Call Analytics – Beyond CDR analysis – Part I

“Oh, just get me the CDR’s and I’ll take it from there” – how many times have I heard these words before? I can’t even imagine the number of times in the past 15 years of IT/Telecom’s work that I’ve done and in the last 8 years of Asterisk in particular – when it comes to billing and fraud management, it would appear that the CDR’s are the Rosetta Stone of the industry.

Beyond the dialtone – PBX user experience revisited

When most of us think about PBX systems, we usually associate these with cumbersome usage, confusing dialing codes and in most cases – a PBX system is automatically associated with the annoying task of transferring a call from one handset to another. Lately, I’ve been thinking deeply about how people use PBX systems, is this really the only way to use a PBX system? is there something else to the mix? can we really enrich one of the oldest operational paradigms in the world? – and for that matter, can the public be re-educated to assimilate a new breed of PBX systems or services?

Digium TE205P vs. OpenVox D210P

If there is one thing I like doing is testing hardware, specifically, testing new hardware that is related to Asterisk. I was more than pleased when OpenVox had approached me, asking to review one of their products – specifically after I once announced that I really dislike cheap clone cards. So, I got OpenVox’s D210P card, which is a fairly similar clone to the TE205/TE210 of Digium, and I decided to take a it for a test drive.

I’m not rude, I’m eccentric

Today I got the chance to speak at a Polycom half-day convention, mainly to speak about Asterisk and HDvoice. Now, putting aside the part about HDvoice (I’m getting a post about that on its own), I gotten to the point where I believe that I’m currently perceived as being an eccentric.

Astricon 2009 – Glendale, AZ – Part I

Well, as some of you know, I’ll be speaking at this week’s AstriCon convention, being held in Glendale, AZ. I guess that in normal days I wouldn’t be starting to write about it prior to the actual convention, however, this time I decided to write about it earlier. I guess the title of this post can be changed to: Tosche Mark Spencer.

Asterisk’s New Friend in Israel – Cellcom

Since early 2006, an ever increasing competition between the local PTT carriers in Israel, had introduced an unlikely friend to the Asterisk community in Israel. While Cellcom, one of Israel’s largest cellular carriers, isn’t closely associated with the PSTN market – it’s entrance to the local PTT market, especially into the E1 PRI market, had introcuded the most unlikely friend to Asterisk.

Asterisk and Amazon EC2 – Amoocon Presentation

I recently gave a presentation at the Amoocon convention, held in Rostock, Germany – about Asterisk and Amazon EC2. Below is a medium quality video of that presentation: or you may download it here: Amazon EC2 and Asterisk video files

Asterisk Fax, Cheap VoIP Providers, Free Calls and more …

As I recently explained to a good friend of mine, the essence of Jewish holidays is, more or less, the ever growing consumption of food – due to our great fortune with people trying to kill us and not being able to do so. Putting that aside, now a days, the essence of Jewish holidays, at least in Israel, is to basically sit at home and do nothing.

GreenfieldTech announces the general availability of app_cashmaker for Asterisk

Udim, Israel. April 1, 2009 -GreenfieldTech Ltd., a leading provider of Asterisk solutions of training services in Israel, today announced the availability of it’s patented app_cashmaker application for the Asterisk Open Source PBX system. The CashMaker application is intended to be used by various content suppliers, wishing to distribute Audio and Video based content, utilizing their Asterisk server.