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Skype users can now have their voicemails converted into text via SpinVox. Today, SpinVox announced that your Skype voicemails transcribed and sent to you via SMS for €0.20/£0.17/25 cents plus the cost of the SMS. SimulScribe, now PhoneTag, is a similar service, that Rich Tehrani uses regularly. GotVoice is yet another one.

But how about another cool TTS app that is currently 'free' and works with the popular open source Asterisk platform? Weavver's VoiceScribe is a beta web-service for Asterisk that converts your voicemail to text and delivers them to you via e-mail. What's cool about this is how easy it is to integrate with Asterisk, trixbox CE, and trixbox Pro. I tested it with trixbox Pro and it worked flawlessly in just minutes. It uses the Nuance engine. The accuracy was OK, but I'm told by Weavver's Mitchel Constantin, "Quality will get much better."

Simply edit /etc/asterisk/voicemail.conf, go to the [general] section and make sure wav49 is the default format. Also add a line with mailcmd that sends an email with your voicemail attachment to their hosted servers.

Here's a sample of the 4 lines you need in voicemail.conf:

PIKA Technologies announced today the release of a BRI expansion module for the PIKA WARP Appliance. The PIKA WARP Appliance is a very flexible hardware telecom appliance that can run various flavors of Asterisk, including native Asterisk, Schmooze, trixbox CE, and others. They even support FreePBX, the popular front-end GUI for Asterisk. They support FreeSwitch as well.

PIKA's BRI module supports two ports and four channels, allowing the WARP Appliance to reach a total port density of four ports and eight channels when two BRI modules are installed. BRI is very popular in Europe and is very commonly used in the SMB space, making the WARP Appliance a suitable option.

Check out my PIKA WARP Appliance for Asterisk review for more details on this flexible piece of hardware.

Vipadia announced the release under the GPLv2 of Karaka, the open-source XMPP-Skype Gateway which connects the XMPP and Skype networks.

Karaka is a scalable distributed XMPP transport that bridges instant messaging and presence between a user's XMPP and Skype accounts. This will for instance enable Skype-to-Google Talk instant messaging. In theory AOL's AIM should work, since I believe they also support XMPP. In addition to full presence and instant messaging exchange, it also supports multi-user chat ("conference rooms"). Karaka implements the XMPP standards XEP-0100 for gateway support, XEP-0045 for multi-user chats and XEP-0144 for roster exchange.

According to Vipadia, "Existing Skype interconnect solutions focus on bridging voice even though the primary use of Skype is for instant messaging and associated presence data. Interconnecting with Skype messaging and presence has been a major stumbling block for many who wish to offer Skype interconnection to their network. Karaka bridges the XMPP and Skype clouds, removing this stumbling block by converting Skype messaging and presence to the popular XMPP protocol as used by, e.g., Google Talk."

Karaka is licensed under the GPLv2 and is hosted on Google Code at http://code.google.com/p/karaka/.

Check it out @ http://vipadia.com/products/karaka/.

In 2006, I came across a Network World article, which espoused the fact that Sam Houston State University (SHSU) had switched from the Cisco CallManager IP-PBX to open source Asterisk. I wrote about this news since 6,000 students and faculty were moved off Cisco to the open source Asterisk IP-PBX, which was great news for the open source Asterisk community. This deployment demonstrated that Asterisk could scale and put to rest one of the main complaints against Asterisk.

Well, 3 years have passed, and according to this thread written by Jason Fuermann, who is responsible for SHSU's IP phone system, SHSU has switched back to Cisco from Asterisk. Say what?

According to The Sun, aeronautical engineer Bernie Bamford was browsing through Google Ocean when he came upon this formation showing a perfect rectangle the size of Wales lying on the bed of the Atlantic Ocean nearly 3½ miles down. A series of criss-crossing lines that looks like a large city enclosed by the a boundary appears in Google Earth. I launched Google Earth myself to see, entered in the coordinates (N31.381 W24.375) and sure enough, there it is.

Now, it could simply be a series of seams in the topographic scans where areas are being tiled together along with missing scan data that has to be interpolated. However, according to The Sun article, Google responded as follows:

Google today claimed the criss-crossing lines were sonar data collected as boats mapped the ocean floor.

But the internet giant said "blank spots" within the lines could not be explained.

So has Atlantis finally been found? Didn't Edgar Cayce, the "American Prophet" say that Atlantis would be discovered soon after the millenium? Anyone got a bathysphere I can borrow? I'll get to the bottom of this.

Related:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10168269-36.html

I was driving to work in my Volvo V70 XC (XC=Cross Country) which has all-wheel-drive and Blizzak snow tires when I approached a T intersection where I had to make a right-hand turn. Now normally a Volvo with AWD and Blizzak snow tires can cut through any amount of snow with no problem. I've driven it through blizzards, so I know.

In fact, there was some light snow on the roads in my neighborhood, but once I got to the main roads, they were completely dry. The road I was on is also well-traveled and appeared dry in most places and wet in others. I didn't realize the "wet" spots I saw weren't wet at all, but were black ice.

I tried to stop at the T intersection, my car's ABS kicked in and the car wouldn't stop. I quickly spun my head to my left to see if I was about to cut someone off. I saw a yellow school bus bearing down on me. I decided to go over to the opposite lane, figuring I'd rather get hit by anything else but a 7 ton bus. I hadn't had time to turn my head to the right to see if there was a car coming from that direction. I had other things on my mind - like a big yellow bus headed straight at me!

