Category Archives: Internet/Web

Our Favorite All-You-Can-Eat Deals in Cyberspace

Monday, May 15, 2023

Let’s begin with a mea culpa. We’ve been wrong on a few all-you-can-eat deals over the years including the CloudAtCost switcheroo, the Google Voice fiasco, and a few other cloud provider implosions. But our overall track record has been pretty good over the past decade, and today we have some fresh deals that are worth a careful look. We, of course, would encourage everyone to perform their own due diligence and at least acknowledge the cautionary note: "If a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is." Having said that, these are all deals that we continue to use and to rely upon as this is written.

Free Oracle Cloud Hosting for Life

We’ve previously written about the free Oracle Cloud hosting deal so we won’t dwell on it here other than to provide a link that will show you how to sign up and use the Oracle Cloud to host your Incredible PBX servers for life at no cost, up to four of them. Here’s the link.

Domain Names at Cost

There are lots of sources to acquire domain names whether you need one or dozens. But nobody comes close to matching Spaceship pricing across the board. Here are some examples: .com for $8.80/year, .org and .net for $9.80, .us for $6.48, and .uk for $5.23.

VPN Unlimited for Life

Whether you use a VPN for anonymous protection while surfing the web or for access to premium movie services while visiting countries that block some services, a lifetime VPN subscription is a worthy investment. In this case, waiting for the deal to come along is worth a little patience. Our favorite lifetime service is VPN Unlimited which, as recently as November 2021 was selling for $18. Today it’s $199.99. Two weeks ago it was $99. There are numerous VPN for Life services but, if you stray from VPN Unlimited, we would encourage you to sign up for a one month plan to be sure it meets your needs in terms of performance and reliability with services such as Netflix. In the alternative, make frequent visits to LowEndTalk, LowEndSpirit, and StackSocial and await the next deal. It won’t be very long.

Unlimited Music Streaming Services

Perhaps the greatest blessing for parents was the arrival of unlimited streaming music services which all but eliminated the risk of being sued or prosecuted for music piracy. If you have a kid in college, the best deal on the planet is Spotify’s 4-year, $4.99 a month plan which provides access to their entire music catalog as well as a Hulu subscription. While you only get one stream at a time, lucky parents will soon discover that their listening hours rarely conflict with the waking hours of college students.

For Amazon Prime subscribers, Amazon has recently sweetened their music deal with Amazon Music Prime which provides free streaming access to 100 million songs. You can build playlists and so long as you stream them in Shuffle mode, Amazon will play all of your playlist selections before injecting any other content. Quite a deal.

Unlimited Home Internet Service

If you’ve grown weary of Comcast, Spectrum, and WOW regularly moving their pricing goalposts, you’ll be pleased to learn that both T-Mobile and Verizon now offer Home Internet Service with no data caps. We actually use T-Mobile’s offering in two locations so the first costs $30 a month with a Magenta Max cell plan and the second costs $50 a month, still a deal compared to the cable companies. Even in remote areas, we’ve found the download speeds to be quite reasonable at 200+ Mbps. And, with T-Mobile, the price is guaranteed for life. With Verizon and a qualifying cell plan, the monthly cost is $25 a month with a 2-year price guarantee. Both will partially cover early termination fees from your previous cable provider.

Lifetime Cloud Storage Services

We would be the first to warn you that lifetime cloud offerings can be a slippery slope simply because the provider’s monthly costs never go down. So long as their subscription model provides more revenue than their cost of doing business, they will probably stay around. Once the math changes, your investment AND your data goes down the toilet along with the provider. Having said that, we’ve signed up with pCloud which has been in business for a decade and boasts a subscriber base of 16 million users. Their lifetime 2TB Individual Plan provides 2TB of storage and 2TB of monthly download bandwidth for $399. Their 500GB Individual Plan provides 500GB of storage with 500GB of monthly download bandwidth for $199. Both plans include a PUBLIC folder (ours is here) in which you can store files with download links that are accessible anonymously using web browsers, wget, and curl. All of their monthly and lifetime plans include a 10-day money-back guarantee. Rave reviews are available from numerous sources using a Google search for pcloud reviews.

On the other end of the usability spectrum is the first provider we tried, Internxt. We bought their 1TB lifetime offering for €99.00, and it’s no longer available. Instead, they now offer a 2TB lifetime plan for $299 or a 5TB plan for $499. The gotcha with Internxt is their crippled download service. It only supports downloads using a web browser. Wget and curl downloads all fail with their support staff professing surprise or ignoring support requests. Steer clear!

Lifetime Email Hosting for BYO Domains

Email hosting is something that most of us take for granted, either because we have a free service from Google or Microsoft or because our Internet provider provides "free" email accounts. The old adage that you’re being penny-wise and pound-foolish seems particularly appropriate here. Your email service is a key critical component particularly if you’re in business. Our solution and the one we recommend is the MXroute Lifetime Plan for $199. With it, you can host unlimited domains and unlimited email accounts with a storage limit of 10GB and 300 outbound emails per hour. They have awesome tutorials to help you get started.

Originally published: Tuesday, May 23, 2023

Need help with Asterisk? Visit the VoIP-info Forum.

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors

FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.

BOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.

The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.

VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!

Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.

Adiós Twitter: Introducing Mastodon for the VoIP Community

Friday, November 18, 2022

#FollowFriday seemed an appropriate day to introduce Mastodon, our decentralized solution to the Twitter meltdown. If you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple weeks, here’s a quick snapshot. Elon Musk buys Twitter for $44 billion. Elon fires half of existing Twitter staff. Elon bans Twitter employees from working at home. Elon, the Free Speech champion, fires Twitter employees that criticize his misleading tweeets. Elon gives remaining Twitter employees an ultimatum to sign a pledge to work under grueling working conditions or leave with three months of severance pay. 75% of remaining employees refuse to sign the pledge, and Elon locks the doors.

Meanwhile, the Mastodon alternative explodes to over 7 million users in a single week. Today we want to introduce you to Mastodon and encourage each of you to take it for a test drive. It’s free. It’s decentralized. And it’s incredibly easy to take advantage of the independence that the Mastodon social media platform offers without worrying about a billionaire ever putting the platform in jeopardy. A week ago we couldn’t spell Mastodon, and today we have a thriving, independent Mastodon platform that offers you almost everything that it took many of us years to build on Twitter. You can sign up for a free account here. Then have a look at our Public (a.k.a. Federated) platform here.

I was born before the world wide web. We can't imagine living without it. Although I can because I did live before it. I create this data visualisation to tell this stor#Innovation #Technology #internet #datavisualisation pic.twitter.com/HrgUjpipeI

— James Eagle (@JamesEagle17) June 3, 2022

The beauty of the Mastodon design is you get the best of both worlds. You can enjoy the content of everyone that anyone on your Mastodon instance chooses to follow while also participating on a local platform that is dedicated to the interests of the Incredible PBX and VoIP community. There is no other VoIP, Asterisk, or FreePBX platform for Mastodon today!

Getting Started. Once you’ve signed up for an account, the first thing you will want to do is to Enable the Advanced Web Interface in Settings. This provides simultaneous views of both your Local community and the Federated community through the web interface. The Federated view already is populated with a feature-rich content collection much like what it took many of us years to create as Twitter users. We should note that Mastodon is a very mature platform offering web access as well as a number of excellent apps for iPhone and Android users. We’ve also started a thread on VoIP-Info.org forum with numerous tips and tricks to get you up to speed on Mastodon. Come join the party!

Here’s our favorite Getting Started with Mastodon article. Start here.

Originally published: Friday, November 18, 2022

Need help with Asterisk? Visit the VoIP-info Forum.

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Happy Fourth: Our Gift to You — 17+ Years of Nerd Vittles

Monday, July 4, 2022 / 5 Comments on Happy Fourth: Our Gift to You — 17+ Years of Nerd Vittles

Originally published: Monday, July 4, 2022

Need help with Asterisk? Visit the VoIP-info Forum.

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors

A Walk on the Wild Side: Meet Incredible PBX for MX Linux

Monday, May 16, 2022 / 1 Comment on A Walk on the Wild Side: Meet Incredible PBX for MX Linux

This week’s adventure is just for fun. It’s a VirtualBox® Beauty featuring Incredible PBX®, Asterisk® 18, FreePBX® 15, and MX Linux 21.1. If you’re unfamiliar with MX Linux, it is one of the slickest Debian aggregations because it seamlessly integrates a desktop GUI featuring Xfce Desktop, KDE, and fluxbox into a Debian 11 platform with native support for LibreOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, SAMBA, and some awesome games and music utilities including Clementine. If all of these apps sound like Greek, then you owe it to yourself to spend an evening or weekend exploring MX Linux while enjoying most of the integrated functionality of the Incredible PBX 2021 platform. Did we mention that printer integration is seamless with most of the major brands so you can enjoy the office suite without missing a beat by abandoning your Mac or Windows desktop.

What would we use this for? The short answer is not for production. The long answer is it’s a perfect complement for a traveling Chromebook where you want to connect back to your PBX mothership while retaining full functionality of a desktop computer back home at zero cost. VirtualBox is free. Incredible PBX is free. MX Linux including our bundled .ova image is free. And an 8GB Chromebook with 64GB of eMMC storage is dirt cheap. So what’s not to like?

Installing Oracle VM VirtualBox

Oracle’s virtual machine platform inherited from Sun is amazing. It’s not only free, but it’s pure GPL2 code. VirtualBox gives you a virtual machine platform that runs on top of any desktop operating system. In terms of limitations, we haven’t found any. We even tested this on an Atom-based Windows 7 machine with 2GB of RAM, and it worked without a hiccup. So step #1 today is to download one or more of the VirtualBox installers from VirtualBox.org or Oracle.com. Our recommendation is to put all of the 100MB installers on a 4GB thumb drive.¹ Then you’ll have everything in one place whenever and wherever you happen to need it. Once you’ve downloaded the software, simply install it onto your favorite desktop machine. Here’s a link to get VirtualBox running on a Chromebook. Accept all of the default settings, and you’ll be good to go. For more details, here’s a link to the Oracle VM VirtualBox User Manual.

