[asterisk-users] Nomination for Coolest App in 2007

[Brad Templeton]

On Tue, Mar 06, 2007 at 11:14:15PM -0500, Steve Totaro wrote:
> Mine goes to chan_bluetooth.  Somewhat of a pain getting it going but I 
> am totally floored with how cool it is!
> 
> Thanks,
> Steve Totaro
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My, that is a cool app.  I look forward to running it when it's a bit more
stable.   While the outgoing call ability seems of limited use since
cell call quality is not that exciting to even unlimited night and
weekend minuets are probably not too attractive compared to 1 cent/minute
SIP terminations, there are a number of interesting possibilities:

    a) If your target has an unlimited calls to other customers/family/etc.
        plan, you would want to call them this way to save minutes.
    b) Handy on some carriers for checking cell voice mail.  (I have
        found that with many US carriers, however, you can call
        your cell phone with CID set to your cell number, and it goes
        directly to voice mail  Make sure you have a password!)
    c) Incoming calls, obviously handy.
    d) During daytime, program to receive incoming calls and say,
        "I am at my desk.  Please call me at xxx-yyyy or press 1 to
        have me call you back at <CID>" so you get
        better quality and don't bill cell minutes.  In the evening,
        assuming unlimited weekends, you might forward directly.

Can it send and receive SMS via bluetooth too?


I also like a lot the talk of coming softphones with bluetooth
headset support.   This would allow you to use your bluetooth
headset as an extension on your Asterisk pbx.   I happen to have
a bluetooth headset that plugs into my hard phone -- I wish more
hardphones supported them natively -- and that's handy.  This could
be just as good.   To really get it right you would want some
speech recognition so you could place calls from the bluetooth
headset by saying names and digits, as many cell phones can already
do.

Of course, a linux softphone could reside right on the asterisk box.
You could multi-dial your bluetooth headset and your hard phones and
answer where you like.