Linux

Hi all,

The iPhone 4, which was officially unveiled on the June 7th at a presentation in San Francisco, includes several new features that will benefit VoIP users. These are touted as:

• Multi-task when making a VoIP call, so customers can access other applications, such as a calendar, during a conversation.


• Built-in noise cancellation to eliminate background sounds when making VoIP calls.


• Videoconferencing will also be possible between iPhones via the Face Time feature, allowing remote employees to partake in business meetings.


• Longer battery life, while the screen resolution has been significantly improved compared to previous models.

The iPhone 4 will be available in the UK from June 24th.

Wow you may think this is amazing, but all these features have been available on Android phones (Google's Open Source mobile operating system) for ages. I've just got an HTC Desire from O2 and it's the No.1 phone in the world right now. It can do all of above and more, plus the Sipdroid VoIP client is free and works on 3G and WiFi using our VoIP services or anyone elses. Best of all it's free software and just works.


Another good blog post covers why the iPhone can never keep up with Android or Open Source:

"Through a bevy of handset makers, Android can offer a variety of phones that will make it difficult for
Apple to beat with just one hardware release a year. While it is hard to

ever go wrong with an iPhone, Android offers a ton of alternative form

factors, price points and carriers: Sprint (NYSE: S) has released the

first 4G phone on Android; T-Mobile has a new competitive Android phone

with a slide-out keyboard; the HTC Incredible sold by Verizon has been

flying off store shelves; and even Google’s Nexus One still boasts some

of the latest hardware. Not to mention new Android phones from Samsung

and LG (SEO: 066570) coming later this summer."

Google now have figures to show that 100,000 open source Android mobile phones are getting activated daily!

Gavin.

It's been a long process, almost 6 weeks, what with the new laws regarding PCI DSS compliance as of the 1st of October 2009, PCI DSS Scans, Business plans, website terms and connditions and many more things we have a merchant account at last!!!

This is mainly for our new Internet Telephony Service Provider called SureVoIP which is currently live with various customers but has no front facing sales and marketing site yet, only the admin and customer portal.

We'll keep you posted with a proper press release in due course.

Thanks,

Gavin.

Hi All,

Here's my second tip in the "OpenLDAP Quick Tips" series:

"You want to manage the rootdn users password using the same tools as you use for normal users in your OpenLDAP directory server":

You would normally set your rootpw in slapd.conf like so:



If you leave out the rootpw line and add the rootdn user as a normal user with a userPassword attribute:



This then means you can change the rootdn password with tools like ldappasswd etc.

Note: this example does not cover cn=config where you can change 99% of OpenLDAP settings and config on the fly. The equivalent rootdn entry in cn=config would look like:



you could use ldapmodify or similar to change above.


If you have an entry for our "OpenLDAP Quick Tips" series, why not e-mail your tip to us.

Hi All,

I might as well start easing back into the OpenLDAP Weekly Newsletter by doing some "OpenLDAP Quick Tips". Here's the first one.

"Check that the synchronisation state indicators of any slaves or masters are the same":



If they are the same, then replication has finished, otherwise replication has not finished or has failed.

For more technical detail, please see http://www.openldap.org/doc/admin24/replication.html#LDAP^[?]%20Sync%20Replication

The first official release is out, and you can see lots of new features . Unfortunately there are still a few Realtime LDAP^[?] driver bugs, but it's getting there.

It's well worth having a play with Asterisk 1.6.0 though.

Gavin.

There's an interesting interview video with Gerald Carter of Samba and Likewise Software talking about Likewise Open:

Likewise Open is an open source, community project sponsored by Likewise Software to integrate Linux, Unix, and Mac in Microsoft Active Directory and authenticate users with their domain credentials. Likewise Open is licensed under the open source licensing so you can download it for free. Or, if you would like to become involved with the project, join one of the community mailing lists and discuss Likewise Open with other users and developers.

Suretec use Likewise Open for some of its cusomters and it's very good if you need to go down that route....

W. Michael Petullo has published a very detailed article for Red Hat Magazine about using the Asterisk RealTime LDAP^[?] Driver and Fedora Directory Server.

It's well written and a good read, but just so you know, OpenLDAP can easily be used and should have been the first choice as I'm sure our partners in crime Symas would point out too

But hey, it's a Red Hat Magazine so you can't blame them really...

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has emerged as a popular technology for modern voice communications. Many organizations have replaced their analog or proprietary digital telephone systems with VoIP-based solutions. This allows the consolidation of telephone services into an existing IP infrastructure. In addition, using IP to host voice services lets the organization leverage existing expertise–while retaining all of the network’s management advantages. Though not without its disadvantages, VoIP provides a compelling option to those looking for a telephone solution.

This article will present a simple VoIP solution using Asterisk, an open source private branch exchange (PBX) product. It will show you how to install Asterisk, configure it using its LDAP backend, and connect to it using the Ekiga software VoIP client and a Cisco 7900 Series VoIP telephone to make calls.

The first comment about the article is right though:

In general experienced users from the Asterisk community advise against purchasing Cisco phones for business deployment with Asterisk and recommend Polycom, Aastra or Snom instead. Cisco phones are very expensive, difficult to setup, technical documentation is not easily accessible for the end-user, their SIP firmware has some nasty surprises and as far as I know that cheap SmartNet contract is still quite difficult to get.

The LDIF Schema and normal LDAP schema are available in non-FDS format and are contributed to the Asterisk Project by Suretec and maintained by Suretec.

Thanks,

Gavin.