What is Asterisk?

Asterisk is an open source software PBX (Private Branch Exchange). It provides all the functionality of high-end business telephone systems, and more over its the most extensible and flexible telephone system. In layman’s terms its the software version of a telephone exchange. Install it on your linux machine and with some configuration you can have a VOIP telephone exchange in your home PC.

Is it Complicated?

It is just like any other linux open source project. You have some configuration files, edit it and you are up and running. Some knowledge of Linux commands can be helpful, even if you don’t know it you can always refer some ebook or the man pages. Setting up a VOIP telephone exchange and making calls via software phones wont take more than an hour. See how simple it is.

Whats in it for my Academic Project?

You can create your own IVRs (Interactive voice response) systems, answering machines, caller identification systems, call routing systems and your own private secure internet telephone exchange. Once you get into it, its your imagination that limits the opportunities.

Will it Help me Find a Job?

Asterisk is your ticket to the telecom domain. There is no other easy DIY means to get into the telecom industry and the technologies that it uses. Asterisk experts are paid 50$ to 100$ per hour in foriegn countries. All the hardware PBX machines will be replaced with Asterisk machines in a few years time.

Oh This Sound Cool. But Where do I Begin

These links will help you get started.

• http://www.asterisk.org/
• http://www.asteriskdocs.org/
• http://www.the-asterisk-book.com/unstable/

I got an email forward yesterday. It simply the logo transition of different companies. It is interesting. 

Sometime while you are preparing docs or composing email in outlook you may need to search for information in web. So you need to open the browser and seach for the keyword and refine the information. It is a step 1,2,3 process. Today I am going to suggest a solution to search right away from word, presentation, outlook, pdf etc, called Kallout. 

You have to select the search text and click on the Kallout icon shown, this will give you result faster than web search. This kind of search is called “Selection Based Search“.  Check out the image below and check how Kallout works with Microsoft word. 

Search is so simple as selecting the text to search and click on the Kallout Icon. You can download the application here. The application is a COM component so the application will work with Word, PDF reader, Outlook, Presentation etc.

I read the book “Getting real” by 37 signals couple of months back. This book is a valuable asset for web developers and Entrepreneurs. I am publishing major points of the book. Pdf is available for $19 @ 37 signals and paper book is available @ Lulu.

Meanwhile read my open source venture inspired by 37 signals. 

1) Keep application simple as ever.

2) Less software is more manageable.

3) If there is a solution that need less development time than current better adopt the new.

4) If the developer is not willing for a change, give developer time to change.

5) Make the designers and developers to work together so that we can avoid unnecessary time wastage.

6) Try to avoid unnecessary meetings. Meetings are needed when there is lack of clarity in requirement.

7) Idea without execution is nonsense.

8 ) Don’t spoil out the personality of application by adding 100 unwanted features.

9) Try to identify unique and useful features.

10) Don’t be baulked to release data API or RSS so let the developers can play around with new ideas with data feeds.

11) Instead of asking customers what are the new features needed ask them what all features need to be removed from the application.

12) There is no use in creating 100 of pages as requirement documents instead tell the features as real stories and mock ups. The best way of mock ups are design in plain hands or HTML designs.

13) Every page has three states regular, blank, error.

14) Don’t design application assuming the regular state only. Every users see blank state first. Keep the blanks state as an interactive session where we can show the features and mock up of how the regular page looks. Thus the customers will gradually understand the applications from demo.

15) Keeping wordings in the pages reflects real feelings of customers.

16) Design web pages from the customer’s point of view.

17) A powerful promo site an essential for applications.

• Overview
• Tour
• Screen capture and video
• Manifesto (explain ideas and philosophy behind it)
• Case studies
• Forum
• Pricing & signup
• Weblog

19) Blogging are effective than advertisement and cheaper way to publicise your product. 

20) All application does support some free or limited usage of your application.

21) Don’t try to impart set up charges and initial charges during signup instead go with monthly based billing so that any user can discontinue the usage of application at anytime without any loss.

22) It is better to add different levels of plans so that some features are available in plan a, plan b so on. So that customers may sometime will to upgrade the plan.

23) Update what is cooking in the lab and statistics of the applications in the blog regularly.

24) Try to post one post per day in the blog so that users will keep watching on the blog and thereby you can spontaneously market anything.

25) Try to publicise the logo of the application from before the launch.

26) Create buzz after launching the applications.

27) Try to collect emails from the website we created for promotions.

28) Education is the soft way to get your brand and product visibility. Continuously releasing pdf’s and study material through blogs and promo site help us to brand the product. This is real reason why corporate like Microsoft, IBM etc release different papers regarding there products and related works.

29) People you educate will become your evangelist.

30) Track all bloggers who write about your product(s) and give thanks by comment or some other means.

31) Add bloggers who blog about your product into your crush list so that next time onwards new feature release and updates will be updated first.

