101 Things You Can Do With Asterisk (and more)!

Asterisk is More Than Just a Phone System

Over the last nine years Asterisk has emerged as world’s leading open source telephony engine and tool kit, however most people simply know it as an open source phone system. Over the last five years that we have been involved in the Asterisk community, we have heard of dozens of different things that people are using Asterisk for or have done with Asterisk.

Personally, I can think of about 25 things (don’t worry I am not competing) that I have heard people do with Asterisk and as the visibility and viability of open source communications continues to grow, more and more applications and uses are coming out each and every day. In a effort to have a little fun and to catalog the many uses and applications of Asterisk, VoIP Supply has partnered with Digium, the creators of Asterisk, to run a contest here on the VoIP Insider to find 101 things you can do with Asterisk.

101 Things You Can Do With Asterisk Rules and Details

The premise is simple.

After reading the rest of this post, simply place a comment below that details a unique use or application of Asterisk that you have had a hand in using/deploying or one that you know of (duplicate instances will be deleted).

When we hit 101 things that you can do with Asterisk, we will pick one winner at random for a $1,500.00 VoIP Supply shopping spree (store credit) sponsored by Digium and VoIP Supply.

So what are you waiting for?

Let’s hear what you or someone else has done with Asterisk!

Update: Due to an overwhelming response, we are extending the contest until Friday of this week. Let’s see how many unique uses for Asterisk we can document!

Update: the contest is now closed. Our winner was Ashley Kitto. For more information visit our follow-up post.

Garrett Smith

Garrett is the former VoIP Supply CMO.

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  • Develop and host a virtual telephone contest. Nationwide contest, run multiple weeks and multiple times per day set to the atomic clock. Specific caller wins I.E. the 101st caller - YOU win!, call record the happy winner, and patch the winner to the local radio station in one of the 50 states the call came into. Also, record the runner-up and 3rd place winner for each contest. All while you watch and see the calls online. Fun and Cool Stuff.

  • (2) SMS asterisk to call me back on cell or at pay phone with a line to call long distance.

  • (3) Determine from your calendar how much you might want to speak to a particular caller (something like you do on GMail with email message filters)

  • Send an IM that prompts Asterisk to make calls out to link two different callers together.

  • (1) Ring your home phone(s) with a special ring pattern when your doorbell is pressed.

  • (2) Provide an IVR that give you access to your home automation to turn on/off lights, open the driveway gate, garage door, etc.

  • Integrating Asterisk with Nagios to automatically generate alerts for service outages.

  • Auto Dialing such as Reverse911/Community Notifications, Telemarketing, Political Polling, Automated Collections & Appointment Reminders

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Garrett Smith

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