Posted on No Comments on Some of the best start up’s were born in some ones basement

Some of the best start up’s were born in some ones basement

I have been looking around the internet and noticed that a lot of the “big boys” were started to solve problems that people have had or as a goof. For instance eBay was started because some one had a lot of stuff that he wanted to sell. Coming from a telecom background I have created several telephony apps to help myself with simple tasks. Others have been the results of bets.

Here in Israel the Exchange rate of the Shekel against other currencies (such as the Dollar, Euro) play a big role in a lot of peoples lives. A friend of mine that lives in Israel that gets paid in dollars likes knowing what his money is worth locally. We had a bet if I can have a hot line up under an hour that would tell people what the exchange rate was against the dollar. I got busy with asterisk + PHP + and some scripts. Within 45 minutes I had working number that gave the rate. I told a few people about it and now the line is getting lots of calls. Who knew ? You can call in and hear it (still didn’t have time to get professional recordings).

Call in to it and let me know what you think.

From the US: 646-335-0424

From Israel: 078-818-7400

/D

Posted on No Comments on A Gui for Asterisk that I like (just a little)

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 😉 )

Posted on No Comments on Great Line

Great Line

Every once in a while some one posts a good line on the Asterisk Users List. Here is one that just made me laugh real hard.

“Windows is a half-baked, dying OS that in essence is a 32 bit extension and graphical shell, for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit operating system, originally coded for a 4 bit microprocessor, written by a 2 bit company, that can’t stand 1 bit of competition.”

/D

Posted on No Comments on Open Source Technology

Open Source Technology

As some of you may know I am part of the Asterisk users list. I can not understand why people expect open source to be free and the best. As usual every once in a while people complain that there is not enough features available, that this or that is broken etc. It is called Open Source for a reason. In the case of Asterisk while Digium controls what goes in Asterisk a lot of the code is submitted by users. If you do not like what is in there then either code it to your liking or pay some one to do it. Back in the day when I was new to Asterisk and I was not able to write my own code I needed something added. I simply went on to the developers list and offered to pay some one to code the feature. It bothers me to end that people expect to have everything that they want for free. This makes me laugh thinking about Microsoft. There you pay for the product and you still don’t get all the features that you want.

Sorry for the rant. It has been a while since I had time to write about it and now I had the time 😉

/D