Disruptive Telephony

Fans of Blue Box have to be aware that I'm a wee bit behind in posting episodes... so I was delighted to finally get Blue Box #50 uploaded yesterday.  I still need to finish putting the show notes up there, but at least the show is out so that people can listen to it.  Given that we recorded it January 17th, it has already aged a bit.  Tonight or tomorrow I'm hoping to get #51 up... and then #52 has already been recorded as well... I'd like to get caught up before going out to ETel where I'm undoubtedly going to get more recordings for special editions.

Have you ever created a "mashup" of telephony applications? Per Surj Patel writing on the O'Reilly Radar weblog, we're going to see some "telephony mashups" out at ETel in just a couple of weeks.  As Surj says:

The competition website is here and we encourage you to enter no matter how silly or brilliant the idea may be. The idea is to spread the word outside of the phone hackers community as to how easy and fun it is to build these hacks. Everything you need to get started you can get from the website. Your phone account (VXML) is free and you have free API's and Toolkits from the sponsors.

If you can write a CGI script then you can hack a commercial style service together in a few hours. Go take a look and investigate. Step outside your daily zone. Let your imagination run riot. Have some fun.

Per the ETel Mashup Contest website, the top 3 mashups will be presented out at ETel.  As the page says:

A telephony mashup is a voice, Web or mobile application (PBX, IVR, VOIP, SMS, Text Messaging, etc.) that combines content from more than one source to create a new user experience. Qualifying entries must demonstrate how an application can use one or more sources of content in an inventive way to benefit users. Any tool or platform that involves content (see StrikeIron or ProgrammableWeb) telephony (ex: VOIP, SMS, Text Messaging, PBX, IVR) can be used to create a mashup. This is uncharted territory, so there is plenty of room to use your imagination!!

The deadline is February 20th... so you still have time!  It will no doubt be both interesting and fun to see what people come up with...

Anyone reading this blog using the ChanSkype software to connect Asterisk to Skype?  I've not played with it at all myself, but it sounds like an interesting idea.  Here's what they say it can do:

• Call online Skype users.
• Call using SkypeOut.
• Receive up to 30 incoming Skype Calls ("Skype Trunk").
• Bridge with SIP channels.
• Make any number of simultaneous calls (limited only by system resources).

Their FAQ is just a wee bit sparse on details, like, oh, precisely how many simultaneous connections will it support?  Their main page has the text above and on the Buy page they note that corporate licenses are licensed per port up to 30 users and it has this text:

This limitation is not technical, for ChanSkype's simultaneous call capabilities are limited only by system resources.

Which naturally makes me a bit more curious.  It's clear that they are using the Skype client-side API through a Linux Skype client but that's about it.  I would think to support multiple users they would have to launch multiple instances of the Linux Skype client.  Is this what they are doing?

If anyone has played with it, I'd be curious to know how it works.  It's intriguing enough to me that I might just have to revive my dormant Asterisk install.

VoIP News yesterday posted an article "Hacking Skype: 25 Tips to Improve Your Skype Experience" that definitely makes for interesting reading (using "hacking" in the original sense of the word not the criminal one).  It's a good list of the kind of innovative things people are doing with Skype.  Many of them I'm already using... some were new to me and some I don't ever see myself doing (sorry, I don't want a lip-syncing avatar).  Are you using any of these?  What other hacks for Skype have you found useful?

In just a few minutes I'll be getting in today's rental car and heading up to Ottawa for the remainder of the work week for some meetings at the corporate office.

One of the nice things about being up there today is that I'll get to drop in on an OCLUG meeting tonight.  In the most of five years we lived in Ottawa, OCLUG was a wonderful place to meet some really incredible people.  I very much enjoyed the time spent there and the friendships that were formed... and I look forward to seeing many of those folks again tonight.   Not quite sure where the "Beer SIG" will be since the meeting is now out on Woodroffe, but I'm sure there's an appropriate spot somewhere around.

The meeting will be doubly interesting because tonight's topic will be Asterisk, which of course is of great interest to me.  Should be interesting to see what is being discussed. (Not quite sure what Randal will be doing with "Fractal Poetry", but hey, it sounds intriguing, anyway.)

If any of you reading are going, I'll see you at the meeting.

