Five Things You Didn’t Know about VoIP
julie March 15th, 2010
Please be sure to check out Tristan’s article Five Things You Didn’t Know About VoIP – www.itbusinessedge.com
Isn’t everyone looking for more ways to save money in their business these days?
julie March 9th, 2010
If you’re looking for affordable alternative for your business phone system, Switchvox is the answer. You could save up to 60 percent over your current system AND enjoy enterprise class features that you may have thought were beyond your reach.
Check it out!
Our newest video overview of Switchvox, the award-winning Unified Communications system is here:
https://www.brainshark.com/digium/vu?pi=37813268
Switchvox is Digium’s Unified Communication system that makes it easy for small and medium businesses to save money and increase productivity. Switchvox provides small and medium businesses with an affordable alternative for their business phone system. This award-winning solution has been named a Tech Innovator award winner, Product of the Year for Unified Communications and has been a Best of Show winner at IT Expo.
Why? We think it’s because it offers enterprise class features at a price small businesses can afford. See for yourself how Switchvox could give your office a whole new way to communicate….and help with your bottom line.
See what you have been missing. Our newest video is here:
https://www.brainshark.com/digium/vu?pi=37813268
Here are some of the highlights from the video:
- Learn more about the Switchboard web interface - it makes it easy to see and manage your calls
- See how easy it is to integrate all of your other office communications – chat, fax, video and conferencing on-demand.
- Web mashups – you can even integrate Google Maps to see where your callers are located!
Road Trip: Digium|Asterisk World – UCEXPO London
julie March 9th, 2010
We are happy to report that Tristan Barnum, Steve Sokol, Malcolm Davenport, Jim Butler and Schuyler Deerman have arrived safely in London and are excited to be attending the UCEXPO event! If you are in the neighborhood, please stop by the Olympia Exhibition Centre to learn more about Switchvox SMB 4.5, Skype for Asterisk, AsteriskExchange and all the latest news from Digium.
Digium presentations:
Tristan Barnum – Wednesday, March 10th – 13:50PM – 14:20PM – Switchvox as an SMB Solution
Asterisk is being used all over the world as the open source core of an incredible (and growing!) number of communication applications. Learn how an open standards compliant solution with a foundation of open source software becomes a more powerful and flexible Unified Communications solution than traditional, proprietary systems could ever hope to be. The cost savings associated with open source and VoIP, in combination with easy to use applications allows for successful deployments affordable for small and medium businesses.
Steve Sokol – Thursday, March 11th – 12:30PM – 13:00PM – Cost Effective UC Solutions with Asterisk and Open Source
The Asterisk open source communications engine serves as the “glue” of the UC universe. Even before the term “unified communications” was in vogue, integrators used Asterisk to build low cost, high value solutions. Asterisk’s open interfaces make it easy voice-enable business processes. Asterisk’s radical price point makes it affordable. In this presentation Steve Sokol, Director of Asterisk Advocacy for Digium offers a primer on building custom UC solutions with Asterisk and other open source technologies.
For more information please visit www.ucexpo.co.uk/Seminars/Digium-Asterisk-World-London
New: Monthly Asterisk Update Newsletter
ssokol March 1st, 2010
Last time I talked about the welcome wagon we’re rolling out for new users. Today I’ve got a treat for everybody. Starting this month, Asterisk has its very own monthly newsletter, the Asterisk Update. Each month we will cover new releases, new features, major updates and the latest news from the world of open source telephony. We will also take time to get to know some of the people who make the Asterisk community an interesting place to hang out.
Perhaps a newsletter sounds quaint in this age of instantaneous (if questionable) content. Well, call us old fashioned but there’s nothing quite like having the digital paperboy toss a tightly rolled bundle of bits through your living room window early on a chilly morning. More importantly, not everyone can keep up with the breakneck pace of innovation here in the world of Asterisk. Giving our community easy access to current issues and upcoming changes will help keep everyone in sync.
Our first issue should be on the newsstands (actually in your inbox) now. If you didn’t get a copy, check out the on-line version. The premier issue covers highlights from the 1.6.2 release, a new versioning system that should help users find the “right” version of Asterisk, and an interview with Terry Wilson, creator of the new calendaring interface that’s scheduled to appear in Asterisk 1.8 some time this summer.
In this age of blogs and tweets and status updates we would be remiss if we didn’t open up the virtual pages of our publication to community input. If you have news, ideas, rants or raves that you think should be included, please send them to ssokol@asterisk.org.
Asterisk.org Launches Weekly Welcome Webinar
ssokol February 26th, 2010
Back in the 1970s when I was a little tyke, my mother belonged to an organization called “The Welcome Wagon”. They didn’t actually have a wagon (unless you counted our ugly green station wagon) but they did a heck of a good job of welcoming people into the neighborhood. Almost as soon as the moving van pulled away, a flock of ladies with casseroles, cookies and daiquiris would descend upon the weary neighborhood neophytes, doling out food, drink and a spirit of welcome.
Flash forward a quarter of a century. It is 2003 and I’ve just stumbled across this incredible concept: open source telephony. I read through the minimalist web site for the Asterisk project, google around for “getting started” hints and begin re-learning Linux after five years in the Windows world. After 36 hours of bleary-eyed compiling, scripting, editing and cursing I finally hear Allison Smith’s beautiful voice welcoming me to Asterisk. That, my friends, was all the welcome wagon we had back in them days.
My first interaction with an actual human being (no offense Allison) came a few days later when I posted to the user’s mailing list asking about additional documentation. The response was virtually instantaneous: “Read the source.” That was it. That was pretty much the answer to all questions. “Read the source.” Sounds like something from Star Wars: “Read the Source, Luke…” Not tremendously welcoming, especially to somebody who’s C language skills were extremely rusty. A long, long way from daiquiris on the driveway.
So now jump forward another seven years. It is 2010. Asterisk has reasonably good documentation. (Even better docs are in the works. I’ll tell you more about that in another post.) There are books and samples and training classes. The wild west of the mailing lists has morphed into something of a friendly frontier civilization. People are rarely told to “Read the source.” But as yet, there is no welcome wagon, dropping by with a heaping helping of green bean casserole and a jug of Carlo Rossi’s finest. Well, today that changes. Today we take one more bold step towards civilization.
Starting on Thursday, March 4 and continuing until the end of time, Digium will be hosting a weekly live introductory webinar entitled, “Say Hello To Asterisk”. Our goal is to offer new users an opportunity to find the answers to the most common questions:
- What is Asterisk?
- What can Asterisk do for me?
- What do I need to know to succeed?
- Which version of Asterisk do I need?
- What does open source mean to me?
- Where can I go for help?
- How do I get started?
The idea is to give new users a bit of insight into the power of Asterisk and show them how to quickly get up to speed. The presentation takes about 40 minutes, which gives us 20 minutes for questions and answers. If you are new to Asterisk and would like a brief introduction to the project, please join us. If you know a new user who could use a bit of orientation, please send them along. We may not have potato salad or fruity drinks, but we’ll do our best to welcome everyone into the Asterisk neighborhood.