen applet
 

GrandCentral has no API, which makes this fairly difficult. That said, most of their URLs are fairly clear, and there's not a lot of obfuscation in general...

I do have a Python script kicking around that (well, as of a month or two ago) could log in and pull/parse the mobile HTML to get your messages.

Re: An idea: a Grandcentral home screen applet
 

You're right about the URLs being pretty clear. If you're logged in/it remembers you, and you go to http://www.grandcentral.com/mobile/c...tno=5555555555 where the 5s are the number you're trying to call, it'll take you to a page that says your browser didn't send a valid referring url but with a link ("click here to try again") that will dial the number.

The full url when it actually calls has a string after the numbers that, presumably, is tied to your session.

Even a quick way to go to that page with a number of your choice would be more convenient than always having to dial from your GC contacts, I think.