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December 10, 2019

Digium The Significance of Switchvox 7.3

A few weeks ago, Sangoma released Switchvox 7.3. In one way, it’s a typical point release like all software point releases as it brings the product forward with incremental, interesting improvements to functionality.

On the other hand, this particular one represents a real coming together of Sangoma and Digium. When Sangoma acquired Digium, Switchvox had its own roadmap for the releases in progress at the time. Sangoma didn’t interfere and didn’t want to slow it down. As such, the next release, which is this one, is where we wanted to merge some Sangoma items with Switchvox to create a better overall business phone system solution.

What does that mean? This latest release includes integrations with the Sangoma line of DECT phones, which Digium didn’t have, and with the industry leading SIP trunking service, SIPStation.

Switchvox 7.3 supports Sangoma’s DECT handsets which provide secure, wireless communication for work environments that demand mobility, such as required in retail, manufacturing, construction, and other office mobility sectors. Also on the phone front, an all-new sidecar has been created for the D65 IP phone, supporting up to 40 programmable buttons on a 5-inch full-color, backlit screen across two pages which can be daisy-changed for greater numbers of buttons.

The SIP trunking integration is also significant. According to a 2019 Eastern Management Group survey, Sangoma’s SIPStation is the best SIP trunking service available. Using an auto-provisioning tool that is new to the Switchvox 7.3 administrative interface, customers of all VoIP knowledge backgrounds can quickly and easily connect their systems to the outside world. SIPStation provides a self-service management portal and is available with monthly and yearly service plans.

Switchvox 7.3 also introduces new, major contact center features for improved caller experience and contact center management which enhances the customer experience and improves operations. A new Queue Priority feature enables agents assigned to multiple queues to respond to high priority customer calls first.

Additionally, the new Global Arrival time feature tracks a caller’s total wait time so that their priority is respected system-wide if they are transferred between queues or departments. Callers also now have the ability to disconnect and keep their position in line with the all-new Queue Call-Back feature.

As with all of our product and service releases, Sangoma strove to improve the overall customer solution set with this release.

For more information about Switchvox, please visit this page.

The post The Significance of Switchvox 7.3 appeared first on Sangoma.

December 06, 2019

Jitsi Introducing: Presenter Mode
Jitsi Meet has had the ability to share your screen with others for years now. Thanks to WebRTC it’s really effortless for applications to allow users to share a window, full-screen or browser tab.

When it comes to the user experience, we decided to replace the user’s video with the shared sreen, and this has been the case ever since Jitsi Meet has supported screen-sharing. Many users would like to share their screen in addition to sharing their video. This can be really helpful during a presentation, since attendees can also see the presenter and their body language thoughout the presentation.

We heard you. It took us a while but here we are, introducing Presenter Mode: simultaneous sccreen and camera sharing is now available on Jitsi Meet.

As you can see, we position a camera thumbnail on the lower right corner of the screen, where the presenter is displayed. You can enable this by “unmutting” your video while sharing your screen.

“But tell us about the implementation!” Ok ok, here we go. There are a number of ways this feature can be implemented. We decided to do it by composing the video on the sender side (preparing the layout on a canvas and creating a MediaStream out of it). This vastly simplifies the implementation on all layers since it’s “just a video stream”. Now that we have it inplace, we have plans to make it even better with a couple of more features, stay tuned!

We hope you like this! Try it out today at meet.jit.si

The post Introducing: Presenter Mode appeared first on Jitsi.
Jitsi Open Source SFUs
Today we are trying something new. We invited Tsahi Levent-Levi to write a guest postfor us. For those working with WebRTC for some time Tsahi will be a faminilar name. Tsahi has been working in the software communications space as an engineer, manager, marketer and CTO for the last two decades. In his various roles he meets and helps vendors with their communication projects, especially when these relate to WebRTC, CPaaS and AI.

Building real life applications using WebRTC is more than just grabbing a sample code from GitHub and adding some HTML and CSS on top of it. It requires installing and managing servers.

To get a WebRTC session to work, you will be needing a signaling server (to get the users connected to one another) and TURN servers (to get over NATs and firewalls when needed). In many cases, you will also need media servers to handle some media processing or routing on the server side.

The most common use cases for media servers in WebRTC rely on SFUs, Selective Forwarding Units. These types of servers route media around the network from one user to another. They are quite handy for group video conferences – it enables them to run efficiently without needing to encode and decode the media (a very expensive task) while maintaining a great user experience.

As a developer, if you are in need of an SFU, there are a few alternatives that you can take:
1. Use a SaaS vendor or a CPaaS provider, use everything and the kitchen sink that they have to offer (including an SFU somewhere in there)
2. Find a commercial vendor and license an SFU from them
3. Build your own
4. Use an open source SFU – like… Jitsi! (there are a few others as well)
That last option is quite popular with those who want to put up their own infrastructure. It gives you both flexibility (you have the source) as well as faster development (it’s a media server implementation).

Why should you be considering the use of an open source SFU?
- No vendor lock-in. Open source means you aren’t married to any specific vendor. Being able to switch from one provider to another, or one outsourcing company to another means greater flexibility and competition. You are locking yourself in to a specific open source project, but assuming you picked a popular and vibrant alternative, you will find multiple vendors offering both support and development services for that open source project.
- Extensibility. While the first reason is mostly generic to open source, extensibility is really specific to WebRTC open source SFUs. many of the open source SFUs out there are quite extensible these days, enabling you to not only conduct group video conferences, but also connect PSTN/SIP users to the session, record streams or send media via RTSP/RTMP to external streaming services.
- Customization. You have access to the code. Which means you can customize it. Modify it to fit your needs. This means fixing bugs you find without waiting for a third party to do that for you, or adding this very unique feature you really need. This mostly depends on your stance – I’ve seen developers treat an open source SFU as a starting point, forking away from the source almost immediately, while others trying to maintain as little modifications as possible. This flexibility is available only through open source development.
- Infrastructure ownership. Open source gives you a great opportunity to own the infrastructure of your service. Making the decision on where to deploy your media servers and how to scale the service. This enables you to offer a localized service in areas where the popular cloud vendors aren’t readily available and when you need to maintain specific governance. It also enables you to more easily explain to customers how to configure and whitelist your servers in their firewalls if you target large enterprises. This ownership of infrastructure is important in many scenarios.
- It is free. Open source is free. You download the code and use it, with some restrictions based on the open source license used. There are costs involved, such as support and integration, but for the most part, using open source has a lower TCO (total cost of ownership) versus the alternatives.
Starting a project and needing an SFU? Why not try using an open source one? And if you’re headed that way, make sure you check out these criteria for choosing an open source SFU.

Guest Blog by Tsahi Levent-Levi, Author of BlogGeek.me as well as CEO & Co-founder at testRTC. He also has online courses (free and paid) at webrtccourse.com

The post Open Source SFUs appeared first on Jitsi.
Digium Customer Service Pain Points a Unified Communications Solution Can Solve
Most consumers would say that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good service. When a customer calls into your business with an issue, a poorly designed or outdated phone system can throw them over the edge, and you can quickly lose them as a customer. Understanding the most frustrating experiences customers have with a business’s phone system is the best way to design a solution that enhances your customer’s experience by solving their issues quickly and efficiently.

Here are some of the common customer pain points with a business phone system, and how a Unified Communication (UC) solution can solve them:

Pain Point: Inadequate staffing & long hold times. (The customer might say, “I’ve been on hold for over five minutes. Maybe you should hire more people to answer the phones.”)

How UC Solves: Managers can correlate agent staffing with call reports, which show the heavy and low-volume call times during the day. Appropriately staffing call center agents based on call volume reduces on-hold time for customers, enables issues to be resolved faster, and can save on costs.

Pain Point: Confusing phone menu (IVR). A poorly designed IVR is a very frustrating experience for customers, yet the majority of businesses have just that: an outdated, unhelpful, confusing IVR . (The customer might say, “I pushed 2 for support and it transferred me to sales. Can I just speak to a manager now?”)

How UC Solves: The IVR was designed for several reasons: to enable customers to help themselves without involving an agent, to route customers to the correct agent who can help them with whatever they need, and to provide general business information. A solid UC solution will provide businesses with several options for their IVR needs, including stock voice prompts, stock music, extension setup, and integrations allowing for more advanced features and capabilities. With the correct tools, your business can create a helpful IVR that will reduce customer frustrations and get them the information they need, faster.

Pain Point: Lack of communication mediums to work through a technical issue. (The customer might say, “I’m having an issue with this feature… there is a little box and a confusing pop-up thing. I wish you could just see what I’m seeing.”)

How UC Solves: A web-based solution allows for collaboration among internal and external users (customers and agents) without the need for plug-ins, separate applications, or passwords; all users need is an Internet connection. Some customer issues are hard to explain without visually seeing what’s happening. In cases like this, the right UC solution allows employees to screen share or host a live video session to walk the customer through an issue or to demonstrate a feature.

Pain Point: Having to repeat information. (The customer might say, “I already dialed in my case number, and now you’re asking for it again?”)

How UC Solves: In addition to a well-designed IVR, CRM integration enables an agent to view detailed customer records as soon as the call comes in (including recent case numbers). If there is an issue, the agent can identify the appropriate person to handle it, check their presence to see if they are available, send them an instant message to give them a heads up about the call, and then route the call. While the IVR provides options for customers to be directed to the appropriate person, the CRM screen pop provides the agent information about the customer. With these two UC features, the agent should have a good idea of who the customer is and how they can help before they even engage in conversation.

Pain Point: Lack of proper agent training (the customer might say, “You aren’t understanding what I’m saying. I need to speak with a manager!”)

How UC Solves: Barge and Whisper features allow a manager to interact on a customer call by joining the conversation (barge) or speaking to the agent without the customer hearing the conversation (whisper). These features are also useful when training new call center agents on the appropriate (and inappropriate) ways to handle a customer issue. These conversations can also be recorded and filed in agent’s personnel folders or used for future training sessions.

Request a personalized demo to see for yourself how Switchvox can immediately improve the customer experience for your company!

The post Customer Service Pain Points a Unified Communications Solution Can Solve appeared first on Sangoma.

December 03, 2019

Digium Unified Communications Virtualization Benefits
Last week, I explored why virtualization is a possibility for a UC solution and why it may be a viable option for some businesses.

This week, I want to go through some of the benefits.

One of the biggest benefits is saving money. If you already have a few servers running other business applications, then you don’t have to buy a new piece of hardware. You can put your UC software on the existing server. However, there is likely still some money to spend because you’ll need to buy virtualization software (such as VMWare or Hyper-V). RedHat does have a free one if you are using Linux. Additionally, you will be spending less money on cooling and electricity and have a smaller overall data center footprint because you’ll have less servers.

The environment and “going green” is also a big deal. You may want to do your part to help the planet or there may be business benefits for saying you are “green”. One of the benefits mentioned in the above paragraph is using less power than if every business application had it’s own server. Using as little power as possible means being as green as possible.

Another benefit that I mentioned briefly last week is improved uptime and disaster recovery. The virtualization technology also comes with the added benefit of not only scheduling multiple applications on the same server but also enabling two different physical servers to work together, bringing the benefit of increased reliability and uptime.

Please read our whitepaper to find out more.

The post Unified Communications Virtualization Benefits appeared first on Sangoma.
Digium Unified Communications Virtualization Benefits
Last week, I explored why virtualization is a possibility for a UC solution and why it may be a viable option for some businesses.

This week, I want to go through some of the benefits.

One of the biggest benefits is saving money. If you already have a few servers running other business applications, then you don’t have to buy a new piece of hardware. You can put your UC software on the existing server. However, there is likely still some money to spend because you’ll need to buy virtualization software (such as VMWare or Hyper-V). RedHat does have a free one if you are using Linux. Additionally, you will be spending less money on cooling and electricity and have a smaller overall data center footprint because you’ll have less servers.

The environment and “going green” is also a big deal. You may want to do your part to help the planet or there may be business benefits for saying you are “green”. One of the benefits mentioned in the above paragraph is using less power than if every business application had it’s own server. Using as little power as possible means being as green as possible.

Another benefit that I mentioned briefly last week is improved uptime and disaster recovery. The virtualization technology also comes with the added benefit of not only scheduling multiple applications on the same server but also enabling two different physical servers to work together, bringing the benefit of increased reliability and uptime.

Please read our whitepaper to find out more.

The post Unified Communications Virtualization Benefits appeared first on Sangoma.

December 02, 2019

Kamailio Kamailio World 2020 – Call For Presentations
We would like to announce that Call for Presentations at Kamailio World 2020 is now open. You can submit your proposal or see more details at:
- https://www.kamailioworld.com/k08/call-for-speakers/
The 8th edition of the event takes place again in Berlin, Germany, during April 27-29, 2020. Expect over 150 participants, developers and community members as well as representatives of the other popular open source VoIP projects such as Asterisk or FreeSwitch.

Looking forward to meeting many of you there!

Thanks for flying Kamailio!

December 01, 2019

Daniel Pocock Videos of my recent talks about reSIProcate development
reSIProcate is a widely respected C++ implementation of SIP. For some time I've been involved in adding features, build system improvements and release management.

Here is my introductory talk at Kamailio World 2018

and the talk I gave on more advanced topics at Kamailio World 2019

November 27, 2019

Kamailio Kamailio HA With Dispatcher And DMQ Modules
Another very interesting blog post published recently by the folks at Wazo project: “Achieving high availability for Kamailio with dispatcher and dmq modules”. You can read the full article at:
- https://wazo-platform.org/blog/kamailio-ha-dispatcher-and-dmq
Dispatcher can be used to ensure the reliability of SIP routing, with options to re-route traffic on next node unavailability, while DMQ solves the needs for sharing data and states between Kamailio nodes.

Should you be aware of similar article that you think worth sharing, let us know and we will gladly publish news about it.

Thanks for flying Kamailio!

Looking forward to meeting many of you at the 8th edition of Kamailio World Conference, April 27-29, 2020, in Berlin, Germany!

November 26, 2019

Jitsi Jitsi Meet now available on F-Droid
Hey there Fellow (Android) Jitsters! We have a good one for you today. Well, technically it went up on Friday, but in case you missed it, here we go: Jitsi Meet is now available on F-Droid!

F-Droid is a Google Play Store alternative focused on FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) applications.

Many people have Android devices which cannot access the Play Store or choose not to for various reasons. This one is for you. Without further ado, here you go: Jitsi Meet on F-Droid.

Now, for those following along, or intersted in the details, this issue was brought up over 2 years ago. Back then we had barely released the app on the Play Store and there were many missing features. In addition, our build infrastructure was… not there yet. So we focused on making the app better until we felt like we could tackle this.

Fast forward 2 years, we introduced a way to build Jitsi Meet without any proprietary dependencies (Google Play Services), which a requirement for inclusion in F-Droid.

Then we were ready. Some back and forth with some F-Droid developers later, the merge request was ready!

