VOIP IP Telephony

Posted: 18 Apr 2008 06:32 AM CDT

We should not be surprised for Asterisk receiving awards but every time I see that Asterisk does, I smile with satisfaction. Everyone of us are aware that Asterisk not only gave us the best Open Source Telephony Solution, it also changed the market. I remember when we had to 5-6 figure costs for simple PBX and 5 figure cost for add on VoIP card for existing PBXs. But now those prices have come down drastically. I am sure Asterisk played a major part in making IP PBX, everybody's tool.

Then the other side of it, the whole new industry and service that was build behind Asterisk to support, promote and extend Asterisk. As a whole these factors have made Asterisk a formidable force in the telecommunications arena. So these awards, valuable confirmations from those who sees the true value of Asterisk.
Congratulations Asterisk!
Following is a news release from Asterisk.

Open source telephony industry leader recognized for technology innovation and quality

HUNTSVILLE, Ala.—April 15, 2008—Digium®, Inc., the Asterisk® Company, today announced the recent receipt of three prestigious industry awards. Acknowledgement of the strength of Digium's products from TechTarget's SearchNetworking.com and TMC, which presented Digium with two awards, follows recognition earlier this year from InfoWorld of Asterisk, the open source telephony project created and led by Digium. The company and its founder, Mark Spencer, have also appeared on numerous "company to watch" and "influencer" lists, including 2008 installations from eWeek, Linux Magazine and VoIP-News.

SearchNetworking.com, in its article accompanying the award, notes: "Capturing the silver award in IP telephony systems is Asterisk, the free, open source IP telephony application created by Digium. The application facilitates VoIP in many protocols and interoperates with almost all standards-based telephony equipment, using relatively inexpensive hardware. Asterisk can save an organization significant costs and is at the forefront of open source VoIP development."

Recent recognition includes:

SearchNetworking.com—Product Leadership Awards: IP Telephony Systems, Silver Award for Asterisk (April 2008).

eWeek—100 Most Influential People in IT (April 2008).

Unified Communications (TMC)—Product of the Year Award for Switchvox SMB 3.0 (March 2008).

INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo East 2008 (TMC)—Best of Open Source (February 2008).

Linux Magazine—Top 20 Companies to Watch (January 2008).

InfoWorld—Technology of the Year awarded to Asterisk 1.4 (January 2008).

VoIP-News—Top 20 VoIP Influencers (January 2008).

"Each award and other recognition motivates the entire Digium team to push harder to continue to strengthen and expand the Asterisk platform," said Mark Spencer, creator of Asterisk and Digium's founder and chief technology officer. "We're grateful to the media and users who've taken note of our contributions and innovation and know that by recognizing Digium, they're congratulating the entire community of developers working on the open source Asterisk project."

tag: Asterisk, Open Source Telephony Solution, IP Telephony Systems, Product of the Year Award for Switchvox SMB 3.0, Best of Open Source, Technology of the Year awarded to Asterisk 1.4

Free VoIP for iPhone™ with fring™

Posted: 18 Apr 2008 05:24 AM CDT

After it seems like after a decade, Fring is finally available on iPhone. Now fringsters wanna be's from iPhone community has a oppertunity to be so. Fring is mobile internet service that enables its users to talk, chat and interact with other fringsters and their internet communities from their mobile phones. fring users are able to communicate with each other and with contacts from Skype^®, MSN^®, Google Talk™, ICQ, Twitter, Yahoo!™ & AIM^®LONDON, 15^th April 2008, fring® today became the world's first mobile VoIP application to be made publicly available for the iconic apple iPhone™, enabling users to talk, chat and interact with other fring users ("fringsters") and all of their online communities, using their iPhone's™ WiFi connection.

A light, sneak preview R&D version of the phenomenally popular mobile VoIP application, developed in conjunction with the Holon Institute of Technology academic research labs in Israel, is now available for use on the iPhone™ from www.fring.com/fring_is/fringcubator. The pre-release version is designed to both answer demand from iPhone-owning would-be fringsters and at the same time enable fring to learn about user experience, benefit from early feedback and influence the R&D process of the full release version, due for launch later this year.

The special pre-release version will enable iPhone™ users to get an early taste of fring and discover the freedom of being able to take their fring^™ contacts and buddies from their other favorite online communities mobile on their iPhones. They will also have the ability to make free and low cost mobile calls over WiFi & enjoy rich, IM-style live chat with their online contacts, regardless of whether they are on their mobiles, PC's or other internet devices.

During login, fring automatically creates a single, integrated contact list, combining contacts from all of the users' selected internet communities. And because fring is an always-on, always-connected application, it offers special features such as real-time, PC-style "presence" indicators which continually display whether contacts are online, away, offline, in a call, on their mobiles or in front of their PCs, providing new levels of freedom to interact and truly take the internet mobile.

