Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com

O’Reilly Media has released the Asterisk: The Future Of Telephony under under the Creative Commons license. Kudos goes to O’Reilly Media and the three authors, Jim Van Meggelen, Jared Smith, and Leif Madsen. Download links and Authors links are under the links at the bottom of the post.
Once I know the rules, I will post it in IPTELEPHONY in Google Groups.
Asterisk: FOT has received wide attention in the VoIP and IPPBX realm. It is a very well put together book that appeals to new comer to Asterisk as well as to the IPPBX pro. For information, I have listed the contents of the book below.

Contents of the Asterisk: The future of Telephony
Foreword

Preface

1. A Telephony Revolution
VoIP: Bridging the Gap Between Traditional Telephony and Network Telephony
Massive Change Requires Flexible Technology
Asterisk: The Hacker’s PBX
Asterisk: The Professional’s PBX
The Asterisk Community
The Business Case
This Book

2. Preparing a System for Asterisk
Server Hardware Selection
Environment
Telephony Hardware
Types of Phone
Linux Considerations
Conclusion

3. Installing Asterisk
What Packages Do I Need?
Obtaining the Source Code
Compiling Zaptel
Compiling libpri
Compiling Asterisk
Installing Additional Prompts
Updating Your Source Code
Common Compiling Issues
Loading Zaptel Modules
Loading libpri
Loading Asterisk
Directories Used by Asterisk
Conclusion

4. Initial Configuration of Asterisk
What Do I Really Need?
Working with Interface Configuration Files
FXO and FXS Channels
Configuring an FXO Channel
Configuring an FXS Channel
Configuring SIP
Configuring Inbound IAX Connections
Configuring Outbound IAX Connections
Debugging
Conclusion

5. Dialplan Basics
Dialplan Syntax
A Simple Dialplan
Adding Logic to the Dialplan
Conclusion

6. More Dialplan Concepts
Expressions and Variable Manipulation
Dialplan Functions
Conditional Branching
Voicemail
Macros
Using the Asterisk Database (AstDB)
Handy Asterisk Features
Conclusion

7. Understanding Telephony
Analog Telephony
Digital Telephony
The Digital Circuit-Switched Telephone Network
Packet-Switched Networks
Conclusion

8. Protocols for VoIP
The Need for VoIP Protocols
VoIP Protocols
Codecs
Quality of Service
Echo
Asterisk and VoIP
Conclusion

9. The Asterisk Gateway Interface (AGI)
Fundamentals of AGI Communication
Writing AGI Scripts in Perl
Creating AGI Scripts in PHP
Writing AGI Scripts in Python
Debugging in AGI
Conclusion

10. Asterisk for the Über-Geek
Festival
Call Detail Recording
Customizing System Prompts
Manager
Call Files
DUNDi
Conclusion

11. Asterisk: The Future of Telephony
The Problems with Traditional Telephony
Paradigm Shift
The Promise of Open Source Telephony
The Future of Asterisk

A. VoIP Channels

B. Application Reference

C. AGI Reference

D. Configuration Files

E. Asterisk Command-Line Interface Reference

Index

Links;
download book as a single entity,a PDF file.(4.5MB) USA1 USA2 UK NL
Download each chapter is a seperate PDF file (3.1MB) USA1 USA2 UK NL
O’Reilly Media
Jim Van Meggelen
Jared Smith
Leif Madsen

Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com

Asterisk has released information about a new release of Zaptel 1.2.12 and Asterisk 1.2.14 together with Zaptel 1.4.0-beta3 and Asterisk 1.4.0-beta4.
According to the Asterisk Development Team, This will very likely be the last beta release of Asterisk 1.4 before the final release, which is targeted for next Friday.

Also please check Asterisknow for Asterisknow versions of the above. Links at the end.

Here is the complete news release;

Zaptel 1.2.12 Released

The Asterisk Development Team is pleased to announce the release of Zaptel 1.2.12.

This release contains a number of updates:

* compatibility with Linux kernel 2.6.19
* bug fixes to the Xorcom Astribank driver (XPP)
* various other bug fixes

Thanks for supporting Asterisk and Zaptel!

Asterisk 1.2.14 Released

The Asterisk Development Team is pleased to announce the release of Asterisk 1.2.14.

This release contains a number of updates:

* a bug fix for the ExternalIVR application and addition of ’silence’ sound files to support it
* various SIP interoperability improvements
* memory and dialog leaks in the SIP channel driver
* a fix to music-on-hold random mode that was not really random
* an improvement to app_voicemail to ensure that the message duration is properly included in email notifications when voicemail messages are forwarded
* corrected a segfault issue during reload of the PostgreSQL CDR driver
* a change to no longer include a header file that does not exist on Linux kernel 2.6.18 (and caused a problem on Fedora Core 6)
* many other bug fixes

Thanks for supporting Asterisk and Zaptel!

