Aaron Rosenthal's Blog

Asterisk and FreeSWITCH

This week I'm using some link bait which discusses a few of the differences between Asterisk and FreeSWITCH. David Greenfield wrote a short blog post discussing one particular case study where FreeSWITC… Continue

Posted by Aaron Rosenthal on August 11, 2008 at 5:00pm — No Comments

A couple AsteriskNOW tutorial chapters

I just got some tutorial chapters from PackT Publishing’s AsteriskNOW book by Nir Simionovich. Although most OS-VoIP readers aren’t developers, and the ones who are probably rarely use AsteriskNOW, I figured there’s no… Continue

Posted by Aaron Rosenthal on August 1, 2008 at 5:00pm — No Comments

Premise based Open Source IP PBX or hosted VoIP?

This is a question I hear constantly and the answer typically relies on three things - cost, business size, and required functionality. Most small-mid sized businesses exploring the move to a new phone system will consider the ups and downs between purchasing a premise based IP PBX or a hosted VoIP solution. These days I think purchasing an old TDM phone system instead of an IP based system is about as smart as buying a VHS… Continue

Posted by Aaron Rosenthal on July 11, 2008 at 3:41pm — No Comments

74 Open Source VoIP Apps

At some point I’ll be writing a full article on the squillions of Open Source VoIP apps out there but until I find the time to do so, I want to share with you all this list called 74 Open Source VoIP Apps & Resource. Here at OS-VoIP, one of the things I’m trying to do is help individuals differentiate between Open Source VoIP apps that are ready for the enterprise and which ones are not. A lot… Continue

Posted by Aaron Rosenthal on July 7, 2008 at 1:05pm — No Comments

Exactly 1 month left to submit for Digium Innovator Award

The second annual Digium Innovation Award is coming up folks! The deadline for your submissions is August 1st so don’t forget. This award was created last year to showcase all the “innovative” applications for which Asterisk can be used. Those eligible for the award are all Digium|Asterisk customers and partners world-wide with solutions that are live or in production. This is nice and broad so if you’re working on something that warrants an “innovative”or “never done before” title, then I enco… Continue

Posted by Aaron Rosenthal on July 1, 2008 at 3:51pm — No Comments

Choosing Open-Source Telephony.

I stumbled upon this article on eWeek which was written by Sangoma CEO, David Mandelstam. This short paper discusses a few things that I consistently have to re-iterate to every client when selling an Asterisk based PBX. Hopefully now this article should save me some time. It is articles like these that truly help out the sales process because they provide the consumer with a no-bull-shit explanation abo… Continue

Posted by Aaron Rosenthal on June 30, 2008 at 2:30pm — No Comments

Digium ships its 4th million port - not too shabby

Digium sent a press release today stating that the company has shipped it's 4th million port. See press release here. You can tell that Digium is r… Continue

Posted by Aaron Rosenthal on June 24, 2008 at 1:30pm — No Comments

Presence with Asterisk

Presence is one of my favorite features and is entirely possible with Asterisk+Bluetooth. Presence is the ability for the IP PBX to recognize when someone's in or out of the office. When you're in the office, the IP PBX will route calls to your desk phone, and when you'… Continue

Posted by Aaron Rosenthal on June 23, 2008 at 12:00pm — No Comments

Polycom SoundPoint IP 670 - now available for order

So I just heard from my Polycom guy today that as of yesterday the Polycom IP670 phone is available for order. I had a few things to say about this phone in a previous blog here, but now that… Continue

Posted by Aaron Rosenthal on June 17, 2008 at 5:30pm — No Comments

Counterpath's SIP based audio conferencing solution for business

Well sorry folks for skipping a day, what can I say.. sometimes 24 hours just isn't enough. So this week Counterpath released a new audio conferencing solution called Quick Conference (QC). The Counterpath Eyebeam softphones have always been our softphone of choice with Asterisk an… Continue

Posted by Aaron Rosenthal on June 13, 2008 at 10:30am — 1 Comment

Comparing Asterisk and OpenSER

Just today I stumbled on this article written by Flavio E. Goncalves which compares Asterisk and OpenSER. It's a short and concise article worth sharing with you all. Here's a few snippets. "If you work with IP telephony, it's quite possible that you have not heard… Continue

Posted by Aaron Rosenthal on June 11, 2008 at 10:12am — No Comments

External Paging with Asterisk

In the spirit of exploring the capabilities of Asterisk beyond its typical use as an IP PBX, external paging is a great feature to increase the value of your Asterisk system by having it assume the functionality typically reserved for a distinctly separate system and additional investment. M… Continue

Posted by Aaron Rosenthal on June 10, 2008 at 3:00pm — No Comments

Breaking news - Digium releases new AA300 Appliance

Digium has just announced the release of their new AA300 Appliance. This new appliance replaces the AA350 and have a few additional advantages over its predecessor. According to Digium, here are some of the highlights: * More Versatile: The AA300 can be rack mounted or wall mounted. Please note that the AA300 ships with rack handles only. Rails and wall mount kits are sold separately. * Less Expensive: The AA300 & Switchvox SMB bundle price remains the same, but the extended warranty and co… Continue

Posted by Aaron Rosenthal on June 9, 2008 at 7:00am — No Comments

Botanicalls - use Asterisk to water your plants!

