use Perl

I spent a fair bit of the weekend fiddling around with Asterisk and softphones on the mac. I want to get an asterisk system setup where I can have an answering machine here built into my server, and email me voicemails, and use it for outgoing conference calls.

I struggled for ages at first to get Asterisk setup - mainly because it just plain doesn't work out of the box on an intel mac. There are binary packages (which run under rosetta I assume) but they don't work. Compiling it myself it all works if I disable pbx_dundi.so and chan_agent.so - that took a while to figure out let me tell you!

So finally with it all working and a couple of free SIP/IAX accounts setup, I try and get the softphones to work. Let me just be straight up about this - it's all utter shite. The only promising option is the Gizmo project, but that requires you connect to their SIP network and doesn't work behind a firewall. Lame. I can't count the number of apps I tried (about 8 I think). I finally settled on JackenIAX.app, which sort of mostly works, but crashes when you answer the phone. Lame.

So for now inbound calls will be routed to my mobile during the day, and to an answer machine at night. I still haven't got a proper inbound number setup - need to consult with $work to see if they'll pay for that (it's only $2.50 a month, plus call charges).

All in, I'm a bit disappointed considering how long the intel macs have been out.

[Oh, and yes I know skype works perfectly well, but I want Asterisk]