We are incredibly thankful to the F-Droid contributors who have helped us get here, and we are committed to maintaining the package forward.

The post Jitsi Meet now available on F-Droid appeared first on Jitsi.
Kamailio Kamailio SIP Routing With rtjson And http_async_client
The folks at Wazo (a project aiming to offer a full open source API programable RTC platform) have recently published a blog article on SIP routing using Kamailio’s rtjson and http_async_client modules – it can be found at:
- https://wazo-platform.org/blog/kamailio-routing-with-rtjson-and-http-async-client
If you are looking to build (REST) API-driven RTC platforms with Kamailio, this article provides very useful details.

Citing from the blog:

“… Our goal was while supporting high degrees of flexibility and ease to configure, to avoid any compromise regarding performances: we aim to support a high number of concurrent calls, high call rates with predictable and linear degradation of performances in case of overload.

The solution

To provide flexible, API-driven routing features in the Wazo Platform C4 Softswitch we decided to implement it on the foundations of the rtjson module. This module not only allows you to push the routing destination URI and the outbound proxy, but it also supports the normalization of the From and To headers, the insertion of additional headers as well as various settings related to the transaction management and its timers.

Together with the http_async_client Kamailio module, it offers a perfect solution to manage very complex and dynamic routing rules of SIP messages delegating the routing logic to an external, HTTP-based web service. The biggest advantage of http_async_client is that, as the name suggests, it is asynchronous: the HTTP request to the API server doesn’t block the Kamailio worker process which is immediately released, ready to serve subsequent SIP message requests. As soon as the HTTP request completes and the http_async_client worker process managing it collects the response, it resumes the Kamailio transaction and calls the Kamailio route designated to manage the API responses, resuming the processing of the SIP message and its transaction. …”

Should you be aware of similar article that you think is worth sharing, let us know and we gladly publish a news article about it.

Thanks for flying Kamailio!

Looking forward to meeting many of you at the 8th edition of Kamailio World Conference, April 27-29, 2020, in Berlin, Germany!
Digium The Virtualization Option for Unified Communications
Most of us understand the on-prem or cloud options when considering a new UC solution. But what about a virtualization option for on-prem solutions? That is, taking the UC software and running it on an already existing high-powered server that is running other of your business applications as well. This would save you money because you wouldn’t necessarily have to buy another piece of hardware to go with your new UC software.

First of all, let’s examine why this might be possible in the first place.

One reason is pure advances in computing power. The COTS (commercial off the shelf) server you buy today clearly has a lot more computing power than the server you bought 5 years ago or even 18 months ago. I learned all about Moore’s law when I worked for Intel. As such, you don’t need discrete hardware to run each business application. It’s a bit hard to wrap your head around if you haven’t thought about it, but it makes sense. If the server has more computing power, then for any given application there will be “wasted” computing power on such as server. So why not use up that computing power by having it applied to multiple tasks or applications?

Another reason is that, as the computing power has increased, software that allowed discrete applications to be run concurrently, yet separate from each other, on that same server came to the forefront. The initial virtualization technology that ushered in the cloud era was geared more toward transactional computing and not really suitable for VoIP applications that are sensitive to latency and dropped packets. However, today the virtualization technology can handle real-time communication applications as well.

The virtualization technology also comes with the added benefit of not only scheduling multiple applications on the same server but also enables two different physical servers to work together, bringing the benefit of increased reliability and uptime.

The post The Virtualization Option for Unified Communications appeared first on Sangoma.

November 25, 2019

Kamailio Kamailio Testing Framework
Giacomo Vaca has published a detailed article about Kamailio Testing Framework:
- https://www.giacomovacca.com/2019/11/kamailio-tests-testing-framework-for.html
It presents how to use and extend it.

The framework leverages Docker to run specific uses cases for Kamailio on many operating systems (now Debian 9, 10 and Centos 7), right now mainly targeting development and regression testing, but there is no limitation to it.

We hope that community members will start contributing to the testing framework the use cases specific for their needs, helping to ensure great software reliability and compliant SIP routing for Kamailio!

Thanks for flying Kamailio!

November 22, 2019

Kamailio Kamailio Developers Meeting 2019 – Follow Up Remarks
Last week we had the 2nd annual Kamailio Developers Meeting hosted by Sipgate in Dusseldorf, Germany:
- https://www.kamailio.org/w/developers-meeting/
16 people were at the event in various roles.

Giacomo Vacca published on his blog a good summary of what happened there:
- https://www.giacomovacca.com/2019/11/my-notes-on-kamailio-developer-meeting.html
Henning Westerholt published on his blog a few pictures of the two days and the evening event:
- https://skalatan.de/en/blog/kamailio-hackathon-2019
This year we had a lot of discussions, as well as work done on multiple planes, not only Kamailio code. So I am trying to list here some of the conclusions for future development, the technical aspects of the meeting, so everyone is aware and can provide feedback.

1) Effective work was done on:
- kamailio code
- kamailio rpm packaging
- kamailio tools (kamctl)
- kamailio release process
- kamailio project keys (to be used to sign the packages)
2) Documentation

2.a) Wiki
- it was somehow a rough consensus to move the wiki content to github,
  along with changing the format from dokuwiki markdown to the
  standard/github markdown. This should enable people to make pull
  requests so developers or community members can review and aprove new
  content. It also makes it easier to contribute using existing github
  account, now the kamailio.org/wiki is requiring to make a dedicated
  account, which many prefer not to do it.
- the presentation can be done either by using mkdocs to generate html files hosted on kamailio.org or using the github provided wiki portal.
2.b) Docs for variables and transformations
- there was a proposal to move them in the documentation the modules
  that export them, there are pros and cons, needs more discussions. Now
  they are in the wiki, so this probably has to resume after deciding on 2.a).
3) Kamailio Modules

3.a) replication (dmq) – several participants discussed about
negotiations between nodes to take active role on some cases (e.g.,
active dialogs)

3.b) api integration – quite some interest in JSON-based API routing,
concluding in extending rtjson to cover more use cases

3.c) security – have options to restrict the use of TLS1.3 or newer

4) Kamailio Releases
- v5.3.2 was released during the event, allowing to document the process
- work to automatise the process is planned, then eventually assign
  teams for taking cares of releases from specific branches
5) Kamailio Testing
- existing docker-based testing framework should be extended and
  integrated in CD/CI pipeline
6) Kamailio packages

6.a) rpms
- rpm.kamailio.org has been prepared and is expected to take over the
  opensuse build service for building rpms and hosting them. Expected to
  provide support for hosting many kamailio versions in the same release
  series so one can do downgrade to older releases. Also, there is work in
  progress to provide nightly builds.
6.b) debs
- work is planned to offer many kamailio versions in the same release
  series
7) Kamailio tools
- kamctl/kamdbctl should be obsoleted in favour of kamcli, which offers
  a better framework for input validation and output formatting, as well
  as better portability, no longer depending on shell interpreter
8) Various discussions
- KEMI exports from C point of view and how to combine the
  documentation for modules and their kemi exports
- move code from internal libraries to core or specific modules (to be discussed further)
- how to make Kamailio friendlier in virtualized environments (ended up
  in the need of making the use of advertised address a bit more dynamic)
- project organising topics – to be approached separately
- next events – Fosdem – someone should submit a proposal to present
  about Kamailio
9) Long term goals

We speak here more or less about Kamailio 6.0 …
- change the behaviour of the native config interpreter to be consistent with the other programming languages in terms of handling the response code (change what is now: the evaluation of negative value to false and positive value to true and the hidden return 0 to exit)
- make the pool of processes more generic, so they can handle traffic from more sockets (being sip traffic or something else) — this should make better use of resources, as some sockets might be less busy that others
I hope I covered the important topics, if I remember something else, I will reply on this thread. Or maybe other participants can contribute missing topics.

Should anyone have comments or suggestions on the above topics, or new ones, let’s discuss on sr-users mailing lists because it impacts the long term use of Kamailio.

Overall, there were 2 very intensive days, however in a friendly and relaxed environment offered by Sipgate. Extremely useful discussions, not only about Kamailio, but about RTC ecosystem. At the evening social network event event, a couple of external people joined, some of them presenting very interesting use cases of Kamailio.

Many thanks to all participants that allocated time and resources to come to Dusseldorf, as well as to the companies that covered expenses for participants.

Thanks for flying Kamailio!

November 19, 2019

Digium The End of the Toshiba IP Business Phone System
It was only a matter of time before someone bought the division since it had a robust channel. And so a couple of months after that original announcement, Mitel completed the acquisition of that division. It then predictably subsequently announced a Toshiba product phase out plan.

The phase out plan is now near its end. October of this year marked the end of any add-on hardware sales. So that’s it for any new sales, though there are two more years of support.

Obviously, Mitel would like the old Toshiba dealers to sell Mitel. However, since that acquisition Mitel is going all-in on cloud.

If you are a Toshiba dealer and would like to sell on-prem andcloud, not just cloud, what is one to do? Sangoma is there to help you. Our Switchvox Business Phone system is available both in the cloud and on-prem and better yet, they share the same exact code base. It looks and behaves the same.

Or if you are an end-user and your Toshiba system starts to get long in the tooth, what are you to do? You probably picked Toshiba since it did the basic functions well, and you didn’t feel like a number being a customer of a behemoth. With the world moving to UC, you want a good value-based UC system, and you want it from a company that won’t treat you like a number. Why not come to Sangoma, who has a great value-based UC system, sold by a great reseller channel.

The post The End of the Toshiba IP Business Phone System appeared first on Sangoma.

November 15, 2019

Jitsi New mobile releases and open beta access
Hi there Fellow Jitsters! Today we are happy to announce Jitsi Meet for mobile 19.4! You can check the release notes here, but we’d like to talk about a couple of the new features here, we think you’ll like them!

Private messages

You may have noticed we have been gradually improving the in-meeting chat. In this release we have made improvements to the styling, but more importantly, we have added private messaging support.

You can long-tap on any participant and a sheet will show up offering you some options. There is a new one available for sending private messages. These messages are sent in the context of the meeting, but no other participants will be able to see them!

Shared document editing

Long time Jitsi Meet users probably know that we support collaborative document editting on the web by integrating with Etherpad. Now that integration is coming to mobile! If your deployment has Etherpad configured a new button will show up offering you to edit the shared document. It’s that simple.

If you are self-hosting Jitsi Meet you can easily enable Etherpad too, check this.

Mobile SDKs released including all these features

Jitsi Meet SDK 2.4 for Android and iOS have also been released including all the aforementioned features, in addition to many stability bugfixes. Check the release notes here!

One more thing: open beta access!

With these new releases we also wanted to open up our beta versions for everyone to join. We develop Jitsi Meet fully in the open: all the commits land on our GitHub repository. However, users wanting to checkout features before a release actually happens need to compile the apps themselves, which can be a bit tedious.

In order to help our users get quicker access to the latest features, and help us help them by providing feedback, we are openeing our beta versiosn for anyone to join! Here are the links to both beta programmes:
- Android
- iOS
– The Jitsi Mobile team.

The post New mobile releases and open beta access appeared first on Jitsi.

November 14, 2019

Kamailio Kamailio v5.3.1 Released
Kamailio SIP Server v5.3.1 stable is out – a minor release including fixes in code and documentation since v5.3.0. The configuration file and database schema compatibility is preserved, which means you don’t have to change anything to update.

Kamailio^® v5.3.1 is based on the latest source code of GIT branch 5.3 and it represents the latest stable version. We recommend those running previous 5.3.x or older versions to upgrade. There is no change that has to be done to configuration file or database structure comparing with the previous releases of the v5.3 branch.

Resources for Kamailio version 5.3.1

Source tarballs are available at:
- https://www.kamailio.org/pub/kamailio/5.3.1/src/
Detailed changelog:
- https://www.kamailio.org/pub/kamailio/5.3.1/ChangeLog
Download via GIT:
```
 # git clone https://github.com/kamailio/kamailio kamailio
 # cd kamailio
 # git checkout -b 5.3 origin/5.3
```
Relevant notes, binaries and packages will be uploaded at:
- https://www.kamailio.org/pub/kamailio/5.3.1/
Modules’ documentation:
- https://www.kamailio.org/docs/modules/5.3.x/
What is new in 5.3.x release series is summarized in the announcement of v5.3.0:
- https://www.kamailio.org/w/kamailio-v5-3-0-release-notes/
Thanks for flying Kamailio!

November 12, 2019

Digium The UCaaS Value Proposition

As I’ve written about before, the drivers for buying UC phone systems typically revolve around efficiency improvement and productivity gains. These can be realized because with all the communications ‘unified’, there is less time lost trying to just connect with each other, track people down, and get info from other systems. In other words, different communications methods in one system enable a “best” way to get to someone when you need them.

A new Frost and Sullivan UCaaS report adds a few more value propositions to the mix. As seen from the table above, improving customer experience and satisfaction and launching new products and services are also important. The improving customer experience and satisfaction, to me, are about obtaining efficiencies – but from the customer point of view. For instance, when I call in to a call center, my phone number identifies me, and my call history can pop up. So while that saves the call center time, it also saves me time and makes me happier because I don’t have to report rote information. So it gets me to my reason for calling, quicker.

Launching new products and services is very interesting. In my opinion, this is just about the entire UC value prop. There are many elements of UC, and it’s doubtful a user, during the initial deployment, utilizes all of them from the get-go. We frequently see customers who like 1 or 2 elements of UC, and that’s why they buy it. Yet, over time, they really like other functions that weren’t part of the purchasing decision. And these other functions enable new services that they hadn’t thought of before. For instance, with mobility, your office phone number can ring on your smartphone. And since your smartphone is with you at all times, maybe you can offer expanded service support times and charge more for that.

To read the full Frost and Sullivan UCaaS report, please click here.

The post The UCaaS Value Proposition appeared first on Sangoma.

November 08, 2019

Victor Seva provisioning spa303 with docker
Let's start again posting something just to be able to remember how I did it in the future ðŸ˜…

docker image from jumanjiman/tftp-hpa

download and unzip firmware

docker run -t --rm -p 69:69/udp -v $(pwd):/tftpboot/spa/:ro jumanjiman/tftp-hpa

http://<phone_ip>/admin/upgrade?tftp://<ip>/spa/<firmware>.bin
Digium What to Know about the ISDN Switch Off
Often, one technology has to be retired to make way for newer, more efficient technology. Wooden ships that relied solely on wind and tides gave way to steel ships with powerful onboard engines and sophisticated geopositioning technology, cutting ocean passage times dramatically. In the same way, telecommunications technology has advanced, and telecom service providers worldwide have begun the process of retiring the older technologies and infrastructures. The public switched telephone network was upgraded to the integrated services digital network (ISDN), which now faces retirement to make way for more advanced IP communications networks.

What is the ISDN?

