Suggestions for Computer Answering Systems?

{e}N0S asks: "Just got done watching the movie Brainscan and it got me wanting my computer to handle my telephone again. Features like: menu systems, custom greetings based on caller id, remote access, voice recognition ("igor hold" "holding") and such would be ideal. Have you Slashdot readers implemented something like this, and do you have tips on good software?"

Comments

Vgetty

[lubeboy]

Vgetty From the web page: Vgetty turns your voice modem into an answering machine. It adds voice capabilities to mgetty. This means, that you can handle data, fax and voice calls on one telephone line. How good all this works depends strongly on the modem you have. There are many modems with bad voice implementations and quite a few more expensive ones with a good hardware and firmware.

Re:Asterisk

[veneficus]

I've been using Asterisk successfully for over 6 months at my house. It's like a media center for your telephone -- You can connect so many disparate telephony technologies together to make the mother of all frankensteined phone systems!

Pound for pound, Asterisk is the best solution for computer telephony in the Linux arena. Bayonne is progressing, but it's not to the level yet that Asterisk has had for half a year now.

Asterisk supports SIP, H323, MGCP, SCCP, ISDN, PSTN, PRI, just about anything you can throw at it that has an ominous sounding acronym.

Besides that, the Asterisk people are helpful if you demonstrate that you're interested in learning, not just the quick fix.

Come check out #asterisk on freenode(openprojects) or http://www.asterisk.org to see what Asterisk can do for you!