One of the things I want to do with this blog is explore all the wild applications in which Asterisk is being used under-the-hood. Rarely do people advertise the use of Asterisk in their VoIP products so here's one business where Asterisk was just right for a very unique application. Although they've been around for over a year, Botanicalls have designed a product that lets your home plants call you whenever it gets parched or has something to say. Sounds crazy but completely true... and a bril… Continue

Posted by Aaron Rosenthal on June 6, 2008 at 11:07am — No Comments

Mark Spencer at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

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Posted by Aaron Rosenthal on June 4, 2008 at 12:00pm — No Comments

Asterisk in the hospitality industry

As more and more organizations wise up to what Asterisk could mean for their communication needs, I've noticed that the hospitality industry is one that is coming to surface with some unique requirements (like many industries) which I'd like to discuss and get some feedbac… Continue

Posted by Aaron Rosenthal on June 4, 2008 at 11:54am — 1 Comment

Get to know SIP if you haven't already

I still find it surprising the number of IT directors and CIO's who still have no idea what SIP is. This is mostly the case with SMB businesses but even if you're a small multi-site organization, you're not doing anyone justice by ignoring new technologies. Because I run into so many people who don't have a solid grasp of what SIP can do, I wanted to write a post laying out some examples. So what is SIP? Only the greatest communications protocol in the world! Go… Continue

Posted by Aaron Rosenthal on May 30, 2008 at 3:09pm — No Comments

Visual Dialplan for Asterisk by APSTEL

This isn't new news as I've been following these folks for months but the… Continue

Posted by Aaron Rosenthal on May 29, 2008 at 11:13am — 2 Comments

Sangoma releases new FlexBRI card - hybrid analog/digital card

For those of you in Germany, Sangoma just announced their new FlexBRI card which is going to support up to four ports of BRI and two ports of FXO or FXS Analog. Sangoma states that this new card "will support synchronous clocking on all channels for 100% guaranteed error-free faxing." I like the sound of error free faxing! Hopefully it stands up to the test… Continue

Posted by Aaron Rosenthal on May 28, 2008 at 5:36pm — No Comments

Asterisk & Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 integration

Some people might consider it sacrilege to mention a company like Microsoft in a community like this but I'm going to anyway... live with it. I'm still waiting for Digium to roll out some sort of Unified Communications solution to Asterisk besides Switchvox which is in my opinion a completely di… Continue

Posted by Aaron Rosenthal on May 28, 2008 at 1:33pm — No Comments

Deploying a phone system is one thing... getting users comfortable is another...

One of the biggest hurdles a company faces when deploying new technologies is the re-training of an entire user population. This is a much larger task when implementing something like a new ERP or even a CRM solution but one must not underestimate that users can also be slow to lear… Continue

Posted by Aaron Rosenthal on May 27, 2008 at 3:08pm — No Comments

fring™ - a mobile VoIP client with SIP... among other things

The eventual evolution of VoIP is going to break into the mobile market and go mainstream sometime very soon... unless networks start banning VoIP but that's just stupid. The idea behind mobile VoIP is to make and receive voice calls over your data plan. With unlimited data pla… Continue

Posted by Aaron Rosenthal on May 23, 2008 at 12:04pm — 1 Comment

New SalesForce contact center telephony integration

I'm a huge Open Source fan and as much as I like using my SugarCRM, SalesForce has some great stuff (and obviously their software extends well beyond just CRM). SalesForce is arguably the driver behind the SaaS bandwago… Continue

Posted by Aaron Rosenthal on May 22, 2008 at 2:46pm — No Comments

Polycom SoundPoint IP 670 - finally a COLOR screen from Polycom!

Note: This picture is of the IP650. A zillion dollars to whoever can find me a picture of the IP670! I've been really happy with Polycom lately and only wish Hollywood would throw more Polycom's onto their sets rather than the overused Cisco phones we see everywhere... The Of… Continue

Posted by Aaron Rosenthal on May 21, 2008 at 2:51pm — 1 Comment

Where is Asterisk going in 2008?

Almost halfway through 2008 and already we're seeing Asterisk everywhere. Asterisk has permeated almost every market in which VoIP is used, from the small business market to the carrier space. The question is, where is Asterisk going to pull ahead in 2008 and in what market?… Continue

Posted by Aaron Rosenthal on May 21, 2008 at 10:35am — No Comments