Disruptive Telephony

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...