Episode 13- Jolly Roger Telephone Company

In this episode of From Idea to Done, we chat about Jolly Roger Telephone Company and how they mess with scam callers using their own robots. Check out their website at: https://jollyrogertelephone.com/ 

J/E: Hey Everyone, I'm Josh and I'm Erick

E: Today's Idea is: JollyRogerTelephone.com. This is kind of an interesting concept. Nerds developed a robot to fight robo calls. Josh from a technical standpoint, can you tell us a little more of what this is?

J: I like that, nerds to fight robo calls - What they do is use a 3rd party service called TrueCNAM to assign a reputation score to the number. Once the score hits a high enough level it triggers the call to be routed into their system. From there the pirates, as they call them, use some sort of a natural language processing to pick up when the telemarketer is talking. Really interesting how they handle it.

E: I think this is pretty great. It would save me a lot of time. Mostly because I usually talk to robot callers, and am just weird on the phone with them.

J: Yeah i think it is great, they’ve really dialed into how to mess with the telemarketer. Listen to this: [https://jollyrogertelephone.com/our-robots/ Bloody Billy 3:00 the telemarketer is actually responding to the robot]

E: I freaking love this. My thought is if you are bold enough to talk to anyone and everyone wasting their time. I/this app can waste your time right back.

J: Yeah I immediately thought of you when you when I saw this on Shark Tank.

E: Yes one time they called saying I qualified for some credit something or other. I just started talking to them in binary answering them in zeros and ones anytime they had a question. I figured it would be hypocritical of them to robodial me, and not accept my robot answers. They stayed on the phone with me longer than you would think. Eventually they got tired when my answer to everyone of their questions was zero one one zero zero one one one one one zero. What I liked about the app, is the ability for them to stay on the line with the telemarketer for so long.

J: Yeah it’s a difficult problem to solve. 

E: We have all had, or at least heard one of our stupid friends in the early 2000s with the Hello….hello, I can’t hear you. It’s actually Scott’s voicemail I got you. I hate freaking Scott. There is a little more tech in this than tricking me for 10 seconds.

J: As a computer you can pick up is there is sound on the call, but how do you pick up what the person is saying. As a computer if i hear a sound, how do i know the intentionality of what they are saying. For example if someone said “How are you today” I could pick up on keywords or possible phrases, but it gets complicated quickly. You’d have to take the audio in real time and then process the audio into something that can be analyzed and responded to. So i’d guess they have a bucket of phrases that they respond to the caller with, and then inject a longer phrase/sentence so they aren’t just saying “uh huh…. Ok” for the entire call. 

E: Yeah this product would save me the time of coming up with new material to mess with the robot calls, and actually having to talk to them. My one complaint is with a name like Jolly Roger Telephone. None of the pre-recorded things talk like a pirate. 

J: But they do have a number of personal robots and even some holiday themed ones as well.

E: Big question could our nerds develop Real Pirate Talking Robot Fighter App?

J: We absolutely could. The toughest thing is to set the trap right for the telemarketer to keep talking, engage with the right wording so it seems natural.

E: YARGH! We now have a project that I am ready to really get behind. If you want to hear some fantastic sample calls from jolly roger telephone. Go to their website. It’s pretty entertaining. 

Thank you for listening