NOTE: The Incredible PBX for MX Linux VM requires a VirtualBox 6.x platform. Adjust screen size in View -> Virtual Screen.

Installing the Incredible PBX for MX Linux Image

To begin, visit our SourceForge page and follow the steps to assemble the 8GB+ .ova image of Incredible PBX with MX Linux.

Next, copy it to your VirtualBox desktop machine and double-click on the Incredible PBX .ova image. Then click Import. Once the import is finished, you’ll see a new Incredible PBX for MX Linux virtual machine in the VM List of the VirtualBox Manager Window. Let’s make a couple of one-time adjustments to the Incredible PBX configuration to account for possible differences in sound and network cards on different host machines.

(1) Click once on the Incredible PBX virtual machine in the VM List. Then (2) click the Settings button. In System tab, verify Hardware Clock in UTC Time is checked. In the Audio tab, check the Enable Audio option and choose your sound card. In the Network tab for Adapter 1, check the Enable Network Adapter option. From the Attached to pull-down menu, choose Bridged Adapter. Then select your network card from the Name list. Then click OK. That’s all the configuration that is necessary.

Running Incredible PBX for MX Linux in VirtualBox

Once you’ve imported and configured the Incredible PBX for MX Linux Virtual Machine, you’re ready to go. Highlight the Incredible PBX virtual machine in the VM List on the VirtualBox Manager Window and click the Start button. The standard Linux boot procedure will begin and, within a few seconds, you’ll get the familiar Linux login prompt. Choose Other from the pull-down list and enter root for your username and password for your password.

During the bootstrap procedure, you may see a couple of dialogue boxes pop up that explain the keystrokes to move back and forth between your host operating system desktop and your virtual machine. Remember, you still have full access to your desktop computer. Incredible PBX is merely running as a task in a VM window. Always gracefully halt Incredible PBX just as you would on any computer.

Here’s what you need to know. To work in the Incredible PBX virtual machine, just left-click your mouse while it is positioned inside the VM window. To return to your host operating system desktop, press the right Option key on Windows machines or the left Command key on any Mac. On Linux desktops, press the right Ctrl key. For other operating systems, read the dialogue boxes for instructions on moving around. To access the Linux CLI, login as root with the default password: password.

Once the Xfce Desktop displays, click on the Xfce Terminal Emulator icon in the left menu bar which will drop you into the Linux CLI.

First, create a new end-user account which we will explain in a minute. Just enter the following command: adduser nerd.

Next, update your admin password for Incredible PBX web access: ./admin-pw-change.

Then update your admin password for web applications: ./apache-pw-change. You’ll need these admin passwords to access the web GUI to manage your PBX as well as to use the AsteriDex and Reminders web apps.

Finally, run ./timezone-setup to set the correct time zone for your virtual machine.

Make note of your virtual machine’s local IP and time by typing pbxstatus. You’ll need this IP address to log into the Incredible PBX GUI using Firefox on the Xfce Desktop.

Setting the Date and Time with VirtualBox

If pbxstatus still shows an incorrect time, manually set the date and time and then update the hardware clock. Here’s how assuming 05160709 is the month (May), day (16), and correct time (7:09 a.m.) of your server:

date 05160709
clock -w

Returning to the Xfce Desktop

Now let’s return to the Xfce Desktop and close the terminal window. Type exit and press ENTER.

MX Linux won’t let you run many of its desktop applications while logged in as root. To switch to the nerd user we created above, do the following. Click on the Application Menu icon in the bottom left column. Then click the Lock Screen icon at the top of the applications menu. When the familiar login screen reappears, log back into your virtual machine as nerd using the password you set up when you created the account. Now explore all the fabulous features that MX Linux offers. And follow our Incredible PBX tutorial to get up and running in minutes.

Originally published: Monday, May 16, 2022

Need help with Asterisk? Visit the VoIP-info Forum.

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors

Many of our purchase links refer users to Amazon when we find their prices are competitive for the recommended products. Nerd Vittles receives a small referral fee from Amazon to help cover the costs of our blog. We never recommend particular products solely to generate Amazon commissions. However, when pricing is comparable or availability is favorable, we support Amazon because Amazon supports us. [↩]

An Electronics Home Makeover for the 21st Century

Saturday, October 23, 2021 / 1 Comment on An Electronics Home Makeover for the 21st Century

It was a sad day when we finally sold our Bozak Concert Grand speakers this year after enjoying them for over half a century. They were a graduation present from "Papa Gene" Newsom of Newsom’s Music Center when I graduated from law school in 1971. The sale got me thinking that I really needed to write about what has changed in home entertainment now that we’ve turned the page to another century. Back then, there was no Internet or Spotify, just bootleg 8-track tapes, an Apple record label, and great home audio made by McIntosh.

For those living in the present, let me tick off what we hope will save you a boatload of money in the coming years. We’ll cover Internet service providers as well as telephony, home audio and TV options, and home automation. Our plan here is to show you how to replace your $200-$500 a month Comcast, Spectrum, and cellular bills with setups that are more robust and considerably less expensive for the whole family.

