MacroDial

MacroDialAppIconDescription

Macro Dial is a tool to help edit and automatically change numbers from your address book according to some rules based on the way you want to call: IDD, calling card, corporate access number, without entering multiple entry in the phonebook.

Target Users

This program is intended to be useful for

  • people who travel and need to dial the same number in diverse way, for example you dial +813 5555 5555 to call japan when you are in Hong kong, but 03 5555 5555 when you are in japan.
  • People who have access to IDD prefix code, or use carrier like softbank in japan that do not process the + as expected.
  • People who have corporate access number that require processing of the number to extract the right extension.
  • People using multiple calling card from different countries.

Goal of the design of the program

  • provide a full set of rules to make any generation of numbers possible.
  • be able to share the rules via the internet. They can be downloaded without compromising personal codes or PINs.
  • have a simple way to enter rules as well as a more advanced complete mode.
  • provide the user workflow that fitted my need.

How to use it

  • Please read the main documentation page and the information how to create new macros
  • when you start the program a wizard will let you choose a few options or package of rules. Currently only for Japan Softbank or Hong Kong three, but you can download more from the web. If you have a code (from friends or from me) you can access rules specific to a company for example.
  • After you select a contact, you can choose the number and if you click on a rule (or macro) that rule will be applied to the number.
  • No number will ever be called without you pressing the call button, so you can review to make sure the number is correct.
  • To create a new rule you can simply edit the number in the Dial screen, and if a simple way to regenerate the number is detected the program will offer to save it as a new rules.
  • If you are a more advanced user you can design your rules from the edit macro function in the setting screen.

Recent Posts

Five Years Without a Single Code Change — Then It Broke

ConnectStats has been alive for over 15 years now. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s an iOS app I built for runners, cyclists, and triathletes who want to actually understand their training data from Garmin and Strava. Not just see it, but dig into it — compare seasons, plot trends over years, find patterns in heart rate zones and pace distributions that the official apps don’t surface.

I’m proud of the app. Users have been generous with their feedback over the years, and some have become friends. But I’ll be honest: between work and life and picking up flying as a hobby, ConnectStats had quietly slipped into maintenance mode. And then maintenance mode slipped into no-maintenance mode. For roughly five years, I barely touched the code. I’d occasionally check that things were still working, but no releases, no bug fixes, no features.

And somehow — five years of nothing — it just kept working. Users kept downloading it, kept using it, kept sending me the occasional kind email. A fifteen-year-old app, running on a codebase I hadn’t updated in half a decade, quietly doing its job. I’ll admit: I was both pleased and slightly amazed.

Then, inevitably, it broke.

Continue reading
  1. 4 years 8 months later… broke and works again 21 Replies
  2. Current Status, what works and what doesn’t 27 Replies
  3. A big steps toward fixing the issue 4 Replies
  4. Still working on it and issue with Strava 34 Replies
  5. Is this the beginning of the end? 9 Replies
  6. Running Effectiveness and historical statistics improvement 14 Replies
  7. Notifications in ConnectStats 3 Replies
  8. Detailed Comparison of Running and Cycling Statistics over time 6 Replies
  9. Garmin Service Error 14 Replies