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.

Asterisk updates, rants and raves

Well, I guess it’s time for another Israeli Asterisk update post – one that was well due a long time now. This post was written after the recent hectic 3 weeks of Asterisk events and news here in Israel. So, I guess we’ll open with some news – beep, beep, beep.

Sangoma USBfxo: too little, too late…

Sangoma recently introduced a new FXO product, the USBfxo. The USBfxo is a dual FXO port device, connected to your Asterisk server via a USB connection. Now, while I do admire the way Sangoma keeps trying to kick it up a notch with new products, but isn’t Sangoma a little late to jump on the […]

Hybrid Spins, Price cuts and more…

I really like marketing spins, there is nothing more amuzing than a good marketing spin – especially when its being performed by a big company. Israel, as much as I don’t like admiting it, is one of the world’s biggest spin experts, especially when it comes to technology and marketing. One of my best friends […]

Hijacked by RTFM to la-la land

I keep a vigilant eye on Google Alerts. To be more exact, I’ve got a few alerts defined, in accordance to subjects that interest me. Two of these subjects are Asterisk and FreeSwitch. Recently, the following had been posted on a personal blog: Chose Freeswitch over Asterisk October 28, 2008 – 12:09 am Posted in Uncategorized […]

Will Fonality fork Asterisk too?

We’ve recently learned that Fonality had forked FreePBX into its own version, to better serve the TrixBox community. Judging from what we’ve learned about Fonality/TrixBox/KG over the past few months, it is my personal belief that this is just another from of spin on the “TrixBox calls home” feature, simply doing something to hide it […]

Say No To TrixBox Campaign – Update

As some of you noticed, I’ve started a “Say No To TrixBox” campaign. In order toPL go about and monitor the usage of the banner, and it’s deployment across the net, I’ve installed an OpenX ad server to support the campaign. I guess that I didn’t realize what the little campaign would do! Current statistics […]

The unbearable manner of the “me too” syndrome

There is nothing more annoying than the “me too” syndrome – the ever annoying human behavior of seeing something good and copying it – while doing a lousy job at it. So, what am I ranting about this time? I’m ranting about the lousy job companies like Sangoma, Yeaster, Varion, PhonicEQ and other Digium would-be […]

The world’s fastest Asterisk based Dialer

As most of you already know, I’m heavily involved within the Asterisk Open PBX project. Over the course of the past 5 years of my dealing with Asterisk, Asterisk had always suffered a serious flaw, and that is, a single-threaded Manager interface – which usually led to serious dead-locks when writing a multi-threaded server that […]