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Gizmo Announced a new beta version of their of their software for Blackberry devices. The new client offers outbound calling to the PSTN by using "Call Out" credits much like Skype's "Skype Out" - Interesting, after looking at the call out rates I just don't understand why someone would use this feature to call a US number when chances are they can just use their mobile provider minutes for less.

Anyway - "call out" is not the only reason one might use the Gizmo Client- It actually has an integrated chat client that allows its users to chat with Gizmo, MSN, AIM, Yahoo, and Jabber contacts.

Here is where this all gets interesting... Being that I have nothing better to do on a Friday morning (Kidding!) I have decided to see of I can get this thing working on Asterisk - Having said that I feel it is prudent to announce that I don't even own a Blackberry phone and that I have no plans to ever purchase one. Soooo.. I decided to see if there were any emulation programs that may afford me the ability to run blackberry software on my Windows PC. Low and behold, after a few Google searches I found a 34 meg download that will let me test without shelling out hundreds on phone and thousands annually on service- I'm quite happy with my Razor thanks...

For now I'll have to sign off as duty calls... However, I will keep you posted as the the results of my efforts in future posts.

Cheers- MW

As you've probably noticed over the past 6 months there have been many new products from vendors like Polycom and Aastra claiming to be the end all be all mobility solution for Asterisk. In the wake of all this hubbub snom technology ag has announced their new M3 IP-Dect product, designed to "Move snom phones away from the desktop into cordless territory"

As announced, the snom M3 will be available through distribution in the us starting Q4 2007 and boasts a range of roughly 165 feet (50 Meters) to over 300 feet when used outside. snom is also claiming that the stylish M3 IP-Dect phone also has a talk time of ten hours with additional features including a 128 x 128 pixel color display with backlight from which you can browse your uo to 100 phonebook entries.

The soon to be released M3 will be their first offering to the mobile user space, and from what I can see the device probably has a better look than all of its competing products. At first glance the snom M3 looks a lot like something you might see coming from the Apple camp however, after more research... it seems as if the product has been developed under the watchful eye of of my favorite automaker BMW and others like Porsche and Maybach. Crazy... If this thing is anything like a BMW M3 chances are the competition doesn't stand a chance.

Digium, the Corporate Sponsor and creator of the extremely popular Asterisk Open Source PBX has announced today that it has acquired Fourloop Technologies, makers of the Switchvox PBX.


In an interview with TMC's Tom Keating, both Digium's Bill Miller and Mark Spencer made reference to the product's future and how they might play their hand against Fonality's.

"So as a contrast right, look at what Fonality did. They bought an open source project [trixbox/asterisk@home] and then turned it into a proprietary product. What we are trying to do is go the other way. Take something that started out as a fully proprietary product and to try to leverage that to bring some additional technologies into open source. That's an interesting angle that I don't think anyone has covered." Mark Spencer...

In my professional opinion, this is the greatest news to come along in a while~!

As a technologist, I have had the fortunate luck of installing Switchvox and have to say that the solution really is much easier to use out of the gate than Trixbox and far more fuctional.

Mike White

Open Source Fan
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