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Get Caller ID Information on Your PCs via YAC: Yet Another Caller ID Program

  • Jan 6, 2006
You don't want to go to Aunt Tessy's dinner party this weekend, but you can't afford to keep your phone off the hook either. Help has arrived! In this article, Kulvir Bhogal shows you how to use a free program called Yet Another Caller ID Program (YAC). YAC allows you see who's calling you immediately—right on your computer screen. This way you can decide who you want to talk to and when, and from the convenience of your desktop or wireless notebook computer!
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Call me an unsociable person, but I like to know who's calling before I pick up the phone. Yes I'll admit it there are some annoying people in my life that I try to avoid talking to. I bet that if you're honest with yourself, you'll admit you have some people like this in your life too.

So, I honestly find caller ID to be a blessing, because it lets me screen my calls if I need to. In this article, I'll show you how to use a program called YAC, which is an acronym for Yet Another Caller ID Program. YAC allows you see who's calling you, right on your computer screen. If you're a wireless user, I can even show you how to set things up so that you can see who's calling your home phone on your laptop. Best of all, YAC is free, making it even more tempting to try out.

What You'll Need

To see caller ID information on your computer via YAC, you will need the following:

  • Caller ID service with your phone company.
  • A caller ID-compatible modem.

How do you know if your modem is caller ID-capable? Many times your modem's manual, or even the box that it came in, will mention whether the modem supports caller ID. If you are not sure if your modem supports caller ID, you might consider trying YAC out to check. As you'll see, the setup of YAC is pretty quick and painless.

  • YAC software.

Simply put, YAC is a server component that listens for incoming phone calls. (The YAC server program only runs on the Windows platform.) The YAC server will send any caller ID information it receives to registered YAC listeners (i.e., clients).

YAC bundles both the server and client in a combined download, so go ahead and download both of them from http://sunflowerhead.com/software/yac/. YAC is a free program licensed and distributed under the GNU General Public License and was developed by Jensen Harris. At the time of this article's publication, YAC was in version 0.16. It is important to note that YAC listeners are available for platforms other than Windows including TiVo and Windows Media Center.

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