Zaptel 1.4.0-beta3 Released

The Asterisk Development Team is pleased to announce the release of Zaptel 1.4.0-beta3.

This release contains a number of updates:

* compatibility with Linux kernel 2.6.19
* bug fixes to the Xorcom Astribank driver (XPP)
* support for Digium’s TE110P Rev C, VPMOCT064 and new revisions of the S110M and S400M FXS modules
* various other bug fixes

Thanks for supporting Asterisk and Zaptel!

Asterisk 1.4.0-beta4 Released

The Asterisk Development Team is pleased to announce the release of Asterisk 1.4.0-beta4.

This release contains a number of updates:

* a bug fix for the ExternalIVR application and addition of ’silence’ sound files to support it
* various SIP interoperability improvements
* memory and dialog leaks in the SIP channel driver
* a fix to music-on-hold random mode that was not really random
* an improvement to app_voicemail to ensure that the message duration is properly included in email notifications when voicemail messages are forwarded
* corrected a segfault issue during reload of the PostgreSQL CDR driver
* a change to no longer include a header file that does not exist on Linux kernel 2.6.18 (and caused a problem on Fedora Core 6)
* logging of dynamic queue member addition and removal in queue_log
* a minor redesign of many CLI commands to be more similar to previous Asterisk releases
* significant improvements to IMAP storage support for voicemail
* a change to the SIP channel to avoid offering formats (codecs) that cannot be transcoded due to lack of available transcoders (along with dynamic activation/deactivation of transcoders)
* support for G.722 16KHz (wideband) audio passthrough, recording and playback
* support for standard prompts in G.722 format
* many other bug fixes

Some of the changes in this release are behavior modifications from the last release; please review the UPGRADE.txt file.

This will very likely be the last beta release of Asterisk 1.4 before the final release, which is targeted for next Friday.

Thanks for supporting Asterisk and Zaptel!

Links;
Asterisk IP PBX And Zaptel

Asterisknow

Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com

If you not heard before, OpenPBX.org is a community driven software PBX project.OpenPBX in the same line of Asterisk but with differences. The most important differences between OpenPBX and Asterisk are;
Built-in STUN support,
The use of SpanDSP for better codecs
Full T.38 fax over IP support
Sqlite instead of Berkeley DB
Universal jitterbuffer,
POSIX timers to avoid Zaptel timing dependencies
Greater speed
Efficient dialplan execution.

Support is via mail list and Wiki
I am testing the current release on a FreeBSD 7. But I have not come across any major issues. I did have some trouble, my own making, with Zaptel drivers. You can help out the development by testing on your favorite platform, which includes NetBSD, FreeBSD 6.2 and 7, Mac OS X, and of course your favorite, happy feet, linux distribution.

Links;
OpenPBX home
OpenPBX wiki
OpenPBX mailing list

Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com

If you are wondering what is ASTLinux, You will have to visit ASTLinux site. I will try my best to describe it in a few sentences.
AstLinux is a custom Linux distribution centered around Asterisk, the Open Source PBX. Although Asterisk remains the core focus, other VoIP applications such as OpenSER are also available. AstLinux has many features that make it ideal for embedded and commercial Asterisk based solutions. However, it can be easily configured to adapt to nearly any situation.
AstLinux has been designed with running from Compact Flash memory in mind. However, it can also be installed to a regular hard drive like other distributions. AstLinux currently occupies around 40mb of disk space, so any Compact Flash card (or hard drive) of 64mb or larger will work perfectly.

AstLinux is also the premier Asterisk Live CD. The AstLinux ISO image is very small, yet it includes two AstLinux versions (net4801 and i586), Windows AutoRun support, and of course, el-torrito booting. Try the best asterisk linux distribution today!

ASTLinux documentation is also updated and available from VOIP-INFO.ORG Check out the links. The distribution itself available from Sourceforge, the new home of ASTLinux.
What’s in 0.4.4?
Changes:
- include rhino support
- include misdn support
- include arno’s firewall by default
- update net4801/wrap kernel config to include USB ethernet adapters
- update Asterisk/Zaptel versions (1.2.12.1/1.2.9.1)
- major build system improvements
- include openssl binary in build

Links;
ASTLinux Home
ASTLinux at Sourceforge
ASTLinux documentation at VOIP-INFO.ORG