In the late 1980s, the public switched telephone network (PSTN) received a massive upgrade. Implementing new digital signaling protocols, such as Basic Rate Interface (BRI) and Primary Rate Interface (PRI), allowed the traditional circuits of the PSTN to transport voice services digitally as packets of data.

Opening the door for a number of value-added services from service providers, the new ISDN was born and enjoyed widespread adoption across Europe, Australia, and parts of Asia.

ISDN Switch Off

This technology was revolutionary and defined twentieth century communications. But as the world has grown comfortably into the twenty-first century, these technologies now represent an expensive liability as the aging network struggles to keep up with the demands of the modern world.

Thus, nearly all service providers have announced dates in the 2020s as the end of life for the ISDN and PSTN.

British Telecom (BT), for example, will cease supplying in 2020, with a full migration to digital voice services by 2025.This move comprises a part of their cost transformation program. High maintenance legacy telecommunications infrastructure is not sustainable. Retiring the older technology opens up capital for investment in next generation IP networks that will not only be more cost effective but will provide more flexible services to meet the increasingly demanding business needs of the future.

While this does present massive potential for growth and progress, the ISDN switch off affects over two million businesses in the United Kingdom alone, with millions more being affected in the coming years as European and Asian service providers also migrate toward IP networks and cease ISDN service.

What is Sangoma’s Solution?

Understandably, retiring the ISDN leaves customers with the challenge of reviewing their options before the network switch off. Luckily for these businesses, Sangoma has been preparing for this situation for years, developing a portfolio of products designed to ease the transition from PSTN and ISDN to full Voice over IP (VoIP) and Unified Communications (UC) service.

In fact, Sangoma’s solutions allow businesses to migrate at their own pace without getting left behind and without service.

Businesses ready for a major communications overhaul will find Sangoma’s on-premise and cloud hosted UC business phone systems the perfect full service solution with hardware, phones, accessories, and services like fax and SIP trunking service available from the same vendor.

Those that need more time to transition their network or that simply want to get a little more life out of their existing PBX solution will find in Sangoma’s variety of VoIP gateways and other offerings the right hardware and services to connect their existing equipment to the IP network.

Regardless of the pace at which a business is seeking to migrate, Sangoma is confident they will find switching to VoIP advantageous not only in its long-term cost effectiveness but also in productivity that can be gained by incorporating Unified Communications into the business workflow.

The post What to Know about the ISDN Switch Off appeared first on Sangoma.

November 05, 2019

Kamailio New Module: Kafka
Vicente Hernando from sonoc.io has contributed a new module to Kamailio named kafka – its documentation is available at:
- https://kamailio.org/docs/modules/devel/modules/kafka.html
The module can be used to send messages to a Kafka server – Apache Kafka is an open-source stream-processing software platform developed by LinkedIn and donated to the Apache Software Foundation. The project aims to provide a unified, high-throughput, low-latency platform for handling real-time data feeds and can connect to external systems (for data import/export).

Thanks for flying Kamailio!
Digium On Purchasing VoIP Innovations

As expected, I’ve had a few questions about why we purchased VoIP Innovations.

One of the most obvious reasons is the addition of revenue (and recurring revenue at that) and healthy EBITDA. You can read the press release to see those kinds of details.

Strategically, adding VoIP Innovations supplements Sangoma’s long term growth and direction as a Communications as a Service company – we provide UC, Contact Center, SIP trunking, and Device all as a Service today. This deal enhances our SIP Trunking and CPaaS “as a service” offerings. While we will still obviously continue to sell and invest in hardware such as UC/PBX on-prem, gateways, SBCs and phones, etc., the industry is evolving towards Cloud, and, thus, Sangoma needs to continue to evolve in this direction. VoIP Innovations helps us in this continuous evolution.

One of the biggest questions I’ve received is related to why we are going down a service provider path, given most of VoIP Innovations revenue comes from their wholesale carrier services. Well, there are two reasons.

First of all, with Cloud, the demarcation line between enterprise and service provider is blurred. For instance, Sangoma itself is a service provider because we offer cloud services to business users. So are we in the enterprise business or service provider business? Where is the line? The customers of the VI wholesale carrier services tend to be MSPs and large enterprises who also need UC solutions. And, as I just wrote, we can deliver that to them. So we see channel synergies.

And, if you go back to the “traditional” definition of service provider, it is not like Sangoma is NOT in the service provider business. We sell to quite a few service providers, and when the Dialogic gateways came over in early 2018, Sangoma also picked up quite a few wholesale carrier customers and other service providers. So we know service providers, and there is also synergy with that part of our business and VoIP Innovations.

Finally, the CPaaS development platform APIdaze will enable additional applications to be written (by us and by third parties) and paired with Sangoma solutions. We are excited about that opportunity going forward.

In summary, we see revenue growth from the additional selling opportunities each side obtains by bringing the two companies being together.

The post On Purchasing VoIP Innovations appeared first on Sangoma.

October 31, 2019

Digium Creepy Conferencing Conundrums Solved with Switchvox Conferencing Widget
We’ve all been there, the conference call from hell. Where someone is not muted and you hear their dog or kids in the background and you can’t figure out who it is because half of the attendees are working remote that day. The guy who always arrives late and interrupts the person speaking with the entrance “beep” of shame, or the exact opposite of that where someone bails out of the call because “someone just walked in”, but in reality they just lost interest. After that someone always asks, “Who just left?” followed by an awkward chorus of “I’m still here” from all the remaining participants. Finally, my favorite conferencing conundrum, someone puts the entire conference call on hold and now the speaker has to shout over the hold music in order for everyone to hear. I am sure that Mozart and Beethoven are rolling over in their graves right now knowing their best symphonies are being shouted over by passive aggressive business people, all secretly dispising that inconsiderate coworker.

Now that you are sitting there with that knotty, lump of annoyance and dread in your stomach, let me ease your troubles by saying there is a way to solve all of those annoyances with Switchvox’s new conferencing widget. Yes, it’s true, you can see everything. The participants as they leave and enter the conference call. A speaker icon next to the individuals who have any audio coming from their end, whether they are speaking or there is background noise that is loud enough to be picked up by the phone. You can join your conference bridge from you switchboard or Sangoma D-series phone with one click of the mouse or button press and hang up. No more dialing in and then entering your own conference pin as if you are one of the attendees.

(In best TV salesperson’s voice) But that’s not all! You can mute all attendees with one click or button press, or you can mute individuals depending on the situation. So, when that one person has scary noises coming from the background, it will be illustrated by the speaker icon and you can mute that specific person, or better yet, you can kick them from the call entirely! (Mwa-Ha-Ha) Finally, you can end the conference with a click or button press and everyone will be removed from the bridge.

It’s worth mentioning that this conferencing widget is available to every user on your Switchvox system at no extra cost. Grant admin privileges to specific co-workers, customize the music on hold, or make it to wear participants cannot talk until an admin is present. Scared to call the IT team and ask them to set this up for you? Fret no more, since this is all set up in your user portal yourself. As long as you are on Switchvox version 7.1, you will see the new conferencing widget appear in your switchboard edit menu and on your D-series phone. Even if you have not had the chance to upgrade, there are still advanced conferencing features silently waiting for you just around the corner in your user portal.

Schedule a demo with our one of our Account Executives and see the conferencing widget live! I promise we don’t bite, but we do reek of Halloween puns. Ah well, tis the season! Happy Conferencing!

The post Creepy Conferencing Conundrums Solved with Switchvox Conferencing Widget appeared first on Sangoma.

October 29, 2019

Daniel Pocock FOSDEM 2020 Real-Time Communications Call for Participation
FOSDEM - Real Time Communications devroom CfP

Overview

FOSDEM is one of the world’s premier meetings of free software developers, with over five thousand people attending each year. FOSDEM 2020 takes place 1-2 February 2020 in Brussels, Belgium.

This document contains information about:
- Real-Time Communications developer room (devroom) and lounge
- speaking opportunities
- volunteering in the devroom and lounge
- social events (the legendary FOSDEM Beer Night and Saturday night dinners provide endless networking opportunities)
- the Planet aggregation sites for RTC blogs
NEW: Save yourself entering Free-RTC events and CFP deadlines into your calendar and task list, follow our iCalendar feed: https://freertc.org/events.ics

Call for participation - Real Time Communications (RTC)

The Real-Time devroom and Real-Time lounge are about all things involving real-time communication, including: XMPP, SIP, WebRTC, telephony, mobile VoIP, codecs, peer-to-peer, privacy and encryption.

We are looking for speakers for the devroom and volunteers and participants for the tables in the Real-Time lounge.

The devroom is only on Sunday, 2nd of February 2020. The lounge will be present for both days.

To discuss the devroom and lounge, please join the Free-RTC mailing list.

Speaking opportunities

Note: if you used FOSDEM Pentabarf before, please use the same account/username

Real-Time Communications devroom: deadline 23:59 UTC on 15th of December. Please use the Pentabarf system to submit a talk proposal for the devroom. On the “General” tab, please look for the “Track” option and choose “Real Time Communications devroom”.

Other devrooms and lightning talks: some speakers may find their topic is in the scope of more than one devroom. It is encouraged to apply to more than one devroom and also consider proposing a lightning talk, but please be kind enough to tell us if you do this by filling out the notes in the form. Here you can find the full list of devrooms and here you can apply for a lightning talk.

First-time speaking?

FOSDEM devrooms are a welcoming environment for people who have never given a talk before. Please feel free to contact the devroom administrators personally if you would like to ask any questions about it.

Submission guidelines

The Pentabarf system will ask for many of the essential details. Please remember to re-use your account from previous years if you have one.

In the “Submission notes”, please tell us about:
- The purpose of your talk
- Any other talk applications (devrooms, lightning talks, main track)
- Availability constraints and special needs
You can use HTML and links in your bio, abstract and description.

If you maintain a blog, please consider providing us with the URL of a feed with posts tagged for your RTC-related work.

We will be looking for relevance to the conference and devroom themes, presentations aimed at developers of free and open source software about RTC-related topics.

Please feel free to suggest a duration between 20 minutes and 55 minutes but note that the final decision on talk durations will be made by the devroom administrators based on the number of received proposals. As the two previous devrooms have been combined into one, we may decide to give shorter slots than in previous years so that more speakers can participate.

Please note FOSDEM aims to record and live-stream all talks. The CC-BY license is used.

Volunteers needed

To make the devroom and lounge run successfully, we are looking for volunteers:
- FOSDEM provides video recording equipment and live streaming, volunteers are needed to assist in this
- Organizing one or more restaurant bookings (dependending upon number of participants) for the evening of Saturday, 1 February
- Participation in the Real-Time lounge
- Circulating this Call for Participation to other mailing lists
Social events and dinners

The traditional FOSDEM beer night occurs on Friday, 31st of January.

On Saturday night, there are usually dinners associated with each of the devrooms. Most restaurants in Brussels are not so large so these dinners have space constraints and reservations are essential. Please subscribe to the Free-RTC mailing list for further details about the Saturday night dinner options and how you can register for a seat.

Related events around FOSDEM

As per usual, the XMPP Summit is happening ahead of FOSDEM. This time it will take place on the 30th and 31st of January also in Brussels. All details are available on the summit website.

Spread the word and discuss

If you know of any mailing lists where this CfP would be relevant, please forward this document. If this devroom excites you, please blog or microblog about it, especially if you are submitting a talk.

If you regularly blog about RTC topics, please send details about your blog to the planet site administrators:
- All projects https://planet.freertc.org planet@freertc.org
- XMPP https://planet.jabber.org ralphm@ik.nu
- SIP https://planet.sip5060.net planet@sip5060.net
  - (Español) https://planet.sip5060.net/es/ planet@sip5060.net
Please also link to the Planet sites from your own blog or web site as this helps everybody in the free real-time communications community.

Contact

For any private queries, contact us directly using the address fosdem-rtc-admin@freertc.org and for any other queries please ask on the Free-RTC mailing list.

The devroom administration team:
- Saúl Ibarra Corretgé s@saghul.net
- Ralph Meijer ralphm@ik.nu
- Daniel-Constantin Mierla miconda@gmail.com
- Daniel Pocock daniel@pocock.pro
- Guus der Kinderen guus.der.kinderen@gmail.com
Kamailio Fosdem 2020 Call For Presentations
The next FOSDEM edition (February 1-2, 2020) is hosting again a devroom for Real Time Communications.

You can see more details about the announcement at:
- https://lists.kamailio.org/pipermail/sr-users/2019-October/107165.html
If you are interested to present on topics related to open source RTC, consider to submit a proposal via Pentabarf portal offered by FOSDEM organizers:
- https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM20/
In Pentabarf system, on the “General” tab, look for the “Track” option and choose “Real Time Communications devroom”. The deadline is 23:59 UTC on the 15th of December, 2019.
Digium At AstriCon Now…

Hello Everyone – AstriCon 2019 has started! We have well over 300 people here that just packed the introductory remarks from Bill Wignall and the keynote from Alan Quayle, which was also livestreamed.

Alan just did a terrific keynote about why the Asterisk and open source community is important for the communications industry in general because it has the broadest set of applications, and you can better control your own destiny. That’s why you don’t have to be beholden to the “big guys” who control the analysts for UC solutions. So AstriCon is off to a great start!

Yesterday, DevCon occurred, and, while I didn’t attend, from all accounts, it was successful.

I’m looking forward to talking with everyone here, and like I said, it’s off to a great start. Now off to the tracks…

The post At AstriCon Now… appeared first on Sangoma.

October 28, 2019

Kamailio Using Kamailio as SBC for Microsoft Teams
Henning Westerholt, one of the project’s core developers, published a tutorial on how to use Kamailio as SBC (Session Border Controller) for Microsoft Teams. The blog post can be found at:
- https://skalatan.de/blog/kamailio-sbc-teams
In this way you can extend the MS Teams systems with the features that Kamailio provides, especially for SIP trunking, interconnecting with VoIP providers or connecting external SIP endpoints.

October 22, 2019

Digium How is Asterisk Different from FreePBX?
Astricon 2019 is next week. And while there will certainly be a lot of discussion about Asterisk, there will also be some discussion about FreePBX. And sometimes I get questions about the differences.

Let’s go through the reasons people ask this question in the first place. Number one, both are free, open source, downloadable communications software. The two leading ones in the world in fact. And by now the 25 Millionth download of Asterisk has occured! That’s a lot. And both are associated with PBXs. But what’s the actual difference?

Asterisk is, in fact, a communications toolkit. Not a ready-to-go PBX. It has a lot of functionality that someone needs to craft into something. That something most often happens to be a PBX, but it doesn’t have to be a PBX. It can be contact center software, an automated call distributor, a voicemail system, a video mail system, an IP-PBX, or so much more. Someone could even add their own IoT hooks to it to turn it into some other kind of communication system. (By the way, we’ll be demoing something like that on FreePBX so come see it.)

