[Asterisk-Dev] Implementing Community voice mail using Asterisk

[Arun Garg]

hi all
I am a student and want to develop a "community voice mail" service using
Asterisk PBX. The Community voicemail may be understood as telephony
counterpart of normal email and is widely available in US for quite some
time.

I want to develop a scaleable application, in which users should be able
to send and receive messages through PSTN,PBX,IP telephony and email.
I have read some documents regarding Asterisk but i am not getting a hang
on the following questions:
1. what should be a 'good'(read least cost) hardware configuration for the
development of the application and its deployment later on.
2. Can I start out without having any Digium hardware at all?
3. What is the URL of if Some kind of introduction to coding an
application for asterisk exists?

I understand that there are quite a lot of experts on this mailing list
and such types of question may sound too simple for them to answer.But the
answer to these questions mean a lot to me.
I will be very thnakful if any generous soul answers these questions.A lot
of  newcomers might be having the same questions.
thanks
arun