The power of open source VOIP

Today seems to be Asterisk day. What is Asterisk, you ask? Asterisk is the open source PBX application that works by using VOIP. It rocks. I wrote a case study about it in the NOSI primer – it can allow for really great flexibility in building phone systems. And today, I learned about two online tools written with Asterisk, which would have been impossible a few years ago.

Committee Caller seems like an amazing tool. You choose the House or Senate committee you want to call, type in your phone number, and Committee Caller will sequentially dial each member of the committee so that you can leave your comment. I haven’t tried it yet, but I will.

Rondee is a new free conference calling utility, also built on Asterisk,  which has a much nicer and easier to use scheduling interface than Freeconference.com, and some very cool features -  like if you register your phone #, you never need to enter a pin, because the system is smart enough to know what conference call you’re supposed to be on – you’ll just get joined to it. It seems cool, and a great alternative to freconference.com. And it’s free, too. Asterisk made it possible for the company to provide this service without huge infrastructure costs.

I look forward to seeing more of what kinds of new and interesting tools can be powered by Asterisk under the hood. Oh, and did I mention – it works really well as a generic PBX – something lots of nonprofits need.