Service Objects and Asterisk, Together at Last!
As a new member of the Service Objects team, I have learned an amazing amount in the last four months. I came on to help Service Objects with System Administrator duties, and there have been many interesting projects for me to work on from simple help desk tasks to installing new production server equipment to improve our customer’s experiences.
One of my favorite tasks has been configuring our new phone system. When I started here at Service Objects we were using an old analog system that, although operational, was starting to show its age. I promptly got started on a new open source platform called Asterisk, which has made us much more digital. Although we still retain our analog lines for incoming calls, we are now able to use our Internet connection to receive calls as well, ensuring that we are always available to our customers.
Many people here at Service Objects have been a part of this project, with Rachael and Marissa helping with the logic and recording the IVR (Interactive Voice Response), Alen and Geoff testing the hardware, Alex helping with some needed programming, and everyone else by providing feedback on how calls are working and sounding.
As a result of our experience with Asterisk, Service Objects is now exploring a whole new family of telephone verification tools. For example, our developers are already creating new DOTS Telephone Verification services to decrease the number of fraudulent transactions for our customers.
Moving forward I am excited to expand our Asterisk footprint beyond our in-house systems. Hopefully my experience with Asterisk will help our customers verify telephone numbers seamlessly – and in real-time – directly through our DOTS Web Service framework.
Thanks for reading this week!
Curtis J.
Add comment July 28, 2009
“Do I Need a User Name and Profile to Access your Web Site?”
When we launched our new Web site earlier this year, we added a feature that allows users to sign in and register with us. Now when you visit our homepage you will notice a green “+” icon in the top-right corner of the page. After clicking on the icon you can begin creating your new user profile. Creating a user profile is not necessary, and you will still have access to most pages on our Web site…
…BUT
…You will lose out on all of the great benefits our Web site has to offer if you do not register! Registering with us allows you to receive additional online lookups, download sample code, sign-up for XML trial keys, or submit sample test batches. The best part about it is that it is all FREE and their is no obligation or credit card information required! Hurry up and register with Service Objects today.
One more thing…
If you are a current client or DOTS Trial Key user, you can use this link to log-in and check your transaction usage. This is completely separate from your user profile and log-in information. You will need your current production and/or license key and the email address associated with your key to sign in.
Thank you for reading this week and we look forward to seeing you on our Web site!
Will E.
Add comment July 21, 2009
Ever Heard of the Idiom “You Get What you Pay For”?
With our new service DOTS GeoPhone Plus, you get what you pay for, and you only pay for what you get.
Sound confusing?
DOTS GeoPhone Plus is our new token based Web Service; you are only charged for a certain number of tokens based upon the quality of the returned data.
DOTS GeoPhone Plus offers its users the unique ability to verify, correct, and enhance customer contact data in real-time, with support for multiple line types in a single search interface. With Service Objects‘ exclusive cascading logic techniques, we are able to provide cost effective matching for DOTS GeoPhone Plus. If we don’t find any records matching the telephone number that you provided, then you don’t pay for that transaction.
So you get what you pay for, and you only pay for what you get.
Please feel free to contact us today to get additional information, or follow this link to sign up for a Free 15 Day Trial Key of DOTS GeoPhone Plus.
Have a great day!
Ericka J.
Add comment July 14, 2009
Telephone Validation Made Simple
If you are looking to validate a telephone number look no further!
There are several things to consider when trying to validate a telephone number, and in this blog we have broken down the process for you step-by-step. There are many ways to validate a telephone number, and many variables within the number to validate:
- Is the telephone number valid?
- Is the telephone number a landline, wireless, or VoIP?
- Is the telephone number disconnected or not valid (e.g. area code 999 does not exist)?
Service Objects offers the following telephone validation options:
- A multi-database Web service designed to provide the most accurate lookup of landline telephone numbers available
- Updated daily
- 72% match rate for consumers, 63% match rate for businesses
- Coverage for the US and Canada
- Point-of-entry validation
- Instantly recognizes if a telephone number is valid and acceptable by verifying the first seven digits of the number
- Returns line type (landline, wireless, or VoIP)
- Telephone data compiled from over 2,600 US and Canadian telephone service providers
- Returns telephone service provider information (carrier, city, state, latitude, longitude)
- Reverse-lookup of residential, business, and government telephone numbers
- Comprised of daily feeds from over 2,600 telephone companies across the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico
- Over 190 million telephone listings
- Dynamic access to a variety of public, private, and proprietary telephone data
- Determines contact name and address
- Determines telephone type (business or residential)
- Determines line type (landline, wireless, or VoIP)
- Reverse-lookup of wireless telephone numbers
- Contains over 100 million consumer wireless telephone numbers
- Determines contact name and address
- Determines line type (landline, wireless, or VoIP)
- Returns telephone service provider information (carrier, city, state, latitude, longitude)
- Combines 3 of our powerful DOTS telephone validation services (DOTS GeoPhone, DOTS GeoPhone Wireless, and DOTS Phone Append)
- Compares a 10-digit telephone number to our database powerhouse of over 300 million records
- Determines contact name and address
- Determines telephone type (business, residential, Government)
- Determines line type (landline, wireless, VoIP, or toll free)
- Returns telephone service provider information (carrier, city, state, latitude, longitude)
I hope that I have helped in answering your telephone validation questions.
Thanks,
Ryan M.
1 comment July 9, 2009
DOTS Web Service Improvements
At Service Objects, we are constantly improving our DOTS Web Services. Some services automatically improve themselves, like DOTS IP Validation. This service has over 45,000 listening posts worldwide that dynamically record the IP addresses of malicious or fraudulent activity. Some services, like DOTS Address Validation, are manually updated every month to guarantee that we use the freshest data available.