FreePBX, as per the definition from FreePBX.org, is “a web-based open source GUI (graphical user interface) that controls and manages Asterisk.” So it’s a GUI built on top of Asterisk that makes it easier to deploy a PBX from that Asterisk core. In the graphic above, it’s one of the items that would appear in the blue box. It’s a complete IP-PBX.

So they are two separate open-source projects. Sangoma will continue to support both projects. If you want to hear more, please attend Astricon next week in Atlanta.

The post How is Asterisk Different from FreePBX? appeared first on Sangoma.

October 17, 2019

Kamailio Kamailio v5.3.0 Released
October 17, 2019: Kamailio v5.3.0 is out – a new major release, bringing new features and improvements added during nine months of development and about two months of testing.

In short, this major release brings 6 new modules and enhancements to more than 80 existing modules, plus components of the core and internal libraries as well as optimizations for embedded interpreters (KEMI framework). Detailed release notes are available at:
- https://www.kamailio.org/w/kamailio-v5-3-0-release-notes/
This is the fourth major release in the series of 5.x.y versions. Besides adding plenty of new features, a lot of development was directed to add more flexibility to run on containerised deployments, next generation emergency services, bring new features to load balancer, dialog tracking or remote registrations and to make available more functions to KEMI interface.

Enjoy SIP routing in a secure, flexible and easier way with Kamailio v5.3.0!

Thank you for flying Kamailio and looking forward to meeting you at Kamailio World Conference 2020!

October 15, 2019

Digium What is the Impact of the RingCentral & Avaya Partnership?
I’ve had a few people ask me what does the RingCentral and Avaya partnership mean? I have to say, my first reaction was that the messaging at Enterprise Connect 2020 is going to be over the top. It was already over the top from RingCentral, but now it’s really going to be totally out of control. Anyway, it means quite a bit financially to both companies and if you want to see what those impacts are, there are quite a few articles out there on that already.

But the questions to me are really about the customer who is considering a UC or PBX solution. And from that perspective, what it really means, like many others have written, is that Avaya hasn’t really executed on its cloud strategy, and this is a way for it to get there.

However, if I’m an Avaya customer looking to upgrade to a new system or a prospect looking to buy now or soon, it likely means confusion. What if you don’t know what you want to do– on-prem or cloud –and you really just want to know about the pros and cons of each and which is best for you. Well, then you’re going to hear two different messages, probably from two different teams. You’re going to have to weigh the pros and cons of not only that but also two vastly different products.

It’s going to be hard to know who to listen to and trust.

So if you are considering a new UC system and you don’t know what is best for you, you are going to look around now. I’d say come to Sangoma. Of course I’d say that, right? But seriously, we happily sell both on-prem and cloud. And because the system is the same code base, it looks and acts the same whether on-prem and cloud. We’d be happy to go through what is best for you. And we know you’d be thrilled with our UC system. Give us a call or come visit and talk to us at AstriCon at the end of October in Atlanta.

The post What is the Impact of the RingCentral & Avaya Partnership? appeared first on Sangoma.

October 14, 2019

Kamailio Kamailio On FLOSS Weekly – Oct 16, 2019
Fred Posner is the guest of FLOSS Weekly this week on Wednesday (October 16, 2019) to discuss about Kamailio SIP Server project.

You can tune in live and see how the session goes – it happens at 9:30am Pacific Time (-7 UTC) / 16:30 UTC. The host of the show is Randal L. Schwartz.

See more details at:
- https://twit.tv/shows/floss-weekly
UPDATE: the recorded video of the session is available at:
- https://twit.tv/shows/floss-weekly/episodes/551
Thanks for flying Kamailio!
TADHack TADHack Global 2019 Winners

Its a wrap for TADHack Global 2019, we’ll announced all the location and global 2019 winners in this weblog.

Thank you to everyone taking part in TADHack Global 2019. You’re part of something special, talent and innovation are everywhere! We hope taking part in TADHack helps make a difference in your life.

Below is the video and presentation were we announced all the location and global 2019 winners. Its truly amazing what the innovative talent around the world can do with the sponsors’ technologies. Congratulations to all the teams.

Thanks to our global sponsors for making TADHack possible: Telesign (Mobile Identity, Trust), Simwood (Programmable Telecoms, Fraud Protection), and VoIP Innovations (Programmable Telecoms).

And thanks to all our local sponsors and supporters across the many locations: MTN, Inovo, IIT RTC Labs, Cluster Creatic, Aplisay, hSenid Mobile, IdeaLondon , Automat Berlin, Vio Networks, KPN API Store, and Speakup NL.

Global Winners

Simwood’s Global Winners

6789cat.com by Peter Gillis and Markus Toepfer

6789cat.com is a service that allows you create a virtual number and use it as privacy-shield for two-way communication. We’re a Simwood hack covering the few missing parts with Apidaze. $1000 global prize.

#BlackPenta by Tselane Bolofo, Abraham Mokaba, and George Links. Great use of Simwood WebRTC: $100 Global Prize

WhoCallsMe by Steve Goodwin, Lily Madar. Inbound call reputation scoring and steering: $400 global prize.

Simwood Node Library by Steve Goodwin, Lily Madar. Wrapping the Simwood API in a node Library: $100 global prize.

SimKube by Matt Williams, Yin Yee Williams. Scalable Simwood services implementation using Kubernetes: $400 global prize .

TeleSign’s Global Winners

Inbus by Andjelka Milovanovic, Stefan Kapunac, Luka Milosevic. InBus automatically notifies users on someone’s distance or time needed to reach a destination, using TeleSign SMS API. Telesign Global Prize of $1000.

Universal help network by Brayan Mamian, Jonathan Ibarra, Cristian Gòmez, Tania Cañizares. Is a network that connects users and specialists to solve their needs on information or specialized advice. Used for users to request information needs and, on the other hand, specialists who take the information request and resolve it, the requests can be complemented through multimedia resources. example: a user consults: “”my puppy got sick and has the following symptoms …”” and the specialist takes the request and answers about possible diagnoses”. Telesign Global Prize of $600.

Fighting Fantasy by Steve Goodwin. Interactive fiction by SMS. Telesign Global Prize of $400.

VoIP Innovations Global Winners

1st Place ($1000) – Automaton by Viacheslav Oleinik: Used VI voice APIs to trigger an acceptance call back to the user once everything has been completed.

20% of tourists in Amsterdam come from outside the Shenghen zone and it’s very expensive for them to use roaming data! If they want to use a service based on QR code they can’t or it’s expensive. Thanks to the NFC solution of Auotmaton, the connection and the payment goes via the connected device itself through the suppliers’ infrastructure and users don’t have to be to use connected devices (bike rental, connected steps,..). By using VOIP Innovations, the supplier makes a confirmation call to users which also doesn’t cost anything for the user.

2nd Place ($600) – Utenz by Vishal Chandrasekaran, Ryan Zheng, Pavan Pandurangi, Jihoon Park: Used VI SMS as their main communications feature to allow users to communicate with each other to talk about healthy eating. Utenz is a dieting and food-tracking app that promotes healthy living, eating, an connection.

3rd Place ($400)– TechBuddy by Will Brickner, Dechen Tsechen: Used VI voice APIs exclusively to connect geniuses with each other. TechBuddy allows geniuses to talk to each other for free through a simple phone call. It matches people based on their skill level.

Location Winners

Belgrade Winners

Here is the Belgrade playlist of all the pitches.

Inbus by Andjelka Milovanovic, Stefan Kapunac, Luka Milosevic. InBus automatically notifies users on someone’s distance or time needed to reach a destination, using TeleSign SMS API. 1st place, 50,000 RSD (Serbian dinars)

SafeWalk by Aleksa Tonic, Stefan Mitrovic, Andjela Loncarski, Pavle Radoman. Safety of kids or elderly. Their app is installed on a phone and on regular intervals asks user to confirm they’re safe. If they fail to do so, SMS with current location is sent to pre-set “safe” number.
2nd place, 30,000 RSD (Serbian dinars).

Reminder++ by Kristina Markovic, Filip Minic, Filip Carevic, Mladen Jugovic. A list of events is scraped from websites, such as shows, sports events etc. Then, users can subscribe to these events. The platform notifies users about any changes in subscribed events, via sms. 3rd place 20,000 RSD.

Chicago Winners

Here is the Chicago playlist of all the pitches.

Scamdrop by Poshak Saran, Guru Moorthy, Noel, Madly, Rebecca, Mike, Urii, Kim. A service catered towards businesses with a large call volume to help grow their business in an efficient and people friendly manner while actively helping prevent fraudulent calls on a daily basis.Won the TADHack Chicago location prize of $500.

Utenz by Vishal Chandrasekaran, Ryan Zheng, Pavan Pandurangi, Jihoon Park. Dieting and food-tracking app that promotes healthy living, eating, an connection. Won the hSenid Mobile prize of $500.

Johannesburg Winners

<playlist coming soon>

London Winners

Here is the London playlist of all the pitches.

eFrancesco by Istvan Hoffer, Matyas Juhasz. Event organization assistant with analytics: joint third prize $100.

RabbitDesk.ai by Dominic Norton,Supriya Rai, Immanual Baskaran. Recruitment Analytics: joint third prize $100 .

Time journey by Joe Reeve, Waverley Chmura, Nadia Leonova, Lucie Kaffe. Telling a story over elapsed time: joint second prize $200.

WhoCallsMe by Steve Goodwin, Lily Madar. Inbound call reputation scoring and steering: joint second prize $200 .

SimKube by Matt Williams, Yin Yee Williams. Scalable Simwoods services implementation using Kubernetes: first prize $400.

The Netherlands Winners

Here is the The Netherlands playlist of all the pitches.

AUTOMATON by Viacheslav Oleinik. 20% of tourists in Amsterdam come from outside the shenghen zone and it’s very expensive for them to use roaming data! If they want to use a service based on QR code they can’t or it’s expensive. Thanks to the NFC solution of Auotmaton, the connection and the payment goes via the connected device itself through the suppliers’infrastructure and users don’t ahve t be to use connected vdevises (bike rental, connected steps,..). By using VOIP Innovations, the supplier makes a confirmation call to users which also doesn’t cost anything for the user. 1st prize $300.

SustainBin by Diana Zubchenko. Problem is that people keep on throwing regular garbage in clothing garbage container. municipalities in the netherlands spend a lot of energy, time and budget to sort clothing garbage again befind recycling. With connected smart bins, the bin opens when a user gets closer to the smart bin – after he / she created an account previously. Therefore no mistake can be made and people are actively using and recognizing the clothing bin. Also, thanks to an incentive program and gamification, user are stimulated to use these bins more often! 2nd prize $200.

Chatplatform by Milo Arimit Bhattacharya. By creating a chat platform and connecting users per topic of interest, connected people will solve their loneliness. Users will be incented for long chats with a sticker reward program. Also, the chat platform can be reused by organisations dealing with people facing loneliness (elderly people, people in reinsertion, suicide hotline,..). API Store prize (€1.000 credits in the KPN API Store to further develop the project)

Popayán Winners

Here is the Popayán playlist of all the pitches.

Helpme by Daniel Andrés Alean Mera, Cristhian Alejandro Cañar Muñoz, David Argote, Jhonatan Mariaca, and Edwin Hair Hidalgo. Help the homeless to improve the quality of life, through a donation network of people and foundations. The app publishes the photo and location of the homeless with a short story so that they can help them. 1st place: 500 USD.

Id_Park by Sebastian Caldon, Valentina vásquez, Juan Benavides,
James Tumbaqui Toro. They’re solving parking slot problem, using location to find the available spots and trusteable. The quotas separation is done through payment methods. 2nd place: 300 USD.

Universal help network by Brayan Mamian, Jonathan Ibarra, Cristian Gòmez, Tania Cañizares. Is a network that connects users and specialists to solve their needs on information or specialized advice. Used for users to request information needs and, on the other hand, specialists who take the information request and resolve it, the requests can be complemented through multimedia resources. example: a user consults: “”my puppy got sick and has the following symptoms …”” and the specialist takes the request and answers about possible diagnoses”. 3rd place: 200 USD.

The post TADHack Global 2019 Winners appeared first on Blog @ TADHack - Telecom Application Developer Hackathon.

October 13, 2019

TADHack Quick Summary of TADHack Global Day 1

Thank you to everyone taking part in TADHack Global 2019. You’re part of something special; talent and innovation is everywhere! We hope taking part in TADHack makes a difference in your life. With TADHack Global 2019 Day 1 coming to a close, here are some highlights created over the day.

Thanks to our global sponsors for making TADHack possible: Telesign (Mobile Identity, Trust), Simwood (Programmable Telecoms, Fraud Protection), and VoIP Innovations (Programmable Telecoms).

And thanks to all our local sponsors and supporters across the many locations: MTN, IIT RTC Labs, Cluster Creatic, Aplisay, hSenid Mobile, IdeaLondon , Automat Berlin, Vio Networks, KPN API Store, and Speakup NL.

TADHack Johannesburg and Popayan were massive, with Johannesburg getting close to 250 people, an amazing result, well done Elisja and team. All locations were larger than last year, with Belgrade achieving the hardest thing; doing its first TADHack – well done Milovan and all the Telesign Belgrade team. Initial estimated are about 500 people across the locations, and we have 110 people registered for remote entries. We’ll know by Sunday afternoon how many remote entries are received.

TADHack Chicago this year is running at the Kaplan Institute, judged by ArchDaily as one of 23 buildings you shouldn’t miss in Chicago! Itâ€™s an impressive facility, thank you Illinois Tech, Prof Carol Davids and her team for making TADHack Chicago possible.

The live stream and photos coming from TADHack Johannesburg are impressive, its the live stream most locations are watching as it also scrolls through the live streams of other locations as well. Inti, my video person, is very impressed and a little but jealous of what you’ve achieved on your live stream Below is a picture of TADHack Johannesburg with the TADHack Belgrade live stream playing.

Below are the TADHack Global Day 1 live streams, as you can see we’re having lots of fun learning and creating. And here is the playlist of all the TADHack Global 2019 live streams, so you can watch live on Day 2.

Belgrade Day 1 Live Stream

Berlin Day 1 Live Stream

Chicago Day 1 Live Stream

Johannesburg Day 1 Live Stream

London (we’re working on it)

The Netherlands Day 1 Live Stream and a timelapse of the live stream

Popayan Day 1 Live Stream

The post Quick Summary of TADHack Global Day 1 appeared first on Blog @ TADHack - Telecom Application Developer Hackathon.

October 10, 2019

Kamailio Kamailio v5.2.5 Released
Kamailio SIP Server v5.2.5 stable is out – a minor release including fixes in code and documentation since v5.2.4. The configuration file and database schema compatibility is preserved, which means you don’t have to change anything to update.

Kamailio^® v5.2.5 is based on the latest source code of GIT branch 5.2 and it represents the latest stable version. We recommend those running previous 5.2.x or older versions to upgrade. There is no change that has to be done to configuration file or database structure comparing with the previous releases of the v5.2 branch.