Choosing a Cell Provider in 2021

With the advent of 46/LTE and 5G cellular service, the cell phone landscape in the U.S. has changed dramatically in the past two years. Unless you live in a remote location, 5G service now is available from all of the major U.S. carriers: T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T. This is where looking at the overall family picture can pay off royally. For example, T-Mobile bundles Netflix, Apple TV, and In-Flight WiFi plus discounted YouTube TV service with many of their plans, and there are substantial discounts compared with other carriers particularly if you’re on a family plan or are a military veteran or age 55+. If you wrote off T-Mobile years ago, it’s time to have another look. Their 5G coverage area now is second to none and pricing is typically 30-50% less than Verizon or AT&T. If you’re looking for the least costly all-you-can-eat cellular plan, then take a careful look at the Nerd Vittles special with Visible, which is the Verizon discount carrier. Unless you need great cell service during major sporting events inside the stadium, our $25 plan has no equal. Here’s a link to our article with the details.

Choosing an Internet Service Provider in 2021

If your cable TV and Internet bill is in the $150+ range and most are, we’ve got some exciting news for you. T-Mobile now has unlimited 5G Home Internet service for $50 a month. While it’s still a little difficult to obtain in all areas, check often. We’ve been searching for eight months in four cities and had signed up for email notice when it was available. We never got an email but, lo and behold, it popped up as available in Asheville NC when we checked last week. Once you have the T-Mobile router, it will work anywhere there’s a T-Mobile 4G/LTE or 5G tower. The results below were in Charleston, SC where the T-Mobile site shows it’s unavailable. Our one-week report card gives T-Mobile an A+ for ease of setup, web access performance, streaming media reliability, and VoIP telephony. There literally have been zero hiccups. You can review our play-by-play adventure on the VoIP-Info.org Forum.

To achieve similar performance from the service providers offering wired service, you’re looking at $100+ a month from Comcast or WOW and at least $50 a month from Spectrum. And, unfortunately, in most U.S. markets, there is zero competition between the major providers. You get Comcast or nothing in many cities and Spectrum or nothing in others.

Choosing a TV Provider in 2021

Even if you’re stuck with Comcast or Spectrum for the time being, there’s still a silver lining. Drop their TV service immediately. Our last (and final) Comcast bill included $55 for hardware rentals, $23.55 in TV broadcast fees, and $13.92 in taxes. That’s nearly $100/month just to get television delivered to your house! That’s before you sign up for a single channel. Here’s a better idea. Once you’ve invested $50 to $100 in your Internet service, sign up for YouTube TV and enjoy unlimited streaming with numerous simultaneous streams, unlimited DVR recordings, 85+ channels including your local TV channels, and almost every sporting event you can name for $65 a month with no additional fees or contracts. The picture quality with a smart TV looks exactly the same as watching cable television. CNET rated it the "best premium live TV streaming service." If you’ve taken our advice thus far, your total home entertainment bill is $50 for T-Mobile Home WiFi and $65 for YouTube TV and includes free Netflix at no additional charge.

Choosing a Music Provider in 2021

Now let’s suppose you still have a teenager in college. Rather than worry about your kids pirating music and movies, here’s a better idea. Sign them up for Spotify with unlimited music plus Showtime plus Hulu for $5 a month for four years! The good news is they’re rarely up when you are so you, too, can enjoy their Spotify, Showtime, and Hulu accounts while they’re sleeping. We’ve never been particularly big fans of Sirius/XM after they pulled their stunt of cancelling lifetime subscriptions. But that lawsuit got settled and they righted their wrong in a most generous way. You not only got your lifetime subscriptions back, but you also got free streaming. While you can’t take advantage of the lifetime subscription any longer, you still can snag the service for about $5 a month if you wait for a deal. That gets you hundreds of music channels for your car plus streaming to your favorite phone, PC, or Sonos device so it’s worth a careful look if you like music.

Home Automation Basics for 2021

If you haven’t dipped your toes into home automation, it’s finally time. An inexpensive Amazon Echo device will get you started. They range in price from under $50 to a couple hundred dollars. Our favorite is the Echo Show 8 for $99. This will bring Alexa into your home and in many of the newer automobiles as well. The next step is to purchase a few smart light bulbs so you can light up your house when the sun goes down and turn off the lights when you crawl into bed at 8:30. There are lots of lights to choose from. Our favorites are Sylvania’s WiFi Smart Lights which can bring every color of the rainbow to your lamps for under $10. For everyday use, you can pick your favorite shade of white, and for holidays, you can set them to orange for Halloween and red and green for Christmas. Now buy yourself a Nest WiFi thermostat and never worry about the proper setting again. It’s that smart. Then get yourself an August Door Lock, and you’ll never have to fumble for your house keys again. Finally, link Spotify with Alexa, and every song on the planet awaits your command. Get hip, dude!

TIP: Using our Amazon referral links helps keep the lights burning brightly at Nerd Vittles.

What About Telephony?

We saved the best for last. Hopefully, you don’t still have a Ma Bell telephone hanging on the wall in your kitchen. But, if you do, today’s your lucky day. You can dump Ma Bell and add a little gizmo called a Raspberry Pi to your home electronics collection. Then follow our tutorial and for about $100 and a monthly cost of a few dollars, you can enjoy home telephone service using your WiFi Internet connection forever. Welcome to the 21st century. Enjoy!