Other improvements to our DOTS Web Services occur on a less regular basis, usually when a client needs a feature that we are not currently offering. We recently added an operation to DOTS Address Geocode – US, in order to return state and county FIPS codes, Census tract data, and block numbers. We have also greatly increased the performance of DOTS Email Validation in order to handle a much larger transaction volume. In the near future, we will be deploying changes to DOTS Phone Append, which will greatly increase our match rates for businesses.
We are always thinking of ways to improve our DOTS Web Services. If you have an idea how we can serve you better, please let us know!
Alex P.
Add comment June 26, 2009
Residential Delivery Indicator (RDI) Coming to Service Objects
We have some exciting news for you. Service Objects has started the integration of RDITM to a few of our different DOTS Web Services. RDI is a data product offered by the United States Postal Service®, and is primarily used for determining if a delivery address is classified as residential or business.
As you can imagine, RDI will be used in both our DOTS Lead Validation and DOTS Address Validation Web Services. We plan on having RDI built into DOTS Lead Validation as early as July 1st, with availability in our DOTS Address Validation Web Service shortly there after.
What does RDI mean to our DOTS Lead Validation Web Service? Well, having the ability to determine if an address run through our services is residential or business is a big deal. It is yet another check that we will be able to perform in order to ensure our customers’ leads are valid and deliverable.
At Service Objects we are constantly working to improve our DOTS Web Services. We look forward to continuously providing our customers with new features to our DOTS Web Services, and RDI is definitely an exciting one.
As always, thanks for reading!
Alen D.
Add comment June 16, 2009
Excited About DOTS Web Services!
As the spokesperson for our Marketing Department, I can say in all honesty that Marketing gets really excited when a new product is launched. Our wheels start to turn thinking about all of the new sponsorships and opportunities we will have to advertise our newest DOTS Web Service, while increasing brand awareness at the same time. Right now, DOTS GeoPhone Plus has us excited because it is a revolutionary real-time service, filling a great void in the market place. On that note, I am happy to announce the release of DOTS GeoPhone Plus!
So what makes DOTS GeoPhone Plus so exciting? Personally, I find our newest service to be both exciting and impressive because it combines 3 of our key products (DOTS GeoPhone, DOTS GeoPhone Wireless, and DOTS Phone Exchange) and combines them all into one comprehensive solution. I can not tell you how often we hear requests for a product of this kind, so it makes us smile to see it come to fruition and fill the market demand for this type of service.
I encourage you to check out DOTS GeoPhone Plus on our Web site, and try a few lookups of your own by visiting our Lookups page. Hopefully you will find our new product as interesting as I do 
Thanks for reading this week,
Dara F.
P.S. DOTS GeoPhone Plus will also be the topic of our newsletter this month so don’t foget to sign up to receive our newsletter or visit our Newsletter Archive.
Add comment May 28, 2009
The Heart and Soul of Service Objects
To our wonderful clients and thousands of users who click on our Web site each day, Service Objects is a B2B company that provides real-time validation and fraud prevention solutions. But behind it all we have a great team of awesome individuals that not only love to help our clients, but love to help our community as well.
When Alen is not working around the clock to ensure absolute up-time for our clients, when Ryan is not explaining to Project Managers how DOTS Lead Validation can protect their affiliate lead gen projects, and when Jonas is not inventing new logic algorithms to combat the ever-evolving forms of online fraud, you will find Service Objects helping those in need.
At Service Objects social responsibility starts at the top with our executive team. On any given day you may find them serving our community by fixing bicycles on Earth Day, caring for pets during the recent evacuation of the Jesusita fires, or mentoring some of the young adults in Santa Barbara.
Giving back is part of our company culture and is the heart and soul of Service Objects. We are a lifetime supporter of the Humane Society, offer pro-bono licenses for public education, help Angel Flight West transport terminally-ill patients to receive medical care, and donate to local organizations in the Santa Barbara area.
At Service Objects we’re not all about business. We are in the business of helping companies reduce online fraud and validating contact information, but we are also in the business of helping people and giving back.
Thank you,
Marissa B.
Add comment May 22, 2009
The Top 10 Reasons I Enjoy Working at Service Objects
10. Our game room with a ping pong table, foosball table, big screen projector, XBOX360, and Rock Band.
9. Blazing fast network access and dual 20″ LCD monitors.
8. Did someone say BBQ?! We love to cook on the Q on our beautiful patio overlooking the mountains of Santa Barbara.
7. Wellness benefits coverage that lets us spend it how we want it! $500 per month on top of our salaries!
6. Fifteen paid personal days off and seven paid holidays = over a month off PAID!
5. Flex time! As long as we work 8 hours in a day we can always get all of our appointments and personal items taken care of.
4. Service Objects encourages us to support our community and gives us work time to spend on community outreach, service, or mentoring.
3. Working in Santa Barbara, CA and being only one mile away from the beautiful SB beaches.
2. Our profit sharing plan that pays monthly and YES, we have been profitable every quarter since day one!
1. And the #1 reason I enjoy working at Service Objects…our office is a dog friendly environment so I get to bring my dog (Honey) to work everyday!
Thanks for reading this week,
Chris M.
Add comment May 12, 2009
DOTS Address Validation FAQ
Figuring out the basics of what DOTS Address Validation does is simple — messy address comes in, clean address comes out! And yet of all our services we probably get the most questions about DOTS Address Validation. Here are the most common:
Add comment April 10, 2009