All you need to start enjoying the pre-released fring for iPhone is an "opened" iPhone with the Istaller and WiFi access. And, just like all other fring versions, fring on iPhone is free to download, free to use!

tag: iPhone, mobile Voip, Fring, fringsters, free and low cost mobile call, Free VoIP

Cogoblue, Another Visual Configurator For Asterisk

Posted: 18 Apr 2008 04:54 AM CDT

Today I read about ISPBX' announcement (below) of Cogoblue, a visual configuration tool for Asterisk. Looks like the other commercial Visual configuration tool that I know, Visual Dialplan for Asterisk going have a competitor.
I have mentioned about Visual Dialplan for Asterisk from version 1.2 to the latest version Visual Dialplan beta for linux. I have also tested the Visual Dialplan. And keep in mind that I have not compared every feature to feature of both these products but by browsing through both the applications capabilities as presented. Both promise to make life easier for people who deploy and manage Asterisk IPPBX.
One big difference is that COGOBLUE is currently available only on ISPBX hardware. The Visual Dialplan is an application for Windows and Linux both of which could be tested before purchasing. I hope ISPBX will release a hardware independence version that will be useful to millions of Asterisk users everywhere. Because, there is always a person willing to spend money on a good tool.
Everyone who design an application would love to say that they are the first to bring the product to market. But in thiscase, people have been designing visual configuration tools for a while, like AstPlanDesigner was doing this as far as 2005 (I wrote about it in 2005. The site and the Sourceforge directory for AstPlanDesigner seem to have gone under. But you can do a google search for AstPlanDesigner.)
But as complete appliances, and open, AsteriskNow, Trixbox, FreePBX, PBX In A Flash and Commercial applications like Switchvox are making Asterisk Configuration, more than glorified text editing. And all those are accompanied with good support, either paid or free.
It is always good to see products of every nature coming out because of Asterisk, even if they say that they are better than Asterisk! ;). It means that Asterisk is going places. It is also good to have open source and commercial applications to support Asterisk. So I will be paying a little more attention to Asterisk than recent past. So to start with I will be writing about another Open Source tool for Asterisk configuration tool, visual as well.

I learned about Cogoblue from VoIPGuides. Here is the text from the press release of Cogoblue extracted from the published PDF.
ISPBX announces the next generation in Asterisk configuration, with CogoBlue the first 'drag and drop' GUI interface on the ISPBX series of PBX appliances, bringing a new level of simplicity. ISPBX LLC, a New Jersey based systems developer, introduces a line of IP-PBX systems featuring COGOBLUE.
COGOBLUE allows you to configure your system just by dragging and dropping visual icons on a display pane. This really is the next generation of Asterisk GUI tools. The CogoBlue "Drag and Drop" interface makes installations faster and easier. The visual objects immediately convey the configuration. This reduces the possibility of unintended results stemming from a "simple" change. No longer will profitability be eaten up by technical support due to configuration mistakes. ISPBX offers a series of PBX models targeted for small to medium sized businesses. Dealers installing these appliances can quickly implement call routing and call processing without the need to manually edit configuration files. Modifications are implemented consistently. This eliminates the need to re-learn and re-work previous configurations as often experienced with rotating technical support staff. The results are shorter support time for users and increased profitability for you.
ISPBX Managing Partner John Signorello said, "In developing CogoBlue, we took a radically different approach from Trixbox and Digium. Instead of another glorified word processor, we developed a rich, intuitive, visual model for configuring PBX systems. It's simple, elegant and very powerful. For dealers, this translates to systems that are easy to configure, easy to modify and return higher profit margins."

tag: Asterisk, AsteriskNow, Trixbox, FreePBX, Switchvox, AstPlanDesigner, Cogoblue, Visual Dialplan,

iPhone Handwriting Recognition With HWPEN

Posted: 17 Apr 2008 08:46 PM CDT

HWPEN for iPhone has been released. It is available on iPhonecake. This is the first Handwriting Recognition IME on iPhone. Developed by Hanwang.com.cn. Chinese multi-character and Latin alphabet input are supported now.
I have not installed this application yet as I am working on something els on my iPhone now. So be careful. (I am using a HWPEN program on my PC with a tablet.)
All the information is in Chinese so you can use Google translation or Babelfish to read more. Here is the link to the distribution site.
To install To install HWPen, add source http://iphonecake.com/src/all in your installer.
tag: iPhone, hand writting for iPhone, hwpen for iPhone, hanwang, HWPEN

VoIP

Friday, 18 April 2008