Originally published: Saturday, October 23, 2021

Need help with Asterisk? Visit the VoIP-info Forum.

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors

Amazon’s Alexa Now Available for Incredible PBX

Tuesday, August 3, 2021 / 1 Comment on Amazon’s Alexa Now Available for Incredible PBX

Loyal readers already know that voice recognition applications occupy a special place in the Incredible PBX® toolchest. Over 8 years ago, we introduced Wolfram Alpha integrating the world’s largest almanac into Asterisk®. And today we’re pleased to add Amazon’s Alexa to the Incredible PBX fold for our latest Incredible PBX 2021 for Debian, Raspberry Pi and CentOS 7 builds. Just dial 5555 and tell Alexa what you’d like to know or do. If you’ve been sleeping under a rock these past few years, Alexa provides not only a thesaurus but also current news and weather, cooking tips and recipes, calendars, movie showtimes and data, Amazon purchasing, shopping lists, reminders, maps, music.everything, home automation control to turn on your lights, lock your doors and adjust your thermostat, sports scores and scheduling, grocery shopping, and almost anything else you can imagine asking for. And our special tip of the hat goes to Russell Grokett for his creativity in bringing the Alexa platform to the Asterisk community. Here’s a simple graphic showing the call flow in a typical Alexa call from any SIP phone connected to Incredible PBX:
Photo credit: Russell Grokett

Before we get started, let me offer a few words of caution. You’ll need to be a careful reader and follow the instructions below carefully to get Alexa working. Amazon uses OAuth 2 authentication which is secure (and tedious) by design. The good news is you only have to go through this setup exercise once after which Alexa will be available at any time without further tweaking. We’ve made some changes in Russell Grokett’s original design to hopefully simplify the OAuth procedure and to adjust some of the configuration to correctly interface with newer releases of the open source components including sox which handles the audio translations between Asterisk and Alexa. All of the code is licensed pursuant to GNU GPLv3.

Prerequisites. Before you begin, you’ll need a working Incredible PBX 2020 platform running CentOS 7, or Incredible PBX 2021 running Debian 10, or the latest Incredible PBX release for Raspbian preferably running on a Raspberry Pi 4 with at least 2GB of RAM.

Overview. There are four steps in today’s installation procedure. First, we will download and install a number of open source components on Incredible PBX by running a simple script. Second, you’ll need to sign up for both an Amazon account if you don’t already have one AND an Amazon Developer Account. Third, we’ll create an Alexa Voice Service application and set up the Alexa Security Profile for the application. Finally, using the credentials obtained during this setup process, we’ll configure the components on your PBX to talk to Alexa. Be advised that the Amazon license we will be using authorizes only private, non-commercial use. Today’s design does not meet Amazon’s terms for commercial and/or public use!

1. Installing Alexa Basics for Incredible PBX

Log into your server as root and issue the following commands to download and install the basic components to support Alexa integration into Incredible PBX:

cd /
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/incredible-alexa.tar.gz
tar zxvf incredible-alexa.tar.gz
rm -f incredible-alexa.tar.gz
./install-alexa

2. Creating an Amazon and Amazon Developer Account

If you don’t already have one, you can create an Amazon account at amazon.com. Write down your email address and password. You’ll need them in the following steps. Next, navigate to the Amazon Developer Portal and set up a free account using your Amazon credentials.

3. Creating Voice Service Application & Security Profile

After creating your Amazon developer account, we’re ready to create a product and security profile. Begin by logging into the AVS Dashboard. Click GET STARTED to begin.

Click PRODUCTS. Then click ADD NEW PRODUCT. Fill in form as shown below. Click NEXT.

Product Name: IncrediblePBX
Product ID: IncrediblePBX
Product Type: Application with Alexa built-in
Product Category: Communications
Brief Product Description: Alexa for Incredible PBX
User Interaction: Hands-free
Distribute Commercially: NO
Children’s Product: NO

In LWA Security Profile dialog, click CREATE NEW PROFILE. Fill in template. Then NEXT.

Security Profile Name: IncrediblePBX
Security Profile Description: Incredible PBX security profile

In the second LWA Security Profile dialog, copy your Security Profile ID, Client ID, and Client Secret to a text file so that you can use them in the following steps.

In the Allowed return URLs field, create two entries clicking ADD button after entering each:

http://localhost
https://actual-Incredible-PBX-IP-address:5000/code

Check the I Agree checkbox and then click FINISH.

Your Product should now appear as successfully configured in Alexa Voice Service overview.

Next, navigate to: https://developer.amazon.com/lwa/sp/overview.html.

Click Select a Security Profile and choose your IncrediblePBX profile. Click CONFIRM.

In the Consent Screen dialog, enter the following and then click SAVE.

Consent Privacy Notice URL: http://dummyurl.com
Consent Logo Image: leave blank

Verify your ClientID and Secret that you wrote down above.