32) Don’t outsource the customer support to call centres. There is no need of wall between the customer and the developers. Let the developer hear the customer feedback that will avoid disparity.

33) Zero training means inline help and FAQ with the application itself.

34) Don’t get shy to get repeat business from people who already know and use your product.

35) Quick turnaround time for support tickets under top priority.

36) Be a surfer and watch the waves and change the business model that suits the wave.

If you see this process in your system, beware it is a trojan. But the main problem is it will not be list in task manager or Close Program window (CTRL+ALT+DEL). But this application is listed in startup application, thats why we didn’t notice the program much.

Removal

Download RegRun Suite. Click here.

New Kaspersky can remove this trojan.

Lots of people misuse invisible feature inorder to even avoid individuals. I wrote an article about yahoo invisible hack some time back which created lots of response among my readers. This time I am going to explain about gmail invisible bug that can be exploited from “off the record feature“. Below are the steps involved, but there are some limitation.

Step 1. 

Set the target user as off the record while he/she is online. This can be done by simply clicking on the option in the chat window. 

Step 2. 

Try sending an IM when he/she is invisible or offline. 

If he/she is invisible he/she will receive message. If he/she is offline you will receive an error “did not receive your chat”.

This hack will only work if you mark the target user as off record when he/she is online. It is a limitation.

How does it work?

When the chat is off the record, it will no longer stored in the gmail account. 

When you send IM to an invisible / offline user it will be delivered by default. At the receiving end the IM will receive as a pop in form of chat window if the user is invisible. If the user is offline it will receive as an email in the inbox. 

The main problem with this hack is if the target user is using another email client or desktop version.

Panda logo

Now a days we are seeing lots of video sites. Now if you need to build your own video streaming web application but you don’t have know how to about videos streaming encoding and even uploading. Panda is solution for this. If don’t need to carry the pain for handling video and its backend. Panda will expose the video information REST api’s. 

Panda’s Architecture.   

Panda architecture

1 Page displays Panda’s upload form in an iframe or popup Video upload with AJAX progress bar. 3 API callback when encoding is done.  4 Video streamed to user.  Panda is highly scalable solution since it use Amazon’s webservice for EC2, S3 and simple DB. The video processing is done in ruby. So this can be easily integrated with Ruby on Rails web application.

Funambol is an open source push email and mobile sync for the mass market. Funambol v7’s new capabilities include open source software for BlackBerry push email and PIM sync, an iPhone plug-in for contacts sync, an enhanced Java ME push email client for hundreds of millions of feature phones, Yahoo! and Gmail contact import into the Funambol Portal, server syncing of tasks and notes via native SyncML clients, an enhanced SDK and greater scalability.

Download your Funambol application here.

I am planning to develop an Agile project Management tool. I am really inspired by 37 signals mode of working. So far they have developed 4 (Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack, Campfire) cutting edge applications and open source web application framework called Ruby on Rails. Moreover 37 signals also developed some more applications, tadalist, writeboard, job board etc. They are developing cutting edge application even working in different time zone. I think all of those who are interested in web application development / marketing should read there book, “Getting Real“.

Getting inspired by 37 signal team I am also planning to develop an application, which is a Agile Project Management tool. I am now acting the role of Agile Business Analyst (If someone are good please let me know I will handover this job to you )for the product, and I am collecting requirements from different engineers who are into Agile SE. As a part of it please convey your thought on the same, what you need to improve your Agile experience. I will put them into different Sprints and realize the product.

And ofcourse about me, I have 3.5 years industrial experience in Web and telephony (asterisk) application development. For more information about me check out my LinkedIn profile. Please contact me @ mail2sanilATgmailDOTcom.

I am planning to develop application in Symfony an open source framework for PHP, in LAMP framework. It is one of the best framework available with plenty of plugins. Moreover this framework is designed for enterprise web application development. I welcome all of those who are interested in participating in the project both in development and identifying requirements. The application will be open source under GNU Licence. As of now we have 2 developers in hand one is me and other is Sarath who will handle XHTML design he is an expert in the field.

Let us work like 37 signals, I am in touch with Jason who is one of the founder of 37 signals, will ask for his expert guidance regarding this. Let this be a community intiative which will conceptualize the Agile Project management tool. I am waiting some of the Agile and open souce geeks who have prior experience in Symfony who are also interested in contributing for this project.

Google recently released geolocation api, it is with reference an extension of google gears. This API is intend for Web applications. This api estimate best estimate of user positions either by using number of sources called Location providers. The location providers may either be on board GPS or a server based(network location provider). 

We don’t worry about permission, that someone track you. The location access will ask for user permission through a dailog. There are mainly three functions which are useful in determining the location, getCurrentPosition,  watchPosition,  lastPosition. 

This application is working in United States and United Kingdom as for now. We can integrate this with google maps. You have to know little of javascript to develop applications using geolocation and google maps api.