Resources for Kamailio version 5.2.5

Source tarballs are available at:
- https://www.kamailio.org/pub/kamailio/5.2.5/src/
Detailed changelog:
- https://www.kamailio.org/pub/kamailio/5.2.5/ChangeLog
Download via GIT:
```
 # git clone https://github.com/kamailio/kamailio kamailio
 # cd kamailio
 # git checkout -b 5.2 origin/5.2
```
Relevant notes, binaries and packages will be uploaded at:
- https://www.kamailio.org/pub/kamailio/5.2.5/
Modules’ documentation:
- https://www.kamailio.org/docs/modules/5.2.x/
What is new in 5.2.x release series is summarized in the announcement of v5.2.0:
- https://www.kamailio.org/w/kamailio-v5-2-0-release-notes/
Thanks for flying Kamailio!

October 09, 2019

Daniel Pocock What does the FSF censor during the Richard Stallman lynching?
A recent blog looks at how to work around censorship in mailing lists, especially the Free Software Foundation. After all, the Free Software Foundation tells us that they use the word Free as in Speech, rather than Free as in Beer.

Here is an example of an email censored by the FSF. There is no obvious way this email violates the GNU Kind Communications Guidelines or any other Code of Conduct.
```
Subject: Re: Nominate RMS for FSF award...
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2019 00:07:30 +0200
From: Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro>
Reply-To: libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org
To: libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org


Personally, I feel this may not quite be correct although it is interesting.

By nominating him for the FSF award, you are saying that you need the
judges to confirm his status.  You don't need that at all.

RMS doesn't need to be nominated for or voted for to be considered a
winner of this award.  He is the founder of the organization, it was his
idea from the outset and that means he was the winner anyway before
there was an award.

Nonetheless, there are things that can be done to approximate the idea:

At a major event, perhaps LibrePlanet, ensure there is a significant
section of the program dedicated to thanking RMS for his FSF work,
bigger than the award ceremony because RMS is bigger than that.

Arrange for other organizations to recognize him for his service in
different ways, whether it is with awards, honorary titles or something
similar.
```
Why do the FSF staff censor an email like this supporting the founder of their organization and the founder of the Free Software movement?

Has the FSF become another Fake Community?

Since raising the issue of censorship in FSF, I received a number of emails from people who feel their own communications have been censored. It looks like censorship is being used for multiple reasons:
- To censor communications about the online lynching of Richard Stallman and hide the voices supporting him
- To hide the questions about former FSF employee Molly de Blanc and the allegations that a undisclosed romantic affair with the leader of Debian was a serious conflict of interest when Debian endorsed her for the OSI board presidency.
- To hide questions about donations from Google that coincide with infighting in other organizations ($300,000 to Debian before the Debian Christmas lynchings, â‚¬75,000 to FSFE when they abolished community representatives). How much does FSF receive from Google, can they promote Freedom without answering that question?
In another recent donation scandal, MIT Media Lab staff systematically hid donations from convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, knowing that some other staff and donors would be outraged. Likewise, Free Software organizations know that some of their volunteers are uncomfortable with Google's donations and influence. Just as certain MIT staff hid the funds from Epstein, Free software organizations are hiding the donations from Google. Censorship is one of the tools they use to achieve this deception.

October 08, 2019

Digium The Importance of Customer Satisfaction with Your SIP Trunking Service
Customer satisfaction (CSAT) is a metric that is always important, and one that Sangoma tracks closely. Many businesses, like us, know that this is really what keeps the business running.

One category we especially track is satisfaction with our SIP trunking services as many of our customers use our SIP trunking service when they deploy one of our UC systems or FreePBX. A poor SIP trunk experience would also mean a poor UC or phone system experience. They more than go hand and hand.

That’s why we were very happy to see that our SIP trunking service was rated the highest in terms of customer satisfaction from small businesses. While we knew we were receiving good CSAT scores, it is great to see this verified by a third party who did significant research.

But don’t take my word for it, read more about it here.

The post The Importance of Customer Satisfaction with Your SIP Trunking Service appeared first on Sangoma.
Kamailio Kamailio Development Milestone – 30 000 Commits
The first commit with the code for Kamailio was done on the 3rd of September, 2001. A bit more than 18 years of continuous development, the project marked the milestone of 30000 commits only in the git master branch. Victor Seva already gave the start of the new series of commits, pushing the 30001th.

The project is currently in an highly active development phase, a bunch of events being scheduled for the near future:
- release of v5.2.5 is planned for Thursday, October 10, 2019 – this is a maintenance release of latest stable branch
- release of v5.3.0 is planned for Thursday, October 17, 2019 – this is a a new major release, opening the 5.3.x series
- the yearly Kamailio Development Meeting takes place again in Dusseldorf, during November 14-15, 2019, hosted by Sipgate. You can join as well if you want to spend two days of interesting discussions and coding with other Kamailio developers.
Thanks for flying Kamailio!

October 04, 2019

Kamailio Development Is Open For Future Release Of v5.4.x Series
With the creation of branch 5.3, the master branch is again open for adding new features, to be part of future release series v5.4.x.

Based on the workflow used during the past years, the next future release v5.4.0 should be out after another 8-10 months of development, plus 1-2 months of testing, so sometime in close to the end of spring 2020 or afterwards.

Thanks for flying Kamailio!

October 03, 2019

Kamailio Git Branch 5.3 Has Been Created
The Git branch 5.3 has been created, to be used for releasing v5.3.x series.

To check out this branch, the following commands can be used:
```
git clone https://github.com/kamailio/kamailio kamailio-5.3
cd kamailio-5.3
git checkout -b 5.3 origin/5.3
```
Pushing commits in this branch:
```
git push origin 5.3:5.3
```
Note that 5.3 is an official stable branch, so only bug fixes, missing kemi exports (to be discussed on sr-dev in case of ambiguity) or improvements to documentation or helper tools will be pushed to this branch.

In few weeks, the first release from branch 5.3 will be out, respectively Kamailio v5.3.0.

Thanks for flying Kamailio!

October 02, 2019

FreeSWITCH FreeSWITCH Codebase now on GitHub!
SignalWire, Inc., the original geeks of software-defined telecom and primary sponsors of the FreeSWITCH open-source platform, announced today that the project’s code is now officially hosted on SignalWire’s Github repository. This announcement coincides with the 15th anniversary of the project, now widely regarded as the de facto software package for embedding communications capabilities within computer [...]

The post FreeSWITCH Codebase now on GitHub! appeared first on FreeSWITCH.

October 01, 2019

Digium The End of Voicemail?
The concept of the end of voicemail is not new and has been around for years. I read a blog recently about “the millennials” killing all kinds of stuff, including doorbells (of all things!) and voicemail. Now let’s not go blaming everything on millennials. I don’t think millennials killed voice mail.

Voicemail is still important for customer-facing parts of a business. While there are other communication methods, voice and thus voicemail for this part of a business is still important.

So voicemail has not been killed. But it has declined for sure, and it’s really other technology that did this, not a millennial. Better technology. Better technology in the way of faster and more efficient communication methods.

Let’s examine why I don’t use voicemail nearly as much anymore. I think, in this respect, I am typical:
1. People can contact me using email, and that’s easier for me to get to and respond to them, remotely anyway.
2. People can contact me using our instant message system. Even if I’m in a meeting or on a conference call and can’t “talk”, I can respond to an instant message.
3. I’ve noticed now that even if I’m not online, and the “green dot” isn’t on, people send me a note to respond to this way. Kind of like a voicemail except on instant message. So once I come online, then I can respond. Again, easier and faster than a voicemail.
4. Text messaging. Definitely this is taking off for my colleagues at work. This is when I know it’s important. Again, can handle this on a conference call or when in a meeting.
5. Direct messages to my Twitter account. I got a few of these last week, for example.
So, for sure, it’s declined, led by technology. But it’s not dead, and it’s critical for customer-facing parts of the business.

The post The End of Voicemail? appeared first on Sangoma.

September 27, 2019

TADHack Location Focus: TADHack Popayán
First, I must thank Fernando Mendioroz for introducing me to the amazing Cluster CreaTIC team based in Popayán, Colombia. The Cluster CreaTIC Technology Development Center promotes and strengthens technology-based entrepreneurship in the department of Cauca. This will be their 3rd year leading TADHack Popayán.

Popayán is the capital of the Colombian department of Cauca. It is located in southwestern Colombia between the Western Mountain Range and Central Mountain Range. It has a population of 258,653 people, is located 1760 meters above sea level, and its typical daily temperature varies only between 55-75F (13-24C) all year round!

The town is well-known for its colonial architecture and its contributions to Colombian cultural and political life. It is also known as the “white city” due to the color of most of the colonial buildings in the city center, as you can see in the picture above.

TADHack Popayán is now in its 3rd year. You can see all the hacks from 2017 and 2018 in these playlists, and some of the photos in the picture below. Popayán has produced global winners in both of its previous years, with impressive hacks that received special commendation from the global sponsors. TADHack Popayán is a great example of how high tech skills and innovative talent are everywhere, not just in the Bay Area.

In June this year Cluster Creatic ran SuperHack. The competition began in February with a call to schools across Cauca. 1,200 children and adolescents were trained in science, technology and innovation topics. From which the 96 children and adolescents between the ages of 11-17 were selected (24 teams of 4 members each) to represent their schools at SuperHack. You can read more on the Cluster CreaTIC weblog. We’re hoping some of these teams can also be involved in TADHack Popayán this year

Here are a few highlighted hacks from TADHack Popayán over the years.

RM5— Juan Daza, Camilo Segura, Mauricio Maca —app to capture student marches, document abuses and connect people with legal help. Here is a great weblog by the team describing their hack.

Hack Mark Software by David Sotelo, Yaison Fabián Samboní, Daniela Velasquez. This application allows you to use the SMS message service to perform searches on a server connected to the Internet. A person can send three types of messages 1. Mail services 2. Internet searches 3. Check the meaning of a word in a dictionary. The application will return via SMS the result of the request.

Hack Go! POU by Jonathan Ibarra, Tania Cañizares, Brayan Mamian, Cristian Gómez. This application allows to receive the measurements that are made in temperature sensor stations and others. People can subscribe to receive information from the data obtained by the sensors, for example when air quality is critical and a person has bee subscribed, they can receive warning messages when a parameterized value in the system has been exceeded. It can also be used in notifications of agriculture, to notify variations in humidity, etc., which allows solving the problem of access to data networks that some farmers have.

Hack Synergieca by David Sebastian Agredo, Manuel Galindo, Andrea Bermeo, and Giovanni López. This application allows you to create free video conferencing rooms to do tutorials. A person can schedule a tutoring of a specific topic to dictate to many people (up to 100). Initially the tutorials would be free, but as the tutor increases the level, later he will be able to charge for personalized tutorials.

Here is a playlist of all TADHack Popayán 2018 hacks.

TechTeamCo by Andrea, Sebastian, Giovanni, Camila, David using Telestax. Geolocation system in catastrophe situations to rescue people using USSD or SMS. Then use the data for analysis and prevention of future catastrophes. Won Location Prize and Telestax Global winner.

R+ by Susana, Julián, Camilo using Temasys. Implementation of augmented reality to an online multiplayer game with 3D features, they used the temays sdk to enable the online multiplayer features. Won Location Prize.

DoctorNowTeam by Fabian, Camilo, Manuel, Javier using Temasys. Delay in appointment management with medical specialists in remote zones, it’s a web platform that allows to connect patients with specialists, It uses Temasys for video calls and messaging for communication in order to facilitate communication from remote or rural places to provide health services, through telehealth. Won Location Prize.

Here is a playlist of all TADHack Popayán 2017 hacks.

Thank you to the Cluster CreaTIC team for your dedication, leadership, and ongoing partnership with TADHack Global.

The post Location Focus: TADHack Popayán appeared first on Blog @ TADHack - Telecom Application Developer Hackathon.

September 26, 2019

Kamailio Kamailio v5.1.9 Released
Kamailio SIP Server v5.1.9 stable is out – a minor release including fixes in code and documentation since v5.1.8. The configuration file and database schema compatibility is preserved, which means you don’t have to change anything to update.

Kamailio^® v5.1.8 is based on the latest source code of GIT branch 5.1 and it represents the latest stable version. We recommend those running previous 5.1.x or older versions to upgrade. There is no change that has to be done to configuration file or database structure comparing with the previous releases of the v5.1 branch.

Resources for Kamailio version 5.1.9

Source tarballs are available at:
- https://www.kamailio.org/pub/kamailio/5.1.9/src/
Detailed changelog:
- https://www.kamailio.org/pub/kamailio/5.1.9/ChangeLog
Download via GIT:
```
 # git clone https://github.com/kamailio/kamailio kamailio
 # cd kamailio
 # git checkout -b 5.1 origin/5.1
```
Relevant notes, binaries and packages will be uploaded at:
- https://www.kamailio.org/pub/kamailio/5.1.9/
Modules’ documentation:
- https://www.kamailio.org/docs/modules/5.1.x/
What is new in 5.1.x release series is summarized in the announcement of v5.1.0:
- https://www.kamailio.org/w/kamailio-v5-1-0-release-notes/
Note: the branch 5.1 is the previous stable branch. The latest stable branch is 5.2, at this time with v5.2.2 being released out of it. Be aware that you may need to change the configuration files and database structures from 5.1.x to 5.2.x. See more details about it at:
- https://www.kamailio.org/w/kamailio-v5-2-0-release-notes/
Also note that the dates of the next Kamailio World Conference, the 8th edition, were just announced, April 27-29, 2020. The event will take place again in Berlin, Germany!

Thanks for flying Kamailio!

September 25, 2019

Digium So…about yesterday…
Yesterday, I wrote a blog called “Is it Possible to Outgrow an Open Source PBX?”. The blog was misconstrued with regards to how I stated the premise of situations that may call for someone to move to a commercially supported PBX. It was insensitive to our open source community and the great work they do. If I offended anyone, I am sorry. Yesterday’s blog post does not represent any change in Sangoma’s commitment to our open source projects or the ecosystems around them. Open source projects continue to play a vital role within our business, and we are thankful for all those who choose to be a part of the broader open source telephony ecosystem.

Let me try to state the premise I was trying to convey in yesterday’s blog post in a different fashion.

It’s easy to get started with building a PBX with Asterisk or FreePBX. That’s why they have been so successful – they’re great platforms and they’re easy to use. One downside, however, is that building your own PBX puts the burden of updates (to the underlying operating system as well as telephony platform) on you if you are managing the system yourself, or on someone else if you outsource that work. Unlike most phone systems of the 20th century, a modern PBX is just another type of computer server and needs to be updated and maintained just like any other server.

So what are your options when it comes to maintenance? If you’re not comfortable doing the maintenance yourself, you could go to an integrator who specializes in support of open source telephony platforms. (Luckily, you’re not locked into just one vendor for help!) Another option is to use a turn-key solution or hosted solution that minimizes the amount of maintenance you need to do. That’s all I was trying to say – there are options to reducing your maintenance burden.

