FreeSWITCH

From TechCrunch this morning comes a disturbing report - the country of Ethiopia has criminalized the use of any kind of VoIP communications. The ban includes Skype, Google Talk, and anything else that could help citizens circumvent the use of the ... [More] state-owned Ethio Telecom. We also hear that Ethio Telecom is blocking all access to the Tor network. This suggests an oppressive regime with serious DPI (deep packet inspection) capabilities in the state-own ISP.   Please read the above-linked article for full details and links to other sources of information.   -Michael [Less]

Happy Monday to you all!   Last Wednesday we had a nice discussion on the weekly conference call about mod_httapi. It turns out that there is a fair amount of interest in the great module but that there are some questions about how to handle certain ... [More] scenarios, such as "session tracking." Thanks to Raymond Chandler for being available to answer a lot of those questions. We will be doing a followup discussion that focuses on Raymond's PHP examples for using mod_httapi. These examples do a good job of demonstrating the power and ease of HTTAPI.   ClueCon season is upon us and our list of speakers and sponsors continues to grow. Packt Publishing is now on board as a media sponsor and we hope to have some nice items from them to give away at the conference. Keep checking the schedule for updates as we are confirming new speakers each week. We are also happy to report that the Wyndham has completed its changeover and is officially known as the Hyatt Chicago Magnificent Mile. (As of this writing their web site is undergoing maintenance, so be patient.) We are excited to see what's in store at this revamped hotel and can't wait to see everyone there this August!   -Michael [Less]

Happy June to all!   We had a busy month of May but last Wednesday (May 30) we took a break from the formal presentations on the FreeSWITCH conference call and instead focused some time and energy on topics of general interest to our community. Feel ... [More] free to download last week's conference call recording and listen to Travis Cross and myself discuss the pros and cons of licensing for content other than source code, such as the wiki documentation and the sounds we've recorded over the years.   Another topic of interest is the original FreeSWITCH book, a.k.a. the "bridge book" because of the cover photograph. Can you believe that this summer it will be two years since the book was released? The FreeSWITCH team and a number of interested community members have been discussing what a second edition would look like - what changes would be made, what new content could be added, etc. We have no definitive plans at the moment, so now is the time to talk about what you would like to see. Do you have an idea on how to make the second edition of the FreeSWITCH book even better? If so, please let us know. Perhaps by ClueCon 2013 we'll have a brand new book on the shelves!   Speaking of ClueCon, we would like to let everyone know that the plans for this year's event are coming along nicely. Our speaker list is growing and the schedule is filling out. We still have a few openings, so please get your speaking proposals in to us right away. We are looking forward to seeing everyone again this August, so please register now, that way we can make plans for ancillary events like the welcome reception.   Thanks for being such a great community! Talk to you next week.   -Michael [Less]

Happy Tuesday to all. We hope you enjoyed your holiday weekend.   We've had a steady stream of presentations on the FreeSWITCH conference call over the past month. Ken Rice has graciously done two presentations on how to create a dialplan module in ... [More] C, including a fully functional example module. This code is extremely helpful not just in understanding how to write a dialplan module but in writing any module that exposes new dialplan applications or command line APIs. This week we will take a break from the formal presentations and have an open discussion on any topics of interest to the community.   Our ClueCon plans are gearing up as well. We are pleased to announce that Plivo, Inc. is a brand new silver sponsor for this year's event. Plivo is an open-source framework for developing Web-based solutions with FreeSWITCH. We are also happy to report that the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) is again with us a media sponsor. IIT holds the annual Real-Time Communications conference and expo where academia and industry meet to discuss various aspects of global telecommunications. We invite you to visit our sponsors' Web sites to learn more about what they have to offer.   As a reminder, ClueCon still has openings for sponsors and speakers. Please contact us via email or at the phone number below if you have any questions. Visit the registration page to get signed up and be sure to book your room at the Wyndham. (And don't forget that the Wyndham will shortly be renamed to the Hyatt Chicago Miracle Mile.)   We look forward to meeting everyone in person this August!   -Michael [Less]

