Astricon, Vegas and Geekness

So, Astricon 2014 is over and behind now and I’m now sitting at the Holiday Inn in Chicago. I have to admit that moving from the RedRock resort and Casino to the Holiday Inn in Chicago – talk about a mind blowing change. Just to give a general idea, the bath room in Vegas was roughly the size of the entire room here (mental note to self – next time order something better via BA miles).

The Asterisk scaleability Unicorn

Asterisk Scaleability is somewhat of a unicorn – not because it doesn’t exist, it is a little tricky to do and get it right first time.

Asterisk ARI – What AGI/AMI should have been

Asterisk ARI – for a seasoned AGI/AMI developer like myself, ARI is a serious mind warp. Why is it a mind warp? simple, it’s all the things we wanted AGI to be, and the reliability we wanted AMI to have, minus all the work around we needed to do – in order to get similar functionality in the past.

Hardware Review: Allo.Com GSM Card

Honestly, this is something I should have already done a long time ago. About 4 months ago, Allo.Com approached us (GreenfieldTech) to write a review about some of their products. After they agreed to the terms – mainly that they we’ll publish our findings, good or bad – we had to move offices, so everything kind’a went into limbo. Last week, finally, we got around to start reviewing the hardware. We currently started with 2 products, the Allo.COM GSM card (http://www.allo.com/gsm-card.html) and the Allo.Com MegaPBX (http://www.allo.com/megapbx-line.html).

Updates, Astricon, Allo.com and more

So, let’s talk PRI cards. Once every often a company approaches me to evaluate their products. I do my best to be as impartial as I can – after all, Digium products are my favorite. However, I’m always happy to see a product that can compete nicely with Digium, simply because I believe it will make Digium products better and stronger. So, a couple of months ago, Allo.com approached me to evaluate their PRI card. I agreed, and they’ve sent me their PCI-e version of a quad span E1/T1 card.

Can you trust your integrator with Fraud Analysis?

As some of you know, over the past 9 months, I’ve been heavily involved in the establishment of Humbug. For those who may not know, Humbug is a Call Analytics and Fraud Analysis SAAS. Now, differing from many of the current telephony SAAS projects, we are not based on Amazon EC2 or some other public cloud infrastructure, we build our own cloud environment. Why do we build our own cloud? simple, we need to keep your data secured and confidential. At Humbug, we see ourselves as a cross between Google Analytics – in our ability to analyze and handle data and Verisign – in our security and confidentiality requirements and methodologies.

Call Analytics – Closed Alpha testing group

Well, it’s been almost a month since I’ve started writing about the humbug project. Now, it’s time to actually get you people involved, at least in the initial levels. We are looking to add 10 additional members into the humbug call analytics suite. Currently available analytics during the alpha testing is inbound call analytics.

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?

Being a successful Asterisk Consultant

A while back, John Todd from Digium, had posted an entry on the Digium blog web site, regarding how to be a successfull Asterisk consultant. While I completely agree with John’s views on the matter, from obtaining a dCAP certificate to the envolvment with the community – there are a few points missing from that post, at least in my view. I will try to add some additional information here, in the hopes that it may help you build your business.