May 6th, 2010 by Kevin Withnall
Engin updated their software a while ago and broke inbound switchboard distinctions. The To SIP header used to contain the switchboard number but now it doesn’t.
Incase you dont understand what this is about, engin is an Australian VoIP provider that allows “switchboard” numbers to be added for $5 per month to an account. This is great for saving money with 1300 numbers and provides local answer points that still come back to a single place. As we are migrating many customers away from Telstra (and hosting the VoIP asterisk system in the cloud at rackspace) this is a necessary function to determine where the calls came from.
Heres updated code that will work.
[ext-engin]
exten => _X.,1,noop(ENGIN STARTING)
exten => _X.,n,Set(ENGINH=${SIP_HEADER(DIVERSION)})
exten => _X.,n,Set(ENGINH=${IF($[${LEN(${ENGINH})} > 0]?”${ENGINH}”:”${SIP_HEADER(TO)}”)})
exten => _X.,n,Set(ENGIN=${CUT(ENGINH,:,2)})
exten => _X.,n,Set(ENGIN=${CUT(ENGIN,@,1)})
exten => _X.,n,GotoIf($[${LEN(${ENGIN})} > 0]?ext-did,${ENGIN},1:ext-did,${EXTEN},1)
just set the context for incoming calls to ext-engin and then this will send all calls back to the ext-did context with the appropriate target based on which switchboard number was used.
January 13th, 2010 by Kevin Withnall
I have used the iPhone for 2 years now and quite like it. The strangle hold apple has really annoys me so after jailbreaking the phone, I can do mostly all of what I want to do.
Heres some thoughts about the last 24hrs playing with the nexus one.
Nexus One – Good Points
- Fantastic screen. It’s bright, clear, hi-res and the animations are great.
- Brilliant google apps integration. (Including lattitude from google apps accounts which aparent’y can’t be done on any other platform)
- Close integration with things like SIP clients with the normal phone interface
- GPS reeption (inside a building, works great)
- Fast browser.
- latitude that ‘just works’
- Gmail integration that doesn’t rely on the old imap methodology. It handles threaded conversations.
- Great camera with flash
- feels thinner and better
- great google talk integration
- proper multitasking
Nexus One – Bad Points
- 3G dropouts. In 24 hrs, i have had 2 calls drop (I don’t make many calls) and have had other call breakup.
- Bluetooth is worse than the iPhone (which is pretty bad). I often have trouble getting A2DP connections working properly with phone calls etc. The iPhone gives you an option to select audio output options and therefore by selecting speaker, then back to bluetooth, it works again. the Nexus one, doesn’t have this option and stopping/starting the bluetooth, while it seems to fix the problem, takes too long.
- Finger sensors seem ‘wrong’. When I played with the HERO, i seemed to have to touch the screen a few mm above the point that i wanted. This is the same on the nexus one. I would be happy to believe it was my fat fingers but the iphone doesn’t have this problem.
- The gmail application, while it has some great features just feels wrong. I normally keep mail unread in the inbox as a todo list, this is harder to do in the gmail app. on the iPhone app, its easier.
- doesn’t support pinch gestures.
- has a totally useless trackball (well, sometimes its the only way to do something so useless is probably not the right word)
- still not enough apps
iPhone Jailbroken – Good Points
- with the purchase of 3G unrestrictor and longtitude, latitude works and SIP over 3G works.
- as much as I hate to say it, iTunes integration makes life easier than the options.
- wifi/3g switching just works
iPhone Jailbroken – Bad Points
- Apples restrictive policies on things like native google latitude support.
- the bluetooth support is crappy but still less bad than the nexus one.
- crappy battery life with no quick replacement option
- only manual upgrading of software/apps
- no multitasking
So in summary, I am going back to the iPhone and hope the next 4G iPhone addresses these bad points.
November 29th, 2009 by Kevin Withnall
October 27th, 2009 by Kevin Withnall
I didn’t know that the smithsonian was so extensive. Its 19 separate museums and were/are great places to visit.
The first things I wanted to see were the Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Air and Space museum. These were great to visit but I also discovered lots more to see. The Natural History Museum was great, as was the Portrait gallery and the National Museum. The national archives was a little less interesting (probably more aimed at children) but it was interesting to see a 1296 copy of the Magna Carta. There was a line for about 40 mins to see the declaration of independence but no line at all for the magna carta.
The Spy Museum (not smithsonian) and the Crime and Punishment museum were interesting but also mainly directed at children, or at least people who don’t watch documentaries as often as I do.
Madame Tussads was really crappy. It could have been that I was expecting so much more after going to the ‘real’ one in london but this one wasn’t even as good as the wax museum in surfers paradise in Qld.
The postal museum was interesting, although also more for children, and had the postage stamp that we’ve all seen on television with the upside-down plane. I don’t know whats its worth but its always the example of expensive stamps.
The Lincoln monument was interesting (although very wet that day) and the Washington monument was also worth seeing (not that you could avoid it). In the same area the monuments were the WWII and Vietnam memorials, the Korean war memorial is a little further away and I didn’t get that far.
I didn’t get to the American Indian museum, the FBI building or the Capitol Building but they had to be missed as I ran out of time. I did get to go to the new Air and Space museum wing (the new one as the 1976 one was full) at Dulles Airport. Thats were the space shuttle enterprise is and the SR-71 Blackbird as well as lots of other things.
So, the things I saw that I will hopefully remember are…
Apollo 11 command module
Space Shuttle Enterprise (not that it was a finished space shuttle capable of space flight)
Magna Carta
The upside down stamp
SR-71
the Original ‘Wright Flyer’
Original Space Suits (from many of the moon trips)0
The X-1
The Enola Gay
Overall it was a great trip to washington as I managed to have it over a weekend where I didn’t have to do too much work and got to see some great stuff.
October 27th, 2009 by Kevin Withnall
Astricon was very informative. From learning more about Amazon EC2, to chan_skype they cover lots of things. Not every session was what I wanted to know but they did get you thinking about how to do things. There were sessions on large organisations and government systems where queues are seperated from media gateways and from servers where extensions connect. There was also a log on XMPP integration into asterisk and thats certainly something ill need to look into further.
Not all sessions were of the same quality. Some were very well prepared and were informative, others were simply sales pitches for the products sold by the company presenting.
It was also nice to meet Jared Smith, Leif Madsen and Mark Spencer. The dCap breakfast was also great as it provided a chance to chat with some others on a technical level. There were certainly some very knowledgeable people there to talk to.
Comments Off 