The post So…about yesterday… appeared first on Sangoma.

September 24, 2019

TADHack Location Focus: TADHack London

Since 2015 IDEALondon has been the location for TADHack London with the support of UCL (Dr Alistair Moore and Niall Roche), Aplisay (Rob Pickering and his team), and of course IDEALondon. Its an ideal, pardon the pun, location for TADHack: the facilities, location, and amazing diversity of people in and around London can not be beat. UCL’s IoT Lab is also based in the same building as Idea London so we are able to play with their IoT toys

Listed below are some of the hacks presented at London over the years, go to the TADHack Youtube Channel to see all the 65+ hacks. From these hacks companies have been founded, people have found their dream job, and students have been able to join successful start-ups.

For 2019 Rob and his team from aplisay will be running TADHack London. Niall will have the UCL IoT Labs on hand to mash-up with the TADHack Global sponsors TeleSign (Mobile Identity, Trust), Simwood, (Programmable Telecoms, Fraud Protection), and VoIP Innovations (Programmable Telecoms). Check out their resources on the front page by scrolling down to the resources section.

Register for TADHack London here, 12-13 October. You’ll have fun, learn lots, and perhaps even change the world, or at least your local community, with your hack.

Some of the hacks from TADHack London in 2018:

Matt Williams: Ethereum Gateway, Ethereum-hosted WebAssembly serverless runtime.

Immanuel Baskaran, Darius Pop: Matrix Whisper Bridge, A bridge between Status blockchain chat and Riot.

Mohamed Habib: insure-auto: Event-driven telemetry capture and cryptographic assurance for autonomous vehicles. Moe also wrote a nice weblog reviewing “Why TADHack is his favorite hackathon in 2018.” He’ll be back this year

Some of the hacks from TADHack London in 2017:

One Vision used Temasys by Leslie, Mike, and Daniel. An application that supports Holistic self using Temasys. An original take on personal organization. Apologies to the team, but I want to highlight this hack as an example of the high quality bar, where a hack this good just missed out on a prize.

PhoneGuard used Apifonica by Ousama, Michael, Mark. A system for charging unsolicited callers a fee to call you, solving one of the ideas proposed by Dean Bubley. Won the Apifonica global prize.

state of the chart by Emma, Gareth, Robert used Matrix and Vidyo. A tool for remote design meetings. Web based video calling with the ability to covert pen-on-paper sketches to shared click-and-dragable drawings. Won the location prize as well as Vidyo global prize.

Pushtime by Aviral used Matrix. Syncs your phone to your computer over the secure, end-to-end encrypted Matrix protocol, using an Android app on one end and a Chrome extension on the other. It works cross platform, and with multiple devices at the same time too! Won the location prize as well as Matrix global prize.

Culturoo by Gladwin, Chris, Awais, Jardin, Immaneul used Temasys and Vidyo. A web calling platform that promotes cultural learning through compelling suggestions for communication. This was the first hackathon for many of the team, and they won the location prize, and here is a write-up of their experiences.

Polite.ai by Rob, Joe, Lucy, Mercer, John used Matrix. It was focused on nailing the troll problem in real time chat. Won the location prize as well as Matrix global prize. Its also now an open source project.

Project Clearwater over RINA by Matt, Yin. Implementation of Project Clearwater IMS core running over RINA network architecture. Won the ArcFire challenge.

Apifonica Node.js contribution by Steven and Lily. A node library to make accessing APIfonica easy. Won the Apifonica global prize.

Rome by Steven and Lily Madar used Apifonica. “Reach me anywhere” – a way of contacting someone, in a variety of ways, depending on the time of day. Won the Apifonica global prize.

E-Advisor-Voice by Roslyn and Dalton. E(lectronic) Advisor is a voice digital assistant that helps you repair, recycle, or sell your abandoned electronics. It is live on Amazon Echo in the US and UK with Germany pending. E-Advisor is also live on Google Assistant. Our hack allows anyone in 60+ countries to access E-Advisor’s service by calling a local phone number.

Some of the hacks from TADHack London in 2016:

Stephen Sale from Analysys Mason created “My First Hack” a primary research automation service using Telestax and Dialogic. This was his first ever hack, we recorded it on Saturday as he had family commitments on Sunday. But in only a couple of hours with coding skills long forgotten he created an application that would help him in his work. He won the Telestax/Dialogic prize for best first hack.

SPAN Services created the hack Mayday using Telestax and Dialogic. Mayday is an application developed over the RestComm platform, which provides features such as audio/video call, chat, annotation and co-browsing. The application supports iOS & Android operating systems and the Web. The demonstration of this application is implemented using an e-commerce electronic store application, where the use of Mayday application has been conceptualized. They won the Telestax/Dialogic prize for best customer Service innovation. Here a link to their remote entry.

Torrey Searle demonstrated the Integration of Midori into a Cisco Spark room with many impressive capabilities and won the Cisco prize. Here’s the link to his remote submission, parental discretion advised.

Steven Bakker, Timo Uelen and Bart Uelen created the hack Babelonio, a mulilingual chat using decentralized messaging. Resources used included Matrix, speech recognition and Google Translate. They won the Matrix prize of a Phantom X Hexapod Mk3.

Sebastian Schumann’s hack ‘Contact Sentry’ using Telestax Restcomm and Dialogic XMS. It provided inbound call filter based on network address book and programmed white-list through Slack. He won the Telestax/Dialogic prize for best overall hack.

Roderick Hodgson and Alex Francois created the hack Distillate using Telestax, Dialogic, Apidaze. The hack enables you to have a record and keep track of the key topics in your conversations. Receive an SMS with keywords from your WebRTC audio conversations. They won both the Apidaze prize and Telestax/Dialogic prize for best use of AI.

Mike Dauphinais created the hack Cupido using Cisco Spark and Apidaze. Its a merge conflict manager: in case of local changes that might create a merge conflict, a room is created to discuss about it. He won prizes from both Cisco and Apidaze.

Brant Wang & Sacha Nacar created the hack BigBro using Cisco Spark. An anti-cyber-bullying bot for chat rooms. They won the Cisco prize.

Roslyn Scott presented how her business Mobicycle can be extended by the hack Repair Clinic using Apidaze, Cisco Spark, Telestax, Dialogic. So people can repair their electronic devices with help from their experts. She the Cisco prize.

Next presenter was Roslyn’s 15 year old son Dalton with his hack Jerry, using Telestax and Dialogic. Which turns your favorite applications ‘data-less’. He won the Telestax / Dialogic prize for best youth hack. And is the youngest TADHack winner to date. And we also have another first with mother and son winners.

I would also like to mention the hack ‘confidant’ by the Founders and Coders WebRTC course students: Tasnim Sultanah, Mireia Sangalo Tomas, Ivan Gonzalez, Jack Tierney, Eleanor Re’em, Virginie Trubiano, Robert Francis, Katherine Bowler, Andrew MacMurray, Jack Murphy, Elias Malik, Francesco Moro, Sam Houston, Owen Turner-Major, Eoin McCarthy, and Ben Gesso. Which used of course WebRTC, Tropo, Telestax and Dialogic. Confidant is a hack which comes from a real life requirement brought to them by a Charity and an NHS Trust who want to enhance youth mental health counseling services using a community of volunteers on related university courses. It demonstrates the feasibility of using WebRTC to provide better access to support services and at the same time give supervised students credit for professional experience gained by volunteering their time. They’d only just learned about WebRTC and were creating a hack they intend to bring to market.

Igor Pavlov, founder and CTO of LyteSpark, and a regular at these events as this was his 3rd TADHack. Showed the LyteSpark Slack App . When you get into a chat session where jumping onto a video chat makes more sense, the LyteSpark app jumps in with a suggestion. LyteSpark has just launched a few weeks ago, yet that did not stop Igor hacking. Its a great example of how communications can be made more effective. Messaging is fine, but sometimes talking so so much quicker, and that’s what the LyteSpark app does. You can download the Slack app here.

Another TADHack regular is the master hacker Sam Machin, who has recently joined Nexmo. Sam’s hack, DxRTC, was a great showcase of using the data channel of WebRTC, to enable 2 peers to find each other by swapping their GPS data. It enabled Sam to have a play with a number of data channel options, and create a sweet little application. Learning is an important part of every hackathon, and Sam shows its important to never top learning, even if you’re at the top of your game .

Be My Friend was created by the team of Justin Grierson and Matt Williams. It used the Tropo as well as Telestax and Dialogic to capture voice and do sentiment analysis on the voice. The idea is to provide support to people with mental health issues. Matt did another amazing coding feat within the browser. Because today IVR’s generally do not support video he coded an application server in the browser – yes, you heard that right.

Faiz Rasool and Joel Barnett presented “Education Studio Live” using the resources from Telestax, Dialogic and Tropo. Its an Online Virtual Class room based learning platform. It uses face and eye detection to determine if someone is not focused on the class, and alerts the instructor to get the student better engaged.

Send what you see was created by Niall Roche and Daniel Fozzati. The hack used CiscoSpark to capture text using phone camera and sending the text (not the image) to a Spark room. It enabled Niall to explore a number of issues with the Spark Java API in Android.

Last, but definitely not least we wrapped up TADHack London with the Vaipo App by Siddartha Pothapragada who used Tropo. The application enables video chat connection between two registered users of the application seamlessly. User can use his phone number to register with the Vaipo cloud service. (or) Users can also use their gmail IDs / facebook IDs to register with our backend. Users can enable Video chat during a regular ongoing PSTN call.

Some of the hacks from TADHack London in 2015:

Keevio Eye, Rob Pickering (@RobinJPickering), CEO ipcortex, UK

This was a great hack to kick-off, showing real-time video over WebRTC from a drone in Bletchley Park with a Raspberry Pi blu-tacked (yep that’s correct blu-tacked) to it to run the WebRTC stack. We’ll have separate weblogs on all the hacks going into the implementation details, GitHub repositories, etc.

Viblast Showcase, Svetlin Mladenov (@s_mladenov), Lead Developer and Co-founder Viblast

At TADHack we allow some showcases, these are near commercial or commercial cool services from small companies that need help getting broader awareness of the good work they are doing related to a sponsor’s technology. Viblast has an interesting WebRTC based peer to peer content delivery network.

WebRTC Computer Vision, Andrey Zakharchenko

This was a fun hack, ably demonstrated by Andrey receiving an honorable mention from Dialogic. It analyses a video stream to check if the viewer is watching, and if not sends an alert. Andrey’s demo is so straight-faced as he demos a student falling asleep, its classic. His hack uses the Dialogic XMS media server and the Oracle WSC.

Wootag Interactive Video Experience, Raj Sunder (@rajsunder) CEO Wootag

Wootag is an interactive video provider, that is they tag videos at particular points with calls to action, and for TADHack they made one of them a ‘click to call’ with Apidaze. Wootag has experimented with click to call services in Indonesia and experienced call through rates as high as 22%, which is amazing compared to western markets. They were a joint winner of Apidaze prize ($500).

Beacon Calling, Sam Machin (@sammachin)

Sam was showing off his full stack programming skills, with an iOS app, and backend logic using the Truphone API. Its taking calling back to the days when people called places, and if a mobile phone is near a bluetooth beacon the call is diverted from the beacon’s number to the mobile phone number. This hack won the Truphone Prize of $1000.

Asticus, Guilherme Jansen, Developer

Guilherme gave a good practical demonstration of how easy it has become to create information services for phone numbers.

PSTN to LyteSpark, Igor Pavlov (@pavlovigor)

Igor was great, not only did he work on his hack, he helped several other hacks. Collaboration is an important part of TADHack. He showed how within a couple of hours he had extended the LyteSpark service to any phone. He was a joint winner of Apidaze prize ($500).

Instant Evaluation, Joris Swinnen (@jorisswinnen), Co-founder & Ideator o10tct

Joris is leading the using of WebRTC to enable communications to be much more deeply analyzed, for example in interviews, but also in patient / healthcare-provider communication. He was excited the the potential Kandy.io has in enabling him to break from his browser applications onto mobile phones, and he explained how he will be developing his commercial app on it. Joris is a joint winner of Kandy prize ($500).

ffonio.in Showcase, Aswath Rao (@aswath), President EnThinnai

Aswath announced the technical review phase of ffonio.in, a text to voice and video app.

Collaborate and Educate, Mirko Orehek, Media Interactive

Media Interactive provide a complete elearning platform. They focused on the collaboration aspects of their platform using WebRTC and Dialogic XMS media server to ensure good quality experience on their service. They were the winners of the Dialogic prize.

Smart Dispatch, Sacha Nacar (@SachaNacar)

Nice contextual call dispatcher for mobile agents. Think of it as a WebRTC automatic call distribution, or an Olark for voice. The hack used Telestax / Restcomm, Voxbone and Nexmo. Sacha was a joint winner of Telstax prize ($500).

Matrix Bot, Scott Barstow (@scottbarstow) and Anders Brownworth (@anders94)

The was definitely the most slick remote video. A similar configuration to Rob Pickering’s hack with a Raspberry pi using WebRTC for the video and using Matrix.org for the signalling to control the robot. They won the Matrix prize a Parrot Bebop Drone.

Number Mapper, Sebastian Schumann (@s_schumann)

Sebastian’s hack was built using Telestax Restcomm and Nexmo. It is a great demonstration of how open source and telecom APIs have revolutionized service development. Something that once cost millions and could take over a year to build, is now possible in 14 hours. This hack was a joint winner of Telestax prize, $500.

WebRTC Lights, Neil Stratford (@neilstratford)

Neil’s hack was a great mash-up of the physical (individually addressable LED light strip) and using a Matrix room to control the LED lights. The applications of this hack are endless, e.g. corporate interactive signage , at parties, etc. Neil won the University College London prize of $1000.

Co-browsify, Žilvinas Rayla and Augustinas Bacvinka

These internet developers were wowed at the potential of WebRTC and applied it to their co-browsing service, they are looking forward to doing much more with WebRTC after their experience at TADHack. They were the joint winners of Kandy.io prize, $500.

Project Clearwater / Matrix Gateway, Matt Williams (@maffydub)

Matt Williams pulled off a coding feat that even impressed Matt Hodgson (who at the WebRTC event in December, pulled off a coding feat while presenting). Matt gatewayed the IMS world with any ‘matrixed-in’ communication island, using WebRTC for the media. Matt was a winner of Matrix prize a Parrot Bebop Drone.

TeachMusicRTC, Francesco Canessa (@makevoid) and Filippo Oretti

TeachMusicRTC was an impressive combination of WebRTC and a number of JavaScript libraries that enabled tone detection. It enables remote music classes, where the student can follow the teacher on the keyboard. The demo worked perfectly downstairs, and then when brought upstairs to pitch the gremlins arrived. But that is what makes the pitches so intense, the chance of failure is high. They won the Google prize of $1000.

