Robo callers we all hate them! Most of us have gotten those annoying phone calls at the most inconvenient of times. In the beginning it was hard for people to root out these calls. They would have to keep track of the caller ID’s being used and learn to ignore them. Then came the block in the iPhone with other apps such as TrueCaller. The spammers were Read more Why the FCC’s large fine on Robo Callers is worthless
How to get back and annoy IRS and other scammers
We have all received calls from the IRS scammers and the like annoying us to no end and trying to scam us out of our hard earned money. Till now there two ways to get back at them.
- Keep them on the phone thinking they have a fish and waste their time.
- Do a LRN lookup on the number, report it and check back to see if the line was taking down.
Both options are gratifying to an extent however the first one only ties up one scammer and the second takes time, some times lots of time. Now there is a better way, we can jam up their lines and annoy them. The added bonus here above the other options is that no one can call them back and get suckered in. All you need is some basic Asterisk skills and a carrier that is willing to take your calls.
This is done in 5 easy steps.
How to install Linphone on CentOS7
After many frustrating days I finally figured out how to get the latest version of Linphone working on CentOS7. I have yet to find any simple how to so here it goes.
RHEL7 (which is what CentOS7 is based on) was taken from Fedora 19. Being that CentOS tries to be 100% upstream compatible any package for Fedora 19 should work on RHEL7 which means it should work on CentOS7.
The fault game
<rant>
I sort of had it with the service providers. It seems that everyone here loves playing the blame game. If you call the cable company its the ISP’s issue. If you call the ISP then its the cable companies issue. A little while back a customer called up the phone company and stated that their internet was not working. The phone company said that it was an issue with their ISP. After speaking to the customer about which lights were lit up on the modem it turned out that the mode was not plugged in. How dumb is the telco ? They are so fast to blame the ISP where the modem was unplugged.
Which service provider do you hate the most ?
/D
</rant>
It’s all about service
I was at a client today that wanted to know how to make money in the very competitive market of VoIP. He mentioned that it is hard to make money on minutes since there is a lot of fierce competition. I explained to him as I have explained to others that clients that are coming to you for the price per minute (generally speaking) are not worth it. If they get a rate of $0.015 per minute to the US from you today and some one else tomorrow will offer them $0.013 they will leave in a moment. It’s all about service. There are plenty of clients out there that are willing to pay for service. People don’t just need low rates but the need features (IVR’s, Call recording, Queues, real time statistics etc.). I tend to work with such people since they are willing to pay for the serivce and they wont nickle and dime you for everything. Know what your worth and sell yoru self accordingly. Never undermarket yourself.
A Gui for Asterisk that I like (just a little)
Yes. You read correctly. As some may know I hate almost any and every gui out there that has been created for Asterisk. Now when a customer wants a GUI on Asterisk you do as the nice paying customer says. I was forced to check out some GUI’s and the Asterisk-Gui (created by Digium) is not to bed. The interface takes a little bit to learn but it’s not hard to get the hang of it. The code that it generates is small and simple (unlike some other GUI’s *Cough** TrixBox**Cough*). Anything that you manually put in to the configuration files will show up in the GUI. While I still prefer “vanilla” Asterisk if you are trying to learn Asterisk or need a quick fix then Asterisk-GUI is the way to go. (Of course GUI’s are always for plan Z and should be used in a worst case scenario 😉 )
Another “Great” web site
Today I cam across a web site www.dialaway4free.com. They seem to allow you to make free calls if you listen to advertisements. I don’t know about everyone else but I would rather pay the few cents that it cost to make the call. Why would I want to sit on the phone before every call and listen to an ad ? Even if you will find people that would listen how effective would it be ? Say I listen to a 15 minute ad and then call my aunt Shirley for twenty minutes. I see it as another company that is trying to make it big in telecom “over night”. Would I remember that ad ? Would you listen to ad’s for free phone service ?
/D