Disruptive Telephony

Great sessions out here at AstriCon... way too much to write about - my head is exploding a good bit! It's been a bit frustrating to try to blog from the conference rooms, though. The hotel WiFi is struggling a good bit under the strain of all the people here with laptops.

Technorati Tags: asterisk, astricon

Here in Phoenix, Arizona, AstriCon has kicked off with two pre-conference sessions that run all day. "Asterisk 101" is running next door and providing a basic introduction to Asterisk. I'm sitting in the "Developer 101" session (pictured) where there are about 100 people gathered in the room. It turns out that this is about developing with the Asterisk code base, i.e. "how to become an Asterisk developer" versus what I was personally thinking it was, which was "how to develop apps that work with Asterisk"... although that is really just an extension of the first. So far, an hour into the session, lead developer Kevin Fleming has been discussing the various tools you need to use in order to work with the Asterisk code base (ex. subversion, makefiles, etc.). Right now he's been dealing with the fun subject of licensing code, the GPL, and the requirement of developers to sign a disclaimer over to Digium that: a) asserts that the developer can contribute the code (i.e. it is original), that it is not patent-encumbered, etc. and b) gives Digium the right to redistribute the developer's code under a different license.

One interesting note - Kevin stated very definitively that Digium has NO plans to move GPLv3. They are quite happy with GPLv2 and see no reason yet to move.

The afternoon session sounds interesting as they will be getting into the overall Asterisk architecture, diving into the code, talking about APIs and debugging. Certainly a day to feed my inner developer...

Technorati Tags: asterisk, astricon, conferences, opensource, voip

Earlier this month, the folks at Digium rolled out their own group weblog, "Inside the Asterisk", which gives a view of activities inside Digium. A true group weblog, there are posts from a number of different people, including Digium CEO Danny Windham (ex. talking about his first days) and many others on staff.

Technorati Tags: asterisk, digium, opensource, blogs

Well, I just confirmed my travel schedule - I'm going to go have a bit of fun out at AstriCon 2007. AstriCon, for those who aren't aware, is pretty much the premiere event for Asterisk developers. I'm scheduled to speak on Thursday about (surprise!) VoIP security. My talk is an "industry perspective" in my capacity as a board member of the VOIP Security Alliance and won't be specifically Asterisk-focused, although I will include a few pieces about what you need to think about with Asterisk and the holes that Asterisk still needs to fill (like, oh, SRTP, which I know is coming). I know Mark Spencer and a good bit of the Digium crowd, so it will be fun to hang out with them (especially given my new independent status).

If any of you reading will be out there, please do feel free to drop me a line so that we can connect.

P.S. After AstriCon, I'll be heading over to the Podcast and New Media Expo in Ontario, CA. If any of you will be there, please do drop a note as well.

Technorati Tags: asterisk, astricon, voip

Being a long-time fan of Tom Keating's great "VoIP and Gadget Blog", I had to smile when my day started off this morning scanning feeds and encountering Tom's post on Friday "Top 10 Reasons Why I love Asterisk".  Tom first takes us (by way of a link) back down memory lane a bit with a piece he wrote in November 2001 called "In Search of a Linux-based PBX" that outlines many of the folks involved then with "open source telephony" and makes for interesting reading (his picture also looks a wee bit younger! ;-).  His piece on Friday revisits that list a bit and talks about Asterisk and how it has risen to be clearly the leader of open source telephony solutions.

It also clearly shows Tom's passion, and that is to me one of the fun and wonderful things about this thing we call the blogosphere.... writers do show more of their passion and we very often do get to learn more about the people behind the names.... and that makes it a whole lot more interesting than just dry and blase "factual" articles.

So kudos to Tom for telling us why he loves Asterisk...

In my queue of things to write about, I'd be meaning to comment on the fact that this year's Fall VON on October 29 - November 1 in Boston will also be the site of Digium / Asterisk World.   Jeff Pulver's team announced this back in March and it will have Mark Spencer and others from Digium involved.  I wasn't particularly surprised to hear this, given that Jeff Pulver has always had an interest in open source and that Digium has always had a large presence at VON exhibit halls.  (You would have to be blind to miss the giant orange booth with its many pods!)  Kudos to Digium and Pulvermedia for organizing a way to spotlight all the great stuff happening in open source telephony.  I'll look forward to seeing what goes on there.

Here's something for a Friday afternoon... yes, indeed, out at Emerging Telephony 2007 back in February, someone (David Troy) did indeed have Asterisk running on a Roomba.  And yes, it was "Press one to start sucking. Press two to stop sucking."

Pictures are now available on Flickr.

More precisely, Asterisk is running on a hacked Linksys WRT54G access point (which is Linux-based) and the controller is using a Nokia WiFi/GSM phone to connect to the Asterisk install.  You could also control the direction of the Roomba using the other keys on the phone keypad.

Why would anyone do this?  Well... why not?

As I mentioned in a recent post, the beautiful thing about VoIP is that it now enables people to "play" with telephony... and do wacky things like hook it up to a Roomba!  :-)

Enjoy the weekend!  Perhaps next week I'll actually get some time to upload the rest of the pictures I took out at ETel. (Hey, it was only 6 weeks ago... )