Cut-and-paste the following as a single line of code into your favorite text editor. Or you can simply edit /root/Alexa-URL which contains the same code.https://www.amazon.com/ap/oa?client_id=YOURCLIENTID&scope=alexa%3Aall&scope_data=%7B%22alexa%3Aall%22%3A%7B%22productID%22%3A%22IncrediblePBX%22,%22productInstanceAttributes%22%3A%7B%22deviceSerialNumber%22%3A%2212345%22%7D%7D%7D&response_type=code&redirect_uri=http%3A%2F%2Flocalhost

Replace YOURCLIENTID in the above code substituting your actual Alexa Client ID.

Next, select the entire block of code that now includes your actual Client ID and paste it into the Address URL of your favorite browser. You should be prompted for your Amazon user credentials. Once you sign in, click ALLOW. You then should see an Unable to Connect error message. This is fine. What we actually need is the Token which now is shown immediately after code= in the Address URL of your browser. Copy everything after code= up to the &.

http://localhost/?code=YOURTOKEN&scope=alexa%3Aall

With YOURTOKEN, Client ID, and Client Secret in hand, proceed to the next section.

4. Activating Alexa in Incredible PBX

Log into Incredible PBX as root and navigate to the /root directory. Make a copy of grant-token.sh in case you make a mistake. Now edit grant_token.sh. Replace YOURTOKEN with your actual Token. Replace YOURCLIENTID with your actual Alexa Client ID. Replace YOURCLIENTSECRET with your actual Alexa Client Secret. Save the file and then run the script: ./grant_token.sh.

The script will return a JSON message that includes both an access_token and a refresh_token. It will be a very long single string that you should cut-and-paste and save for a rainy day. The string can be parsed in an editor so that it looks something like this:

Access tokens expire every hour, but this refresh token never expires. We’ll use the refresh token to generate a new access token whenever Alexa is run from an Asterisk extension. So cut-and-paste the very long refresh_token and save it with your Client ID and Client Secret.

Next, change to the /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin directory and make a copy of token.pl in case you make a mistake. Then edit token.pl and scroll to the my $post line (line 16). Replace YOUR_REFRESH_TOKEN with the refresh_token from above. Replace YOUR_CLIENT_ID with your actual Client ID. And replace YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET with your Client Secret.
Save the file.

TIP: If you decide to install Alexa on more than one of your PBXs, the setup process only takes a couple minutes. Complete Step #1 as documented above. Then copy the my $post line from token.pl that includes your credentials and replace the my $post line of token.pl script in your second PBX. Done.

Now you’re ready to try things out. From the command line, issue the command: ./token.pl

List the results like this: cat /tmp/token.resp

There should be no errors and the results should look something like this:

IMPORTANT: Don’t forget this step or future queries from Asterisk will fail since our test generated files with root permissions only: rm -f /tmp/token*

Now we’re all set to use Alexa from your PBX. From an extension on your PBX, dial 5555. When prompted, say "What’s the weather for today?" After receiving the response from Alexa, you can either hang up or say another query.

We’ve documented some Alexa queries and skills in this thread on the VoIP-Info.org Forum.

If you have problems getting all the pieces to work, check over the steps again. You may also wish to consult the original documentation. Ignore references to differing file locations.

Republished: Tuesday, August 3, 2021

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Review: The 2021 Cadillac Escalade – Everything a Tesla Isn’t

Sunday, February 14, 2021 / 11 Comments on Review: The 2021 Cadillac Escalade – Everything a Tesla Isn’t

Happy Valentine’s Day. We’re on our fifth year of our love-hate relationship with Elon and Tesla. After a second purchase of a Tesla with Full Self-Driving (FSD) and no cigar, it’s beginning to smell more like vaporware. Tesla now is morphing FSD into a "feature set" that includes Automatic Lane Changes, Summon from across the garage, AutoPark (maybe and sometimes), Traffic and Stop Sign Alerts, and AutoSteer on City Streets (coming soon). You’ll note that AutoSteer on the highways and interstates now has vanished even though Elon touted sleeping in the back seat while his Tesla drove him from California to New York. To juice end-of-year sales, Tesla even offered buyers a 90-day FSD subscription rather than making buyers fork over $10,000 for vaporware. In case you’re confused by Tesla’s new nomenclature, keep in mind that many vehicles have had most of these "FSD features" for years, but nobody else called it full self-driving much less charging $10,000 for it.

SuperCruise. Photo credit: cadillac.com

Which brings us to General Motors and the 2021 Cadillac Escalade with SuperCruise for an extra $2,500. Guess what? On all major highways in the United States, it offers hands-free Full Self-Driving so long as you sit in the driver’s seat and keep your eyes on the road. Does it park itself? Yes. Does it have Automatic Lane Change? Yes. Does it have a HUD display? Yes. Does it have Night Vision? Yes. Does the dashboard look like a glorified golf cart? No. In fact, the dashboard sports curved OLED displays measuring more than three feet in total width. Any commercial airline pilot will be drooling. Can it really drive itself without your touching the steering wheel? Absolutely. Is it perfect? Damn near. Will you ever buy a Tesla again? Probably not. This is especially true considering GM’s new electric Hummer EV is just around the corner and will also include SuperCruise.

