“Six years ago, Mark Spencer started his own Linux technical support business. Unlike other tech startups at the time, he spent his money frugally. Spencer had to; he didn’t even have enough to pay for an office PBX system, which can cost up to several thousands of dollars. ‘I had about $4000 [EUR 3300] to start it out with, and I wasn’t about to buy a phone system, so I figured I’d just make one,’ he says.”
I’m wondering if there’s any company who builds a little of this functionality into cordless, landline phones? For example, why can’t I find a phone on the consumer market that will send all calls from my boss automatically to voicemail after 9pm without ringing the phone?
Or allow me to set up different ring tones depending on who’s calling? Or a button I could press for a ‘do not disturb’ message that tells callers I’m busy and to leave a voicemail, or else press 1 if it’s an emergency to ring the phone. Also, have it automatically answer the phone and tell everyone but telemarketers to press 1 to ring my phone, but be flexible enough so that I could include a ‘whitelist’ of phone numbers to bypass this message.
You know, the kind of stuff that should’ve been available 10 years ago!
Edited 2006-01-16 23:36
Uhm, having been the administrator of an asterisk box, you CAN do all of that, and you could set it up straight on a linux box at home. Check out plutohome.com, it’s supposed to be a project that goes towards that exact thing. Or just go with Asterisk@Home. Very easy to set up, and you can get wireless VOIP phones.
Leech
Notice I said …
I’m wondering if there’s any company who builds a little of this functionality into cordless, landline phones?
To me, this seems like one of those tasks where, for my small one-bedroom apartment, having a PC doing the work behind the scenes just seems like overkill.
Asterisk is great. We’ve been using it in a 30+ person company for over a year. It saved us a ton of money. I’ve known Mark since around the time he was starting Linux Support Services and coding gaim. He interviewed me for a pretty funny job. I thought I was being hired as a sysadmin for an ISP, but I later found out they basically hired me to shut the place down because the owner didn’t know how to.