(As I now get in my white rental car to drive up to Ottawa with snow all around... whoever thought up creating white cars obviously missed the fact that in the winter those cars are almost invisible.  Ugh.)

Wow!  Some big changes down in Alabama... per the news release yesterday (hat tip to Alec Saunders), Mark Spencer is changing roles within Digium and stepping aside as CEO to bring in ADTRAN's Danny Windham as the new CEO.  Mark will remain as Chairman and CTO of Digium.  They also announced a new worldwide VP of Sales.  Tom Keating has a good writeup of the announcement and also has a link to a podcast of the conference call announcing the changes.  It makes for good listening.

As noted, ADTRAN has had a long relationship with Digium... if I recall correctly, Mark started out as an intern there at ADTRAN and when he went on to launch Linux Support Services and needed a phone system, it was his background at ADTRAN that made him think that if he could just get telephony onto a PC, he could manipulate it.  Thus was born Asterisk.  (And then later Digium, the company, to support Asterisk.)

I'm glad for Mark to see the change.  I've come to know him a bit over the years through conferences/trade shows and the interviews we've done with him for Blue Box...  and he's definitely a hard-core techie and developer... he's done the CEO role because it's needed to be done, but his talents really are in the technology and I'm sure this role change will let him get more back into the technical stuff that is his passion.  Congrats, Mark!  You've certainly deserved it and I do wish you all the best.

I've long enjoyed Richard Zhao's posts at "Telecom, Security and P2P" because, living in Beijing and working for Lenovo, he brings a distinctly different view into the global conversation.  For instance, earlier this year he posted about Chinese security standards, something that few of us outside the country would probably have noticed or commented on.  However, as he mentions over on his Chinese language blog (in English), access to Wordpress.com, where he previously had the blog, is apparently being blocked or degraded in China.  So he has now moved his blog to:

http://sbin.cn/blog/

As the title states, he covers primarily telecom and security.  Do check him out...

Over on one of Google's blogs, there is a post "New life for network equipment" about how the Network Startup Resource Center helps take networking equipment that is "old" by Western standards and give it new life in other parts of the world where equipment such as routers and switches may be too expensive to easily purchase.  First off, kudos to Google for supporting such an organization with their own donations.  As they say in the blog entry, it's very easy for those of us in the always-on part of the world to take that connectivity for granted.  And yet for a very large portion of the world, there is no such guarantee for connectivity.

This post, though, did make me think... what happens to all the "old" VoIP gear when it is replaced?  We are at the stage now in the evolution of VoIP where people are replacing IP-PBXs with newer models (from the same or different vendors).  SIP phones have been out long enough that they, too, are being swapped out for newer models.

Where are they going?  Landfills?  Probably. 

But yet some of those pieces of equipment may work perfectly fine in other parts of the world where people can't afford newer systems (keeping in mind that PSTN gateways might not, of course, because of the sheer number of different telecom standards).  Is the NSRC already dealing with VoIP systems?  Are they interested?  Are they even the appropriate organization?  I don't know... and obviously I can contact them... and perhaps I will when I have a chance at some point.  But it's an interesting question to me.

Where does old VoIP equipment go when it's been replaced?

Well, I had intended that video #2 was going to be Alec Saunders demonstrating iotum's new Talk-Now application.  However, as he explains, Alec took the video down! Bummer, as it was a fun demo of what that technology iotum has can offer.  Ah, well, you'll just have to read about "Talk-Now" or even sign up to give it a spin (if you have the right Blackberry).  Of course, you can read MobileCrunch, Jon Arnold or ZDNet first.  It's definitely an interesting take on how to extend presence out to mobile devices. 

And Alec, do come back with a video again - I liked the first one!

It's a Friday afternoon... and so I thought I'd end the week with two videos I've been meaning to write about.  First up, Mark Spencer shows off their new AsteriskNow distribution:

So if you've never seen Mark Spencer, there he is.  AsteriskNow seems to be Digium's answer to Trixbox, now that Fonality purchased Trixbox and has been very actively promoting it.  (Trixbox, you may recall, was originally called "Asterisk@home".)  The idea is similar... package Asterisk and all other necessary components with a Linux distribution and provide a very simple GUI with wizards to install the whole thing.  Looks simple from the video... I'll have to try it out once I get vmware or something else running on one of my systems again.