Night Vision. Photo credit: cadillac.com

Night Vision. Photo credit: cadillac.com

Want to know more? Well, here you go. There’s a vertical wireless charging holster between the seats that works great with an iPhone or an Android phone. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto work perfectly without ever plugging in a cable. The Escalade dash now offers lots of apps and automatic updates. Welcome, Alexa. You now can say, "Open the Garage", or "Lock the Front Door", or "Turn on the Living Room Lights" from the comfort of your car. And our old favorite, Waze, works great to alert you to every speed trap on the road. Got a favorite radio station in a distant city? The Escalade has you covered with TuneIn. And Spotify and Pandora are as close as your dashboard. Every car these days has a backup camera. The Escalade has cameras everywhere, and you can view any of them from your dashboard. There’s even a zoom in and zoom out feature. The car has its own WiFi HotSpot, or you can connect to the Internet via a Personal Hotspot on your smartphone. And, yes, the car slams on its brakes before you hit something or someone in front of or behind your vehicle.

Finally, a word about Escalade fuel costs compared to Tesla Superchargers. If you’re planning to buy a Tesla to save money on fuel costs, DON’T. Back in 2016, Tesla touted that its superchargers would "never be a profit center." This may be Tesla’s biggest scam of all. Florida has some of the least expensive electricity rates in the U.S. Yet when you use a Supercharger in Florida, the cost is nearly 8 cents a mile. But that’s a mile according to the Tesla dashboard. Just because a Tesla shows 320 miles of range, don’t believe it. 320 miles of charge actually gets you about 240 miles of driving range at typical interstate highway speeds. When you factor that into the actual cost per mile, the number is closer to 11 cents a mile. For a vehicle such as an Escalade which can use regular fuel and still get 20 miles per gallon even by the EPA highway estimate, that translates into an almost identical cost per mile. Florida regular gas is selling for about $2.20 per gallon. While an Escalade is anything but fuel efficient, your actual cost per mile is nearly the same as driving a Tesla Model X using Tesla’s Superchargers for electricity. Funny how Big Oil has managed to make gazillions of dollars off gasoline sales charging the same prices as Elon’s "non-profit" superchargers.

For those that are wondering, would we buy the new Escalade? Absolutely. In fact, we already have. Put this car on your Bucket List. Or surprise your Valentine. It’s that good.

UPDATE: And now there’s this:

Originally published: Sunday, February 14, 2021 Updated: Wednesday, April 14, 2021

Meet Acer Spin 713: A Phenomenal Computer for All Seasons

Monday, December 7, 2020 / 1 Comment on Meet Acer Spin 713: A Phenomenal Computer for All Seasons

It’s a portable office. It’s a movie theater. It’s a LAMP server. It’s a desktop PC. It’s a tablet computer. It’s a Chrome browser. It’s an Android platform. It’s a Linux server. And it gets almost 8 years of free software and firmware updates. Meet the $629 Acer Chromebook Spin 713. And, if you hurry, it’s $80 off at Best Buy today.

The checklist of superlatives is almost too lengthy to mention: a touchscreen of unrivaled quality, a 12-hour battery, dongle-free ports galore: HDMI, USB-C, USB 3.0, microSD slot, and headphone jack. While Chromium notebooks began as little more than a Chrome browser, that was then. The 2020 iteration includes complete Android integration as well as a feature-complete Debian 10 virtual machine platform supporting Apache, PHP 7, and the latest MariaDB/MySQL. If movies and television are your thing, Netflix and Sling TV transform the Chromebook into a near perfect viewing platform. As they say, seeing is believing. So here’s a snapshot from an iPhone that captures the quality of the 2256×1504-pixel (3:2 QHD) display. Suffice it to say, the display is as good or better than our $3,000 MacBook Pro’s screen.

Photo credit: robbie-bischoff.pixels.com

Did we mention Best Buy’s $629 price. This 2-in-1 is a steal. It’s $200 below today’s Amazon pricing and is $400 below the closest comparable Chromebook models. Some may recall that we reviewed the System76 Lemur Pro Linux notebook in August and raved about its pricing at $1322, more than double the cost of Acer’s Spin 713. Having used both machines, I can honestly say you lose nothing by choosing the Acer device, and you gain access to the entire Android platform including Google Play as well as Linux. And the Spin 713 converts into a touchscreen tablet simply by flipping the screen. The only downside is, if these machines go on sale for Black Friday, you will be hard-pressed to find one to buy.

Deploying a LAMP Server with a Chromebook

If you pick up one of these bad boys, here’s a quick primer on setting up a LAMP server on the Linux virtual machine. Begin by enabling it in the Settings tab. Next, click on the Linux Terminal option in your Applications. At the Linux prompt, set up a new root user password: sudo passwd root. Switch to the root user account: su root. Now enter these commands:

cd ~
apt update
apt upgrade
apt install apache2 apache2-utils -y
systemctl start apache2
systemctl enable apache2
chown www-data:www-data /var/www/html/ -R
apt install mariadb-server mariadb-client -y
systemctl start mariadb
systemctl enable mariadb
mysql_secure_installation
apt install php7.3 libapache2-mod-php7.3 php7.3-mysql php-common \\
php7.3-cli php7.3-common php7.3-json php7.3-opcache php7.3-readline \\
php7.3-mbstring php7.3-dev -y
systemctl restart apache2
echo "<?php phpinfo(); ?>" > /var/www/html/info.php
echo "ip a" > /usr/local/bin/ifconfig
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/ifconfig
ifconfig | grep "inet "

