[vox-tech] Nursing home wi-fi mystery

[Rod Roark]

On 05/11/2015 09:42 PM, Mark's tech help wrote:
> I'm just encountering this thread now..
> is she definitely needing an old-school phone (those Western Electric's cant be beat) or could you get her to work with a mic/speaker into a computer working with a web page?  (I actually came across an old and a new MagicJack in the thriftstore, & the circuitry seemed it would be handy and they were only a buck or so, so grabbed `em.  But then I read online that they're reviled for privacy invasiveness etc.. have been meaning to poke around & see if Linux tinkerer/heroes have written drivers or what..)
> While I'm hesitant to suggest a megacorporation who makes money off building databases on people, Google Voice (free when you sign up for gmail) lets you make all the free calls you want to USA phones.
> $30/mo is huge to me--  then again I'm out of work. (Please help.)  When you have the free wifi, paying for a basic VoIP service would be more private than Goog, & likely under $8/mo.
> Another thought about hardware--  I think the Ipod Touch has a free app to make it work via WiFi like a phone over a Goog Voice acct. If she could work one of those.
>
> Just my $.02!

Hi Mark, thanks for your thoughts.

The MIL is 91 and set in her ways, so a traditional telephone is
definitely in order.  For this the MagicJack Go is a great deal, $42 on
Amazon which includes a year of service and long distance in North
America.  We were paying more *per month* to AT&T.

The cool part for me was completely automating the captive portal logins
and recovery from network outages.  As a long time PHP web developer I
enjoyed seeing how useful it is for command line scripting too.

I could see this being extended to support streaming video.  Netflix,
Hulu etc.

Rod