We're looking forward this week to a followup on a conversation that we began last Wednesday. After Fred Dixon gave a great demonstration of Big Blue Box we had our very own Ken Rice give an introduction to writing a simple dialplan module in C. This ... [More] week Ken Rice will follow up on the discussion and answer any questions you may have. If you missed last week's discussion you can download the audio by clicking the "torrent" link on the past calls page.   In ClueCon news we are happy to report that Norm Tomlins and Voice Network are back to sponsor us again in 2012. We look forward to seeing Norm again this August. We have also posted a number of presentations on this year's schedule. More presentations are in the works, so stay tuned for further announcements. Visit the ClueCon site to register, or call us at 877.742.CLUE if you have any questions about speakers, sponsoring, or anything else related to the event.   Only 77 days until ClueCon!   -Michael [Less]

This tidbit comes from TMCNet. Two New Jersey men who ran an elaborate scam that allowed them to sell VoIP services to legitimate companies. The catch? They obtained their service through fraud. Check out the original story over on TMCNet. Also, keep an eye on your servers!   -Michael

Greetings from the FreeSWITCH team. We hope your Monday is going well!   This week we have an interesting topic in our community conference call. We will be joined by Fred Dixon, lead developer of the Big Blue Button project. Big Blue Button is open ... [More] software that enables distance learning and remote education. Fred will do a live demonstration of how it works as well as discussing how FreeSWITCH fits into the picture. We invite everyone to join us Wednesday to see this cool project in action.   In ClueCon news, we are pleased to announce that we have two more sponsors: NACT and HarQen. NACT uses FreeSWITCH in carrier class solutions, such as pre-paid and their commercial Vinci Class 4/5 softswitch. HarQen provides innovative voice-based solutions in their line of Intelligent Voice Services products.Their flagship offering is Voice Advantage, a tool that allows creation of custom recorded interviews. Managers and recruiters can quickly review these interviews, greatly speeding up the recruiting process. We look forward to seeing representatives from NACT and HarQen at ClueCon this August.   As a reminder, our ClueCon PowerPlay is still in effect. Register one attendee by the end of May and you'll receive three entries in our great ClueCon prize giveaway. Register two attendees from the same company and they each will receive six entries. The more people from your company who register, the more entries each person receives. Visit the ClueCon site or call us at 877-742-2583 if you have any questions about attending, sponsoring, or speaking at this year's event.   See you this August!   -Michael [Less]

Ken Rice just announced an important step in the inexorable march toward FreeSWITCH 1.2, namely a new release candidate: freeswitch-1.2.rc2. You can download it here.   The most important thing you can do right now is download this latest version and ... [More] make sure it works for your various scenarios. The more people who try it, the quicker we'll get to 1.2 and the fewer bugs that we'll have to deal with after branching.   If you have any questions please feel free to ask on the FreeSWITCH-users or FreeSWITCH-dev mailing lists.   -Michael [Less]

Hello all!   We have a topic that is important for everyone in the FreeSWITCH community: business. Over the past few weeks I've personally been asked by three different business leaders if I knew of any FreeSWITCH talent that they could hire. (This ... [More] is in addition to the talent that the CudaTel team has been pursuing.) One challenge we're having is how to communicate all these needs.   Many in the FreeSWITCH community are not aware that we have a FreeSWITCH-biz list. It's a kind of a bazaar where you can post about pretty much anything that does not apply to the -users or -dev lists. We don't actually have very many people registered for the -biz list. We would like to change that. We are asking that everyone who is registered with -users or -dev to go sign up for -biz.   Some may be concerned about spam and junk mail from yet another mailing list. Fortunately for us the amount of traffic on the -biz list is minuscule. In fact, through the end of April, the total number of posts to -biz this calendar year was seven. Not much traffic at all.   Let's all get signed up for FreeSWITCH-biz so that we can keep in contact about business opportunities for members of our community. If you know FreeSWITCH then the future is indeed bright!   -Michael [Less]

Since I live in the weirdest state of the Union (that would be "California" for those of you wondering) I am always on the lookout for stories affecting me locally. Those of you who like to watch the regulatory landscape might be interested in this ... [More] post from Steve Anderson over at TMCNet. It's about a move in the California State Senate to deregulate VoIP services. Nothing's happened yet but it might get interesting so stay tuned for updates.   -Michael [Less]