Make note of your Linux machine’s IP address (last command above) and use a browser to access and verify the PHP info for your server: http://Spin-IP-Address/info.php

In the alternative, use this FQDN: http://penguin.linux.test/info.php

In keeping with their tradition of idiotic obsolescence, the PHP developers dropped support for mysqli in PHP 7 which means the mysql_connect function to interact with MySQL databases fails. Here’s how to restore it:

mkdir /usr
mkdir /usr/src
apt install build-essential git
cd /usr/src
git clone https://github.com/wardmundy/pecl-database-mysql mysql --recursive
cd mysql
phpize
./configure
make
make install
cd /etc/php/7.3/apache2
echo "extension=/usr/lib/php/20180731/mysql.so" >> php.ini
systemctl restart apache2

The mysql and mysqli sections will now magically reappear in your phpinfo() listing.

Adding Clearly Anywhere Softphone to the Spin 713

As noted, the Spin 713 also is a fully functional Android platform so adding the Clearly Anywhere softphone is easy. Simply download the software from Google Play. Then run the app and enter your extension credentials and FQDN of Incredible PBX 2020 PUBLIC server.

Adding Linphone Softphone to the Spin 713

Adding the Linphone softphone is equally easy. Simply download the software from Google Play. Then run the app and enter your Linphone SIP credentials with the configuration setup documented in our tutorial. Linphone calls to other Linphone users and to Incredible PBX 2020 PUBLIC users or anyone with a SIP URI worldwide are free.

Installing OpenVPN for Android on the Spin 713

There are several ways to install OpenVPN on the Spin 713 platform. You can use the traditional method we’ve documented for Linux installs; however, you will lose the ability to use OpenVPN IP addresses from your desktop and browser. The better method is to install the OpenVPN for Android client from the Play Store. Next, send yourself an email with the .ovpn file you created for the Chromebook. Open the message using Gmail on the Chromebook and save the received file in your Downloads folder. Open the OpenVPN for Android app on your desktop. Choose the + icon to create a new Profile and select the .ovpn file from Downloads. Once installed, edit the Settings. In the IP and DNS tab, disable No Local Binding. Enable Override DNS Settings and specify 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 for your DNS servers. Enable PULL Settings.In the ROUTING tab, enable Bypass VPN for Local Networks and Block IPv6. Then Start the VPN Client by clicking on your saved Profile.

Installing Zoom for Debian 10 on the Spin 713

No computer platform would be complete without Zoom. Begin by downloading Zoom for Debian here. In the File Manager (Alt-Shift-m), navigate to your Downloads folder and double-click on zoom_amd64.deb to install the application. Once installed, it will appear in your Linux apps container. Right-click (HINT: tap touchpad with two fingers) on Zoom icon to add Zoom to your Shelf.

Installing phpMyAdmin for PHP 7.3 on the Spin 713

No development platform would be complete without phpMyAdmin. We found an excellent tutorial to get everything set up properly with a few minor changes. Your LAMP platform already is in place so skip down to Step 2 in the tutorial. There’s one important correction in the instructions. Step 4, item 1 should be: sudo mkdir /var/www/html/phpmyadmin. And accessing phpMyAdmin once installed should be: http://Spin-IP-address/phpmyadmin.

Mastering Chromebook Shortcuts on the Spin 713

If you learn no other keyboard shortcut, remember this one: Ctrl + Alt + /. That gets you the entire list of keyboard shortcuts on the Chromebook. These keyboard shortcuts are a bit like memorizing multiplication tables. The sooner you learn them, the happier you will be using your Chromebook. If you’re an avid Linux user, be advised that the Linux virtual machine and the Chromebook desktop share the same clipboard so you can easily copy-and-paste between the two environments. On the desktop, Ctrl-c copies to the clipboard, and Ctrl-v pastes data from the clipboard. In the Linux virtual machine, Ctrl-Shift-C copies to the clipboard, and Ctrl-Shift-V pastes data from the clipboard. Learn a few new shortcuts each time you use your Chromebook. You’ll be amazed how quickly your productivity improves.

Where To Go From Here?

While you’re getting your feet wet, here are some must-have’s for your Spin 713. For openers, feast your eyes on the 4K Nature Videos on YouTube. Prepare to be blown away.

Next, you’ll want a free Office Suite for your Chromebook. Our favorite is WPS Office which provides Microsoft-compatible versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint and a PDF Viewer/Editor.

For video editing, nothing comes close to PowerDirector. Also check out YouTube Studio.

For photo editing, Adobe Lightroom is the hands-down winner. Google Photos and Snapseed (our personal favorite) are also worth a careful look. Both are free compliments of Google.

For Nerds, check out the Crostini Wiki on Reddit. And master the Crosh terminal commands.

Originally published: Monday, November 16, 2020 Updated: Monday, December 7, 2020

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1. Installing Alexa Basics for Incredible PBX

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Deploying a LAMP Server with a Chromebook

Adding Clearly Anywhere Softphone to the Spin 713

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Mastering Chromebook Shortcuts on the Spin 713

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