Kamailio Open Source VoLTE, Carsten Bock

This pitch showed even the core of telco networks are going open source. This was a more industry focused hack, but we’re hoping for TADHack Global (at least in Lisbon) we can have a private LTE network to hack on, where developers can get in and play with the guts of the network. But more on that later.

The post Location Focus: TADHack London appeared first on Blog @ TADHack - Telecom Application Developer Hackathon.
Digium Is it Possible to Outgrow an Open Source PBX?
An update to this blog post can be found here or at the bottom of this page.

Many small businesses have started with an open source PBX like FreePBX or another one based on Asterisk. But once you have that in place, is it possible that you might need to move to a more business-oriented solution– one that is supported? In other words, is it possible you might outgrow what you started with?

Open source PBXs are perfect… for the right customer. If you as a customer are programming oriented, then digging into an open source PBX is great. And it might be fun to go download new releases and pick the specific phones you want and keep the system updated with the latest security upgrades.

But let’s say your business grows. And you have less time for that than you used to. Or the techie guy who first said, “hey, let’s do this open source thing,” has moved on, leaving you with an unsupported mess!

Certainly in that case it would make sense to upgrade to a commercial system, so that someone else handles the updates, the support, the specific upgrades required, and has a choice of phones and SBCs that work with the unit. The system can still be open source-based and can behave like you are used to, but you’d have more time to run the business. In other words, it could be a supported open source communications system.

Or let’s say you need other features beyond what the open source version offers. You might want specific routing capability. You might want to add on applications beyond simple phone calls. You might want to add smartphone support via a smartphone client. You need MORE.

In all these cases, it makes sense that you would “outgrow” what you are currently using. We’ve had customers start with an Asterisk-based PBX, moved to FreePBX from Sangoma (also based on Asterisk), and then from there moved to the Sangoma commercially-supported PBX version PBXact.

It definitely makes sense for a growing business.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–
[UPDATE]
Yesterday, I wrote a blog called “Is it Possible to Outgrow an Open Source PBX?”. The blog was misconstrued with regards to how I stated the premise of situations that may call for someone to move to a commercially supported PBX. It was insensitive to our open source community and the great work they do. If I offended anyone, I am sorry. Yesterday’s blog post does not represent any change in Sangoma’s commitment to our open source projects or the ecosystems around them. Open source projects continue to play a vital role within our business, and we are thankful for all those who choose to be a part of the broader open source telephony ecosystem.

Let me try to state the premise I was trying to convey in yesterday’s blog post in a different fashion.

It’s easy to get started with building a PBX with Asterisk or FreePBX. That’s why they have been so successful – they’re great platforms and they’re easy to use. One downside, however, is that building your own PBX puts the burden of updates (to the underlying operating system as well as telephony platform) on you if you are managing the system yourself, or on someone else if you outsource that work. Unlike most phone systems of the 20th century, a modern PBX is just another type of computer server and needs to be updated and maintained just like any other server.

So what are your options when it comes to maintenance? If you’re not comfortable doing the maintenance yourself, you could go to an integrator who specializes in support of open source telephony platforms. (Luckily, you’re not locked into just one vendor for help!) Another option is to use a turn-key solution or hosted solution that minimizes the amount of maintenance you need to do. That’s all I was trying to say – there are options to reducing your maintenance burden.

The post Is it Possible to Outgrow an Open Source PBX? appeared first on Sangoma.
WebRTC Hacks and the WebRTC Open Source Popularity Contest Winner is…
An analysis of the most popular open-source WebRTC repos on GitHub with a review of how WebRTC itself is doing there.

Continue reading and the WebRTC Open Source Popularity Contest Winner is… at webrtcHacks.
FreeSWITCH OK Google, Stop Spying on me
According to the American Institutional Confidence Poll, Americans trust Amazon more than the government or the press. In fact, they are the second most trusted institution, only behind the military. But as our trust in technology grows, the amount of information we have on how these tech companies use our private data remains stagnant. It [...]

The post OK Google, Stop Spying on me appeared first on FreeSWITCH.

September 23, 2019

TADHack Location Focus: TADHack Chicago
TADHack Chicago has been part of TADHack Global since the beginning. In 2014,Â we thought weâ€™d just run TADHack in Madrid, and ended up with a global event across Manila, Philippines; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Colombo, Sri Lanka; Madrid, Spain; Chicago, USA; and lots of other locations around the world where people hacked from home such as Russia, Canada, India, Brazil, and Australia. And thus TADHack Global was born

For 2019 TADHack Chicago will run at the Ed Kaplan Family Institute For Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship, the new innovation hub on the campus of Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago. Illinois Techâ€™s Kaplan Institute attracts innovative and entrepreneurial students from across the campus and beyond who come to learn how to convert their creative ideas into significant and viable businesses, services, and new solutions.

The continuous support of IIT RTC Labs, and the dedication of Prof Carol Davids, Warren Bent and Tom Costello are fundamental to the continued success of TADHack Chicago.

Weâ€™ve been fortunate on the timing of TADHack Global over the years. TADHack Chicago winners get to present at the IIT RTC Conference on the Tuesday after the TADHack weekend to industry leaders. This year we have 2 CTOs from the FCC, Eric Burger (current CTO) and Henning Schulzrinne (ex-CTO). As well as other industry celebs such as Tony Jamous, previously President at Nexmo, the Vonage API Platform, currently investor and advisor; Thomas Howe, CTO Ten Digit Communications; Chris Wendt, Director of Technical R&D for IP Communications, Comcast; Drew Morin, Director, Federal Cyber Security Technology and Engineering Programs, T-Mobile; and Dean Bubley, heâ€™s the one whoâ€™s going to be asking you questions

You can see all the TADHack Chicago hacks from over the years here:
- 2014
- 2015 (June), as part of TADHack Global
- 2015 (Oct),Â TADHack-mini Chicago (one location event).
- 2016
- 2017
- 2018
The hacks include internet of things, robotics (dancing robots), emergency services, NG911, fax (yes hacks using fax), augmented reality grocery services, social support services, collaboration service ideas weâ€™re only just start to see commercially implemented. Chicago has led the way and delivered world-class hacks over the years, many of which have become real products and services. Â Here are a few hacks from over the years:

Hack Grocery Go, from the team: Bill Boyd, Sachi Shirasake, Ofra Orz, Rennell Garrett. Carrefourâ€™s Augmented Reality and Telestax Customer Shopping Experience.

Team â€˜ProbatioNerdsâ€™ of Adnan Baleh, Caterina Lazaro, Javier Garcia, Ernesto G. Grabwosky, Sergio Gil and Marion Le Callonnec share custody of theÂ Trossen Robotics HROS1 Humanoid Endoskeleton using a Matrix Mobile app to control the robot through WiFi/Internet. The robot danced the Macarena!

Team â€˜Vivoâ€™ of Nestor Bermudez and Arin Sime used Matrix, Tropo, and Telestax to create an Apple Watch app to notify loved ones when you are having a heart attack. The demo worked, and they provided the analysis of the massive potential from such an application. A great pitch and it couldnâ€™t happen to a nicer team

I look forward to seeing you on 12-13 Oct at TADHack Chicago.

Please Register here for TADHack Chicago.

The post Location Focus: TADHack Chicago appeared first on Blog @ TADHack - Telecom Application Developer Hackathon.

September 20, 2019

TADHack Location Focus: TADHack Johannesburg (TADHackJHB)
TADHack Johannesburg (TADHackJHB) is the largest TADHack location. This year we’re anticipating over 200 people taking part, registrations are already over 450! MTN South Africa do an amazing job running TADHack Johannesburg, since 2016, making it one of the longest running hackathons in South Africa. TADHackJHB even made it onto breakfast TV in 2016! Thanks to everyone who makes TADHack Johannesburg such an amazing event, well done!

The developer community in Johannesburg is not only large, its world-class. As evidence, it consistently wins global prizes, see the two below, as well as having loads of local prizes awarded.
- In 2018 team Vaultron (Stephen Asiedu, Cameron de Bruyn, and Quintin Rudman) used Status (an Ethereum OS) for storing and releasing private information securely. They won the Status Global prize. It’s tough enough just to understand Status and all its capabilities, it’s the most complex set of resources we’ve offered at TADHack. Yet, Vaultron did it, and produced a hack that impressed the Status team.
- In 2016 Hack Geasy by Robert Sandell won the Canonical Global prize. An energy monitoring solution using MQTT and Mobile IOT. You can see the winning pitch here.
You can see all the pitch videos from 2016 and 2018, showing the amazing talent in South Africa. Also please check out the TADHack Global 2018 photos to see just how much fun everyone has at TADHackJHB.

It’s amazing what we’ve achieved together, with this short summary of TADHack from 2014-2018.

TADHackJHB Interviews

Interviewing the TADHackJHB winners from 2018, they found the hackthon gave all participants a “reputation boost”. They also realized that South Africa is on-par with the rest of the world. The winners also reported that TADHackJHB opened doors for them and are talking to companies in the UK to implement their projects. It also “opened doors” for them and helped the with new job offers. Many of our TADHackJHB participants are working on growing their hacks into new opportunities post the hackathon.

MTN uses TADHackJHB as a platform to find graduates. One successful candidate, Waqar Saman, won the Best Female Coder prize and is now working at MTN. Congratulations!

TADHackJHB Winners

Other TADHackJHB winners include:

The team that won the $1000 TADHack Johannesburg prize is team #SkratchLabs (Thubalethu Mambane, Kabelo Kgobale, Sydney Molobela, Answer Tjiane). This team created an AI application that learns your usual patterns through a mobile phone then submits irregularities to a back-end which is directed to an emergency control point to help.

The #Hungrywolves (Shenique, Le Fleur, Nabeel, Makkan, Saman, Waqar, Thillendrin, Poovalingam, Sumeshan, Padayachee) won Huawei devices for making best use of the Huawei API’s that were provided. This team created an application that allows users to book spaces in taxis. Shows the users the routes they can take, drivers on those routes. Users can rate drivers and routes based on safety and time take. Program will be managed by taxi associations that can add their drivers and routes.

#TheImmortals a.k.a #Skaftin team (Sebastian Dyantyi and Nerudo Mregi) won the IBM prize. This teams goal is to “become the dominant last mile delivery service for informal economic regions, which are often perceived to be higher risker. We’ll enable democratised access to efficient logistics services for informal settlements that need it most. When we unlock this market and tough to crack frontier it will provide a good foundation to expand our offering to township entrepreneurs, businesses and those who want to provide their goods and services to customers outside of their conventional reach.”

TCS Winner of R3000 Vouchers is #SocietyX a.k.a #1632. This team developed a Crowd-sourced Emergency Services Optimization Engine

TCS Runner Up of R2000 Voucher is team #Ovalleaf (Livhuwani, Matsigila, Terrence, Ndou, Joseph Sirwali, Pulane Maphiri, Morris Nkosi). This team created an all in one verified digital documents provider

TCS Second Runner Up of R1000 Vouchers is the #TechSavvyKids Team (Nolubabalo Mgcima, John, Thabiso Yende, Khanyisile, Kutlwano Mofolo, Anathi Mseleni). This team created Hu- Track which is an application that seeks to help fight Human Trafficking in our country but more especially in our Townships. The App will be available on smart phones and non-smart phone users and it can be accessible via an App, SMS and USSD.

See you at TADHackJHB, 12-13 Oct. Register here.

The post Location Focus: TADHack Johannesburg (TADHackJHB) appeared first on Blog @ TADHack - Telecom Application Developer Hackathon.

September 17, 2019

Kamailio Autumn 2019: Upcoming Events
The autumn is full of RTC-related events where you can meet Kamailio developers and community members participating or speaking about the project. Should you want to meet other Kamailio folks at these events or it just happens to be in the same city even you do not participate to the respective events, just announce yourself via users mailing list or the social networking channels tagging the project.

Here is the list of events we are aware of:
- JanusCon, Sep 23-25, 2019 –Â Naples, Italy
- VoIP2Day, Oct 10-11, 2019 – Malaga, Spain
- TADHack Global, Oct 12-13, 2019 – Berlin, Chicago, London among locations
- TADSummit Americas, Oct 15-16, 2019 – Chicago, USA
- IIT RTC Conference, Oct 14-16, 2019 – Chicago, USA
- Kamailio Advanced Training, Oct 21-23, 2019 – Berlin, Germany
- Astricon, Oct 29-30, 2019 – Atlanta, USA
- FUSECO Forum, Nov 7-8, 2019 – Berlin, Germany
- Kamailio Developers Meeting, Nov 14-15, 2019 – Dusseldorf, Germany
Should you know other events where members of Kamailio project are participating and want them listed here, contact us, we will happily add them.

Furthermore, we encourage the members of our community to go to local events (e.g., meetups, open days of educational and academic entities) and talk about Kamailio, being it a presentation or just during open discussions. Should you need any kind of assistance for such activities, do not hesitate to open a conversation within the users mailing lists, there are many members that can give hints and help you prepare properly. Even it is going to be your first time, your willingness and efforts are really appreciated.

Thanks for flying Kamailio!

September 12, 2019

TADHack VoIP Innovations Sponsors TADHack Global 12-13 October

We’re proud to announce VoIP Innovations is returning to sponsor TADHack Global 2019, 12-13 October. They’ve been with us since the first TADHack in 2014, thanks to their acquisition of Apidaze in 2017.

Please Register for TADHack Global here

VoIP Innovations provides Voice and SMS APIs, as well as a WebRTC SDK for voice, video, messaging and data channel over the internet. Check out and sign up to their resources for TADHack Global here.

TADHack is a series of hackathons that run around the world to help people learn about the latest Internet, IT, and Telecoms technologies; and most importantly use those technologies to solve problems that matter to them. It’s one of the largest global hackathons in the world, running in over 40 countries, with 12k registrations, helping people launch new businesses and services.

It’s an event where people (e.g. students, graphic designers, interface designers, project managers, product managers, IT Managers, coders and non-coders, interested individuals, and subject-matter-experts) collaborate on a software project. Occasionally, there is a hardware component, for example we’ve had some impressive IoT (Internet of Things) hacks over the years, including a robot dancing La Macarena using decentralized web technology.

TADHack Global is made possible thanks to hundreds of people around the world who love technology, and are excited by the democratization of technologies so anyone can use them. They run locations because they want to educate, inspire, and make a difference in people’s lives and the communities they live in. The TAD in TADHack stands for Technology Application Development.

Our hacks include programmable telecoms (voice, video, messaging, phone ID), blockchain, encryption, Ethereum, internet of things, cloud computing, robotics, machine learning, speech and face recognition, trust ratings, mobile payments, enterprise communications, decentralized web, open source, and many other technologies. Check out previous years’ hacks from 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014.

