Mark Spencer ( The original creator of the Asterisk Open Source PBX platform ) has posted a video on youTube presenting Digiums latest project, AsteriskNow.org

After evaluating all the free PBX GUIs for Asteriskfor a recent project Ive settled with www.trixbox.org (formally Asterisk@home)

Everybody is talking about the new Apple iPhone and feeds/news sites across the Internet are littered with pictures of this next generation phone.

However, after working in the handset industry for a number of years bets are that this will be another low – medium seller in the market. Why ?

1) No matter how quick the interface is text messaging is going to be quite difficult.

2) O2/vodafone are going to have this handset in testing for months before its released on a contract … and theres talk about only 1 major operator getting the contract for the iPhone .. in Europe this would be a disastrous approach.

3) Its huge !!!

4) Lets take the customer who wants their iPod/phone. Why not just buy a Nokia, it does the same job and with current subsidies will work around around 300-400 euro cheaper than the predicted iphone price !!

I recently got to install AsteriskNOW on a server in work. Using rpaths Linux applicance toolkit Digium have made a install cd which will (although will wipe your entire system) deploy a full working Asterisk PBX system will a nice AJAX GUI shielding the enduser from the often confusing configuration files.

However, after deploying it on a VMWARE testbed the ISO version has one serious bug. It will not allow saving of incoming dial plan properly. However, outgoing works just fine. A bug report has been submitted, and Digium have already assigned a developer to look at it.

Still the best GUI ive seen yet ( although not free ) is Bicoms PBXWare.