I have read the book Asterisk now by Nir Simionovich, published in March 2008. The book was a big disappointment, the reason is that the book do not cover the software used in AsteriskNOW today. The book cover the Asterisk GUI but AsteriskNOW is using FreePBX instead which is totally different. One main reason to use AsteriskNow is to avoid the sometimes cumbersome task to install Linux or a similair operating system, download, compile and configure Asterisk using cryptic text files. So an accurate description of the GUI used is essential for a book like this and unfortunatly the book is to old. I do not intend to install an old version of AsteriskNOW just for a bookreview so I cannot tell how accurate the book is. So my recommendation is to wait for an updated version of AsteriskNow book.
Links
- A sample chapter Chapter-7-For-Annoyance-Press-1-Voice-Menus-and-IVR
- Link to the book AsteriskNow
February 18th, 2010 at 4:32 am
Hi Peter,
I admit that the book is outdated – it was published in March 2008, almost 7 months prior to the release of AsteriskNOW 1.5 which replaced the AsteriskGUI with FreePBX.
At the time of writing the book, Digium was focused on promoting the AsteriskGUI interface, thus, there was no indication that the interface would change.
There is a vast number of websites and manuals available on the Net for FreePBX, so I’m confident you’ll be able to setup AsteriskNOW at ease – even without reading an outdated book. While the GUI parts of the book are outdated, the rest of the book – dealing mainly with theoretical and general telephony isn’t outdated – and will surely give a newbie the information required to start swimming the Asterisk/Telephony world.
Regards,
Nir Simionovich
February 18th, 2010 at 7:58 am
You are 100% correct.
I read the FreePBX book http://www.it-slav.net/blogs/2009/11/26/book-review-freepbx-2-5-powerful-telephony-solutions/ and used that on my AsteriskNow installation.
The FreePBX book do also cover the theory behind telephony, more or less every book about Asterisk cover that area. What I wanted was some tricks&tips for my AsteriskNOW installation and the AsteriskNOW book did not help me.
For example: An mp3 player is missing and do not exist in the yum repositories that comes with AsteriskNOW so I installed it manually to get MusicOnHold to work. I was hoping that your book should help me with issues like that.
Is there any plan to write an updated version of your book? I would gladly read it.
Best Regards
Peter Andersson
February 22nd, 2010 at 4:19 pm
Hi Peter,
Well, I have to admit that Packt hadn’t approached me for writing an updated book, specifically due to the fact that they have other books about FreePBX. If you want to learn about other stuff that you can do with Asterisk, you can get my second book about Asterisk AGI programming – that will surely give you some ideas and tracks of implementation for new ideas.
I think that writing a “Tips and Tricks” book for FreePBX is a good idea, however, I have no idea how to even start it – as there are so many. How can you choose 20 or 30 topics for a book, when you have over 10,000 to choose from.
Regards,
Nir Simionovich