We’ve helped refugees find lost family members, farmers irrigate their fields better, keep online discussions civil, teams launch companies based on their hacks, the homeless affordably access legal services, improve emergency aid distribution, with thousands of hacks over the years.

At TADHack Global you’ll be able to solve problems that matter to you through using Telesign’s APIs mashed up with any other resources you like. We’re really excited at what we’re going to see from around the world, it’s going to be revolutionary!

This weblog share some of TADHack’s achievements over the past 5 years, since the first TADHack Global in June 2014 to TADHack Global 2018 of which VoIP Innovations / Apidaze has been part of since 2014.

Please Register for TADHack Global here

Visit http://www.voipinnovations.com/ for more information or follow us on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/groups/1636827/) and Twitter @voipinnovations;

Check out TADHack Global 2019, Oct 12-13, at http://www.tadhack.com/2019/

Follow TADHack on Twitter @TADHack.

The post VoIP Innovations Sponsors TADHack Global 12-13 October appeared first on Blog @ TADHack - Telecom Application Developer Hackathon.
TADHack TADHack Global 2019 🌍🌎🌏 is only One Month Away!
TADHack Global 2019 on 12-13 October is running across many locations around the world, see below. Please reserve 12-13 Oct in your diary for a great weekend at one of the largest and most diverse hackathons, now in its 6th year. Thank you.

We may not be as fashionable as the internet brand hackathons. However, we’re run by people who care about technology and their local communities. Who give their time for TADHack, and try and make a difference in the lives of everyone who takes part and their communities. Please carry on reading to learn about TADHack Global. I hope to see you on the 12-13 Oct, its going to be fun and will make a difference in your life

Please Register here for TADHack Global

We have Global sponsors Telesign (Mobile Identity, Trust), Simwood (Programmable Telecoms, Fraud Protection), and VoIP Innovations (Programmable Telecoms). Check out their resources on the TADHack front page.

With local sponsors and supporters across many locations: MTN, Inovo, IIT RTC Labs, Cluster Creatic, Aplisay, hSenid Mobile, IdeaLondon , Automat Berlin, Vio Networks, KPN API Store, and Speakup NL. They make all these locations possible:
- Belgrade (new for this year)
- Berlin
- Johannesberg
- London
- Netherlands
- Romania
- Chicago – we have an amazing new location for TADHack Chicago,Â Illinois Techâ€™s Kaplan Institute
- PopayÃ¡n
- Remote (that is, the comfort of your own home)
You can learn more about taking part in TADHack here (weblog is from 2018 but its still mostly relevant). Please register by clicking on a location convenient from the TADHack front page, or remote if there is no location near you, and complete the simple registration form. Youâ€™ll have fun, meet great people, and perhaps even change the world through your hack!

During TADHack we use Riot for communicating and collaborating. You can sign up to Riot here.

Check what we’ve got up to over the years, and what people think about TADHack:
- Why TADHack was my favourite Hack in 2018, by Mohammed Habib, PhD, CTO Zealy.
- TADHack Popayan: Dnuncia by RM5, by Juan Daza, Camilo Segura, & Mauricio Maca.
- 5 years of TADHack.
- Tiáº¿n Nguyá»…n Kháº¯c on TADHack Auckland.
- Bunyip at TADHack Sydney by Si Pham.
- 3 step guide to participating in TADHack (and maybe even winning) by Martin Zaleski, Bruno Panelli, and Guillermo Paterson.
TADHack is for Everyone: itâ€™s an event where people (e.g. students, graphic designers, interface designers, project managers, product managers, IT Managers, coders and non-coders, interested individuals, and subject-matter-experts) collaborate on a software project. Occasionally, there is a hardware component, for example weâ€™ve had some impressive IoT (Internet of Things) hacks over the years, including a robot dancing La Macarena using decentralized web technology.

TADHack Global is made possible thanks to hundreds of people around the world who love technology, and are excited by the democratization of technologies so anyone can use them. They run locations because they want to educate, inspire, and make a difference in peopleâ€™s lives and the communities they live in. The TAD in TADHack stands for TechnologyÂ Application Development.

Our hacks include programmable telecoms (voice, video, messaging, phone ID, mobile identity), blockchain, encryption, authentication, trust, Ethereum, internet of things, cloud computing, robotics, machine learning, speech and face recognition, trust ratings, mobile payments, enterprise communications, decentralized web, open source, and many other technologies. Check out previous yearsâ€™ hacks from 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014.

Weâ€™ve helped refugees find lost family members, farmers irrigate their fields better, keep online discussions civil, teams launch companies based on their hacks,Â the homeless affordably access legal services, improve emergency aid distribution, with thousands of hacks over the years.

At TADHack Global youâ€™ll be able to solve problems that matter to you through mashing up identity, trust, fraud protection, and programmable telecoms / communications from Simwood, Telesign, and VoIP Innovations. Weâ€™re really excited at what weâ€™re going to see from around the world, itâ€™s going to be revolutionary!

Please Register here for TADHack Global

The post TADHack Global 2019 ğŸŒ�ğŸŒ�ğŸŒ� is only One Month Away! appeared first on Blog @ TADHack - Telecom Application Developer Hackathon.

September 09, 2019

Kamailio Kamailio Developers Meeting, Nov 14-15, 2019, in Dusseldorf
Kamailio SIP Server project is organizing another meeting of its developers during November 14-15, 2019, hosted again by sipgate.de in Dusseldorf, Germany.

The event is intended to facilitate the interaction between Kamailio developers and to offer a convenient environment for working together on several topics of high interest for the project, including writing code for Kamailio and its tools, improving documentation, or discuss about future development.

Everyone from the community is welcome to join. Please note we have a limited capacity of 20 seats in the meeting room. Also, very important to be aware that this is not an event to learn how to use Kamailio.

More details about the event, the venue, how to register, are available at:
- https://www.kamailio.org/w/developers-meeting/
Looking forward to those two intensive hacking Kamailio days in Dusseldorf!

Thanks for flying Kamailio!

September 08, 2019

WebRTC Hacks How Zoom’s web client avoids using WebRTC (DataChannel Update)

Continue reading How Zoom’s web client avoids using WebRTC (DataChannel Update) at webrtcHacks.

September 05, 2019

Kamailio Development Frozen For Next Major Release v5.3.x
The formal notification that the development for the next major version 5.3.0 is now frozen. The focus has to be on testing the master branch.

Also, the master branch should not get commits with new features till the branch 5.3 is created, expected to happen in 2-4 weeks, a matter of how testing goes on. Meanwhile, the commits with new features in the C code can be pushed to personal branches, pull requests can still be done, but they will be merged after branching 5.3.

It can still be done commits with documentation improvements, enhancements to related tool (e.g., kamctl, kamcmd) and exporting missing KEMI functions to the modules already exporting most of the other functions (done for previous releases, because likely that was a fail to notice, all functions should be exported for a module at the same time).

Once the branch 5.3 is created, new features can be pushed again to master branch as usual. From that moment, the v5.3.0 should be out very soon, time used for further testing but also preparing the release of packages.

If someone is not sure if a commit brings a new feature, just make a pull request and it can be discussed there on github portal or via sr-dev mailing list.

A summary of what is new in upcoming 5.3 is collected at:
- https://www.kamailio.org/wiki/features/new-in-5.3.x
Upgrade guidelines will be collected at:
- https://www.kamailio.org/wiki/install/upgrade/5.2.x-to-5.3.0
Everyone is more than welcome to contribute to the above wiki pages,
especially to the upgrade guidelines, to help everyone else during the
migration process from v5.2.x to 5.3.x.

Thanks for flying Kamailio!

August 30, 2019

Kamailio Upgrading kamcli To Work With Python3
With the perspective that Python2 is going to be removed from the major Linux distributes starting with the beginning of next year, the work to upgrade kamcli to run with Python3 has been started.

From now on, master branch of kamcli is expected to work only with Python3:
- https://github.com/kamailio/kamcli
There is still work to be done to upgrade all the code, but any use of it should be done with Python3 and eventual issues to be filed on bug tracker. Of course, pull requests are welcome as always!

Who wants to use the version for Python2 has to use the code from git branch v1.2-python2. That branch is probably not going to receive any new feature, it will be kept for use with older systems (as well as a running option during the upgrade period to Python3).

Thanks for flying Kamailio!

August 29, 2019

TADHack Leader in Mobile Identity Solutions, TeleSign, Sponsors TADHack Global 2019
We’re proud to announce TeleSign is sponsoring TADHack Global 2019.

TeleSign connects and protects online experiences with sophisticated customer identity and engagement solutions. Through APIs that deliver user verification, data insights, and communications they solve today’s unique online customer experience challenges. Their customers include most of the largest web brands in the world who trust Telesign to help them deliver the easiest and safest customer experiences available. You’re in great company hacking on TeleSign.

TeleSign’s APIs deliver actionable insights that enhance and protect every stage of the customer experience.
- Score – Delivers reputation scoring based on phone number intelligence, traffic patterns, machine learning and a global data consortium. Think of it as a credit score of your users that can grant and block access based on data intelligence.
- PhoneID – Detailed and actionable global phone number and subscriber data intelligence to strengthen authentications, evaluate fraud risks, and enhance the user experience. There are multiple add-ons you can choose from that provide wholistic solutions around mobile identity.
- Standard API docs – Get familiar with TeleSign and our APIs through technical docs that will help with implementation.
Simply go to their sign-up page to get started. Or check out TeleSign’s resources for TADHack Global here.

Not only are TeleSign a global sponsor and will have people attending locations such as Chicago, they are also are running TADHack Belgrade. This is a new location for TADHack, we’re excited to see what the amazing talent in Belgrade will create. Please tell anyone you know in Belgrade that TeleSign’s running a TADHack there

Please Register for TADHack Global here

TADHack is a series of hackathons that run around the world to help people learn about the latest Internet, IT, and Telecoms technologies; and most importantly use those technologies to solve problems that matter to them. It’s one of the largest global hackathons in the world, running in over 40 countries, with 12k registrations, helping people launch new businesses and services.

It’s an event where people (e.g. students, graphic designers, interface designers, project managers, product managers, IT Managers, coders and non-coders, interested individuals, and subject-matter-experts) collaborate on a software project. Occasionally, there is a hardware component, for example we’ve had some impressive IoT (Internet of Things) hacks over the years, including a robot dancing La Macarena using decentralized web technology.

TADHack Global is made possible thanks to hundreds of people around the world who love technology, and are excited by the democratization of technologies so anyone can use them. They run locations because they want to educate, inspire, and make a difference in people’s lives and the communities they live in. The TAD in TADHack stands for Technology Application Development.

Our hacks include programmable telecoms (voice, video, messaging, phone ID), blockchain, encryption, Ethereum, internet of things, cloud computing, robotics, machine learning, speech and face recognition, trust ratings, mobile payments, enterprise communications, decentralized web, open source, and many other technologies. Check out previous years’ hacks from 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014.

We’ve helped refugees find lost family members, farmers irrigate their fields better, keep online discussions civil, teams launch companies based on their hacks, the homeless affordably access legal services, improve emergency aid distribution, with thousands of hacks over the years.

At TADHack Global you’ll be able to solve problems that matter to you through using Telesign’s APIs mashed up with any other resources you like. We’re really excited at what we’re going to see from around the world, it’s going to be revolutionary!

This weblog share some of TADHack’s achievements over the past 5 years, since the first TADHack Global in June 2014 to TADHack Global 2018.

Please Register for TADHack Global here

Visit www.telesign.com for more information or follow us on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/telesign/) and Twitter @telesign;

Check out TADHack Global 2019, Oct 12-13, at http://www.tadhack.com/2019/

Follow TADHack on Twitter @TADHack.

The post Leader in Mobile Identity Solutions, TeleSign, Sponsors TADHack Global 2019 appeared first on Blog @ TADHack - Telecom Application Developer Hackathon.

August 20, 2019

FreeSWITCH FreeSWITCH v1.10.1 Release
FreeSWITCH 1.10.0 was released earlier this month (one year ahead of schedule) and now we are excited to announce its first update. Thank you to our community for all of your feedback, we have been working hard to incorporate it into our 1.10.1 release. We focused on database improvements as we made the transition from [...]

The post FreeSWITCH v1.10.1 Release appeared first on FreeSWITCH.
Kamailio NG Emergency Services – LOST And HELD Support
Recently a new module was introduced in the GIT master branch, named lost – its documentation is available at:
- https://www.kamailio.org/docs/modules/devel/modules/lost.html
It has been contributed by Wolfgang Kampichler from Frequentis AG, Austria. It implements extensions specific to next generation emergency services (aka 112-NG or 911-NG).

Using this module, SIP requests may be forwarded based on a location provided with the request or retrieved from a specific location server using an identity (HELD).

It also offers the basic functionality to get or parse location information and to query a mapping service (LOST) in order to get next hop based on location and service URN, either specified or provided with the request.

The specifications for these extensions come from IETF:
- RFC5222 (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5255)
- RFC6155 (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6155)
With this occasion we welcome Wolfgang in the Kamailio development team, he is going to maintain and develop further this module!

Thanks for flying Kamailio!

Planet SIP

December 10, 2019

December 06, 2019

December 03, 2019

December 02, 2019

December 01, 2019

November 27, 2019

November 26, 2019

November 25, 2019

November 22, 2019

1) Effective work was done on:

2) Documentation

3) Kamailio Modules

4) Kamailio Releases

5) Kamailio Testing

6) Kamailio packages

7) Kamailio tools

8) Various discussions

9) Long term goals

November 19, 2019

November 15, 2019

Private messages

Shared document editing

Mobile SDKs released including all these features

One more thing: open beta access!

November 14, 2019

November 12, 2019

November 08, 2019

What is the ISDN?

ISDN Switch Off

What is Sangoma’s Solution?

November 05, 2019

October 31, 2019

October 29, 2019

FOSDEM - Real Time Communications devroom CfP

Overview

Call for participation - Real Time Communications (RTC)

Speaking opportunities

First-time speaking?

Submission guidelines

Volunteers needed

Social events and dinners

Related events around FOSDEM

Spread the word and discuss

Contact

October 28, 2019

October 22, 2019

October 17, 2019

October 15, 2019

October 14, 2019

Global Winners

Simwood’s Global Winners

TeleSign’s Global Winners

VoIP Innovations Global Winners

Location Winners

Belgrade Winners

Chicago Winners

Johannesburg Winners

London Winners

The Netherlands Winners

Popayán Winners

October 13, 2019

October 10, 2019

October 09, 2019

October 08, 2019

October 04, 2019

October 03, 2019

October 02, 2019

October 01, 2019

September 27, 2019

September 26, 2019

September 25, 2019

September 24, 2019

Some of the hacks from TADHack London in 2018:

Some of the hacks from TADHack London in 2017:

Some of the hacks from TADHack London in 2016:

Some of the hacks from TADHack London in 2015:

September 23, 2019

September 20, 2019

TADHackJHB Interviews