Patrick and Fred Chat… sometimes about VoIP
Atlas heard about this venture and shrugged...(cause he had the whooooole world....)
I was introduced to a fun little “tool” today: Find the shortest route between two Wikipedia articles.
The first thing I tried was an analysis of the path from Death to VoIP, and I discovered Read the rest of this entry »
Note: There’s an intro, the DDA response, and Fred’s response in this article. Jump to the end to read Fred’s response.
A few months back, we posted a nice little article on using Asterisk to get Parking Space Availability from Ann Arbor garages. The response from the VoIP community was fantastic! We received great comments and feedback from people like Jason Goecke, Dug Song, Dave Michels, Evan Cooke, and more! People not only responded, they even showed different ways of providing access to this information. And everyone shared their work in an open forum — truly a great example of open source coding inspiring innovation (albeit with Parking Spaces).
Even better was the local response in Ann Arbor. Edward Vielmetti and Fred Posner were interviewed in the local papers, appeared on a radio show, and even rode the teeter totter. Everyone loved the idea of being able to check on parking space availability… everyone except for the DDA (insert scary music).
The DDA (Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority), funded by tax dollars, “provides a diversity of transportation and parking options to meet downtown’s [Ann Arbor’s] ever-changing needs.” The DDA does not like us making information of parking spaces available to the public via phone. Instead, the DDA wants to control this information. Seriously, they want to control parking space availability information.
Tyler Erickson helped Edward Vielmetti and Fred make this project even more fascinating by tracking parking space availability over time. The plan was to provide predictability of availability. For example, “We’re sorry, the lot at 4th and Washington is currently filled, we predict the parking lot will be available in 7 minutes. Press 1 to be notified…”
Wouldn’t that be neat? We thought so… The DDA’s response was to block Tyler’s access. Of course, since it was using Google Apps, it blocked Google, but that’s another story. We inquired as to why this blockage occurred and… well enter Susan Pollay. Susan Pollay is Executive Director of the DDA. She told us (and remember, this is a tax funded organization): Read the rest of this entry »
Digium’s John Todd announced an amazing little contest — The Asterisk S-Prize. Asterisk, the open source VoIP telephony software from Digium, finds itself in small / medium businesses routinely. But more and more, large businesses and enterprises are switching to Asterisk to fulfill their telecommunication needs. With this in mind, Digium announces the S-Prize — geared at designing a single system capable of processing 10,000 call legs.
Here’s the information, directly from the source: Read the rest of this entry »
What you VoIPing 'bout Willis?
Yes, you guessed it correctly. In today’s article, Diff’rent Strokes will be used as a metaphor for VoIP. Why? The correct question is “Why Not?” And the answer… well that’s simple — Diff’rent Strokes is the perfect metaphor. Take for example these classic lines from the show’s theme song:
Now, the world don’t move to the beat of just one drum,
What might be right for you, may not be right for some.
Classic. Pausing for Trivia… do you know which 80’s sitcom star wrote these lyrics? If you said Growing Pains actor and Canadian sensation Alan Thicke, you’d be right… but, as usual, we digress.
Those working within VoIP, and contrary to many medical reports there are people still working in the industry, have many flavors and styles of VoIP products to choose from. Although opinions vary, there really is no “right” or “wrong” product line. Selecting your VoIP implementation is an individual choice that is determined simply by what works best for you. Read the rest of this entry »
Digium's Asterisk was downloaded 1.5 million times in 2008
In the face of economic woes, companies seem to be embracing both VoIP Telephone systems and Open Source software. Asterisk, an Open Source VoIP / PBX telephony system, clearly strikes a chord with many.
Earlier today, Digium (the makers of Asterisk), announced that in 2008 alone, Asterisk received more than 1.5 million downloads (which is 50% more downloads than last year). From the announcement:
Digium’s strong 2008 year highlights the attractiveness of less expensive, easily customizable open source software in the current recession. Asterisk is the world’s dominant open source telephony software. As the economic crisis worsened, Asterisk downloads rose by 32 percent from September through December, compared to a year ago.
For more information, please read the Digium press release.
About Digium
Digium®, Inc., the Asterisk® Company, created, owns and is the innovative force behind Asterisk, the most widely used open source telephony software. Since its founding in 1999, Digium has become the open source alternative to proprietary communication providers, with offerings that cost as much as 80 percent less. Digium offers Asterisk software free to the open source community and offers Asterisk Business Edition and Switchvox IP PBX Software to power a broad family of products for small, medium and large businesses. The company’s product line includes a wide range of hardware to enable resellers and customers to implement turnkey solutions or to design their own voice over IP (VoIP) systems. More information is available at www.digium.com.
Digium announced today the release of Asterisk versions 1.2.30.3, 1.4.23-rc2, 1.6.0.2, 1.6.1-beta3, as well as Asterisk-Addons versions 1.6.0.1 and 1.6.1-rc2. These releases address includes regression introduced in Asterisk 1.2.30 and Asterisk 1.4.21.2 and has existed in the Asterisk 1.6 branch since release. More details of course can be obtained from the asterisk.org post. As always, you can download the updates free from the asterisk.org website.
Why free? It’s just how Digium rolls. They really take that GPL open source to heart.
Asterisk is free, open source software provided under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Asterisk is the most popular open source software available, with the Asterisk Community being the top influencer in VoIP.
For more information, please check out:
Identifying the strength of Asterisk, the revenue of Switchvox, and the popularity of Astricon, iLocus predicts the next VoIP company to go public will be Digium. Of course, we believe that if you can put 5 hyperlinks in the first sentence, you should just stop and let the hyperlinks do the talking. We have been in a non-stock buying mode, but an IPO from Digium might just change our minds.
Well, even though it happened back on June 11th, Digium posted on their blog today a recent award the Switchbox SMB 3.5 received from TMC Labs.
With the 2008 Internet Telephony awards, TMC Labs honored products that demonstrated significant contributions towards improving communications. For the past 9 years, awards have been given to products that TMC Labs finds “truly innovating.”
Digium better be building a new trophy case — it’s only the end of June and they’ve already racked some significant bling. Along with the TMC innovation award, Switchvox also was named the 2008 Unified Communication product of the year. Not to mention being named Best of Show for IT East. (Did we mention Switchvox has a free version?)
And let’s not forget Asterisk. So far this year, Asterisk was named 2008’s Best IP PBX by Infoworld as well as a Product Leadership award from Searchnetworking.
Not to be outdone, Voip Tech Chat was recently awarded the Most Likely to get a Restraining Order from Ben Affleck award.
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