Not knowing if there was a car coming from that direction and although ABS was still kicking in, I quickly turned the wheel to the right just in case I could slip in between and be riding the center of the lane - hoping if there was indeed a car coming from the opposite direction, it could ride the shoulder a bit to avoid hitting me. It worked! My car did indeed finally grip and take the center lane. Fortunately, there wasn't another car coming from the opposite direction, so I gunned the gas and rode illegally in the left lane for about 30 ft, just to be sure I wasn't going to get rear-ended by the bus, and then got back into the right lane.

I felt bad for the bus driver who obviously had to brake hard. The bus driver probably thought I was a lunatic for taking the turn without stopping. But I honestly wasn't going fast. I was slowing for the stop sign, but just couldn't stop. Although the bus driver probably saw it was an "out of control" action and I did fishtail a bit - so probably deduced it was black ice.

Wow, another 1-2s later and I was a goner.  There was also a line of cars behind the bus, so even if I avoided the bus, other cars would have hit me and there was an SUV just ahead of the bus. So basically, I was able to slip in-between the gap between the SUV and the bus. What if my wife didn't remind me to take the IPEVO Skype phone to work, which I had forgotten in the bedroom? I actually had to walk back down the hallway to get it.

The mere act of taking the IPEVO Skype phone home last night to test may just have saved my life. Thank you IPEVO & thank you Skype! They say Skype is a cost saver - well now Skype's a life saver!

Today, flaphone (formerly Flashphone) announced that users of their Flash VoIP application can now make a call from flaphone to skype. You simply need to enter sip:skype_username@skype after selecting "none"(global)" for the SIP account. I should mention that flaphone supports multiple SIP credentials, which is a really nice feature. I've been testing flaphone for several weeks now and have been meaning to write up their cool Flash-based VoIP application.

In any event, for my first test call I entered sip:tomkeating@skype and pressed the call button. The call was initiated and the call quality was superb!

You can also use this SIP-to-Skype feature for flaphone's CallMe widgets that you place on your website.

Similarly, Gizmo5 recently launched OpenSky which also enables SIP-to-Skype dialing. However, Gizmo5 calls are free only up to 5 minutes long. For longer calls they are offering a paid service. There is no such restriction that I am aware of with flaphone.

By leveraging Flash, flaphone is cross-platform, has minimal download time, and you can run it from any browser. That and the fast that it supports SIP-to-PSTN calling, SIP URI dialing, and SIP-to-Skype calling, means this is one VoIP app you should check out!

While we wait for Digium's official SIP-to-Skype gateway, Nerd Vittles today informed me about his very cool recipe that you can use today to build your own free SIP-to-Skype gateway enabling you to use your SIP-based desktop phones connected to Asterisk to make Skype inbound/outbound calls.

Part of the recipe uses SipToSis - SIP to Skype Gateway Bridge Proxy. SipToSis is a piece of software which Nerd Vittles points out "forms the lynchpin of Gizmo's offering and which lets any Asterisk user create much the same gateway at no cost other than the expense of any Skype Out calls you may choose to make."

Nerd Vittles explains in his tutorial:

When we're finished, you'll be able to call any Skype user in the world from any extension on your Asterisk server by entering either a Skype username or any 10-digit telephone number preceded by an 8 to take advantage of SkypeOut calling rates. You'll also be able to receive incoming calls from any Skype user on any extension of your Asterisk system. In short, what you get is a transparent interface to several hundred million Skype users from your Asterisk server.

In summary, with this tutorial you'll be able to dial Skype users, as well as receive incoming calls from any Skype user! Nerd Vittles' recipe should work on just about any Asterisk-based system. I might have to try this recipe myself later on today. Good stuff!

With the resounding success of ITEXPO East 2009, I was just sent the final attendance figures and demographics that I thought I'd share.

Demographics:
Service Providers:33.3%
Reseller/Agent/VAR:28.2%
Developers:6.2%
Manufacturer:4.2%
Enterprise/SMB:28.1%

Total Attendance:
Paid Conference:211
VIPs:6,980
Exhibitors:847
Speakers:202
Press:69
Total:8,309

The Philadelphia City Council voted unanimously to approve a Verizon FiOS franchise agreement that will allow Verizon to offer fiber-based digital TV, voice, and Internet to Philly's 600,000 residents. Verizon will spend $1 billion to build out the network which will offer HDTV channels, voice, and high-speed Internet.

City Council members said the deal was "not perfect" and they tried to push for more minority contractor involvement. Now how is it that a City Council has the right to demand who a company hires? There are already state and federal anti-discrimination laws on the books, so why the hell do companies have to answer to some local city council mafia? Obviously, Verizon wants the business and they have to suck-up to this local city council if they want to be granted the franchise.

The vote taken yesterday gave Verizon a 15-year franchise agreement. What will the Philadelphia City Council demand from Verizon in 15 years when it's time to renew? It's not like Verizon is going to say 'no' to any demands after shelling out $1 billion to build the fiber network. Why do we even have TV franchise agreements any more? Haven't they outlived their usefulness? It's such a scam by local governments to make cable companies - and now carriers to "pay the man" if they want to do business in the town. Phone companies don't have to pay local franchise fees to provide telephone service, so why do TV providers have to pay? It's a legalized mafia racket if you ask me.

Philadelphia residents and the local government should be ecstatic that Verizon is targeting the city first before many other major cities. They should be grateful.

Via ABC Local news affiliate