- Backing Up Your Backup
- Customizing the iPhone for Emergencies
- Summary
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Customizing the iPhone for Emergencies
At first. We started with "unlocked" iPhones, subscribed to T-Mobile. (We have personal reasons for not using AT&T.) When bringing up the screen to make a call, we get the familiar dial pad screen shown in Figure 1.
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Other than the T-Mobile logo, this screen probably looks just like yours. But look at the springboard in Figure 2. We have not only the normal green phone icon, but also a yellow icon called "Siphon."
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When the Siphon icon is pressed, a dial screen comes up. At first glance, it looks just like the regular iPhone dial screen. With a closer look, however, you can see that this dialer is for making VoIP (or "SIP") calls, as shown in Figure 3.
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VoIP dialing from a wireless handset isn't exactly new to the industry, but it is fairly new for the iPhone. The Siphon program allows the user to set up virtually any VoIP service provider—or even to connect to a company's IP PBX. Setup is a snap, right from the iPhone's own Settings screen. The Siphon program shows up in the Settings screen (see Figure 4).
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When you press the Siphon icon, it brings up the specific settings for your service provider (see Figure 5). A variety of providers can be used, including Skype. The idea is that anywhere you can find a Wi-Fi hot spot, you can make calls.
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We used a provider called Gizmo 5 (recently acquired by Google). Gizmo provides outbound SIP calling for about a penny a minute, and the quality is pretty good. Signup is simple on the Gizmo website. Although the service was originally intended for making calls from a desktop PC, it adapts just fine to the iPhone and other IP-capable devices. We were also able to secure an inbound number for $35 a year.
A really handy feature for us is that the Gizmo service lets you customize your outbound Caller ID. We changed the Caller ID to reflect our normal wireless numbers, for two reasons:
- We wanted to keep the VoIP number private so that customers wouldn't use that number for non-emergency situations. (But even if someone used that number, inbound calls are free on Gizmo, so we had no worries about cost.)
- When we call a client on VoIP during a wireless outage, using our custom Caller ID prevents the customer from rejecting an "unknown" caller.
Likewise, even in an emergency customers can continue using the same number for us as always. We can let calls go to voice mail, or we can forward the wireless number to the Gizmo line and answer our calls as usual.
We had to resolve one other issue with regard to inbound calls. The iPhone is designed to run only one application at a time. Since we had an immediate need for disaster recovery, we had to "jailbreak" (hack) our iPhones to run an application called Backgrounder, which allows all versions of the iPhone to multitask. With the help of Backgrounder, our iPhones can answer VoIP calls in the background while we're doing other tasks such as reading email. Once the Backgrounder application is installed, all the user needs to do is press and hold the button on the front of the phone, and the message shown in Figure 6 appears.
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With this approach, the Siphon application can be closed, and the phone can be used for other activities. If a call comes in, the phone rings, allowing the user to close the active application and answer the call. A second click of the button disables Backgrounder.
If you're reluctant to unlock your iPhone, you can use other applications that are available from the App Store. One of them is called iTalk, as shown in Figure 7. Notice the buttons that allow you to select between cellular and SIP calls.
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