This is by far the most commonly "mentioned" item. I do recognize the irony of pop ups on a web page that is anti-spam. When I set up this web page, I had the same attitude about the web page that I did about the hardware-hack itself ... cheap and simple. I never expected the overwhelming response that I've seen in the last week, so I didn't consider it worth while to actually pay for bandwidth. More importantly though, I feared reprisals from telemarketing corporations should this thing actually take off. So, I went searching for a free ISP that did not have a bandwidth cap and required minimal ID (maximum anonymity) to set up an account. That search led me to Pagerealm.com. I apologize for the inconvenience because I know how frustrating pop-ups can be, but I haven’t made dime 1 from this invention to date so I don’t feel much impetus to start paying for the current bandwidth bubble I seem to be floating on. Plus this is the best way I know to keep my personal information from being attached to (or exposed by) a website or web domain.

I was in contact with some students who were working on a SW only version of the Telecrapper, but once they got far enough into it to realize the complexities involved with TAPI and multi-threaded programming, they went back to spending all their time on World of Warcraft. If anyone can offer assistance in either of these problem areas, please let me know and I’ll pass it on. Otherwise, the SW effort is stalled right now.

There are no plans that I know of to implement this idea on the MAC platform. If anyone knows of such an effort, please let me know.

To the best of my knowledge, there has only ever been one Telecrapper built (mine). With the SW only version always "just over the next hill", producing a HW version never seemed to make sense. There are no plans to produce any more HW based Telecrappers for sale or otherwise.

I had a disk crash, but I believe I still have most of the WAVs and stacks.txt I used for all of the recordings on a CD somewhere. If time permits, I’ll make them available on the web page for download (Chris, Grandpa, HipHurts, etc.).

Both the phone number and the recording equipment used for every call on my webpage were located in a "1 Party Consent" USA state. That is to say, it is legal to record a phone conversation if only 1 involved party knows that it is being recorded. Such laws vary from state to state.

For users without Caller ID, the SW puts up a button on the screen that allows manual pick up of a call with just a mouse click. This also works if you’ve answered the call and realized that you want the Telecrapper to take over.

The list of potential AI improvements is endless. Once a SW version is available the door will be open to most of the suggestions I’ve read and more.

I have posted all of the interesting conversations recorded by my Telecrapper. I do not know of any other recordings from any other users. If anyone knows of anyone else with their own Telecrapper recordings, please let me know.

All voices and scripts were done by myself and do not infringe on existing copyrights. Users have my permission to copy and distributed the recordings without fee or license as long as the recording is kept in its entirety (the URL tag must remain at the end).

Folks have been very generous with criticism of how I implemented the first Telecrapper. I have received an ample quantity of suggested improvements/overhauls and further help in this area is not necessary. Thank you for your consideration though.

I will be the first to admit that my first attempt is an ugly solution. However, I didn't expect or hope that large masses of people would xerox my exact implementation to do their own. My original goals were to 1) Make something that I could complete in one weekend or less (otherwise, with my schedule it wouldn't get done), 2) be enough of a proof of concept to show the value such a device would provide, and 3) provide a starting point for others with more technical skills than myself to refine and streamline.

It's now coming up on the 5 year anniversary of when I completed the first Telecrapper and disappointingly it is still the only Telecrapper that has ever existed as far as I know. I do have almost 5 years of criticisms pointing out undesireable parts of the implementation though. So, if you are feeling inclined to point out undesireable aspects of my first implementation please keep in mind that this design has had a 100% monopoly on the Telecrapper market for almost 5 years now. I would put forth a friendly challenge to any of my would-be critics then: "Do it better, prove to me that there's a better way." I'm sure there's more elequent ways to do this, but they're all very complex to do "the right way" and I haven't seen anyone yet willing to go past the "criticize" stage to the "out-do" stage. Prove me wrong ... I dare you.