Phuzby is a small multi-platform desktop tool written in Java for searching LDAP databases primarily for the telephone numbers of colleagues, suppliers and customers. He sits it your task tray until you click on his icon, then he asks for your search criteria. Phuzby gives a list of matches, lets you pick each one for a closer look, and can even read out the telephone number to you to help you dial it. If your phone system is compatible with audio TDMF codes, you can also hold your handset to your PC speaker to dial. The name Phuzby was inspired by, but is different to (to avoid any potential litigation) to Buzby.
Buzby, the multi-coloured animated bird, was the hero of a long running British Post Office Telephones publicity drive during the late 1970's to early 1980's. He appeared in a series of television commercials where his punch line was "Make Someone Happy With a Phone Call". The television commercials featured the British character actor Bernard Cribbens as Buzby's voice. There was an extensive poster and billboard promotion of which the above are just a small part. The campaign attracted a great deal of publicity at the time, with the public either loving Buzby (The majority) or loathing him (The minority).
Phuzby was written by Nigel Gibbs, but has been released under the GNU General Public License v3, and is therefore Open-Source. Please feel free to contribute to the project.
A Special thanks to Janice Harvey for giving Phuzby such a wonderful voice.
Many thanks to all the staff of ITPS Ltd for using Phuzby internally since 2003.
Currently Phuzby is only distributed in source code, no pre-compiled binaries are available. You can find screenshots and get hold of the latest release here...
© Nigel Gibbs 2006-2008