VoIP Hacks - O'Reilly's Latest Release

For Immediate Release
For more information, a review copy, cover art, or an interview with
the author, contact:
Kathryn Barrett (707) 827-7094 or kathrynb@oreilly.com

Changing the Telephony Landscape at Home and at Work
O'Reilly Releases "VoIP Hacks"

Sebastopol, CA--Voice over IP, or VoIP, may be the most important IP
technology to emerge in the last year or two. VoIP is a family of
technologies that enables voice applications and telephony to be carried
over an IP network such as the Internet. These technologies include
protocols, hardware and software standards, and computer programs. VoIP is
employed in telephony applications, from analog phones to next-generation
IP phones and wireless headsets, and in desktop voice chat services, from
web-based party-line chat services (like Yahoo Chat) to the well-known
Skype desktop voice-calling service.

According to Ted Wallingford, author of "VoIP Hacks" (O'Reilly, US
$29.95), "IP PABX shipments have now passed traditional PABX shipments and
two thirds of the world's largest companies indicate they'll shift
completely to pure VoIP telephony within the next few years, according to
research quoted by MSNBC.

"The subject of VoIP is absolutely crucial to enterprise decision makers
and Joe Blow consumers alike right now," Wallingford continues. "The
infrastructure upgrade cycle triggered by VoIP is transforming corporate
networks, just as home users are seeing their telephony habits
transformed. I haven't had a traditional landline in my home since early
2004, and I've saved hundreds of dollars as a result. VoIP changes the
telephony landscape at home and at work."

Wallingford wants to make the technology more approachable and more
useful. "Everybody from Philips to Netgear--big-name consumer electronics
firms, are introducing VoIP hardware to compliment the explosion of VoIP
services that sprung up in 2005: Skype, Google Talk, Gizmo, and of course,
Vonage. All of these new products and services are hackable to some
degree, and VoIP Hack explores useful and unconventional ways of exploring
and customizing them."

After reading "VoIP Hacks" people will be able to integrate all kinds of
voice services together in very personal ways. Wallingford says, "Some
readers may choose to forward calls to their home phone line into the
Skype network so they can answer them on a laptop. Other users may fashion
their own telephone privacy management or find interesting ways of
converging telephony and other electronics--like X10 electrical controls,
for example. It's hard to say which of these concepts is the most
important or the most consequential, because there's really something in
this book for everybody!"

Topics covered by the book include:

-Creating a software PBX with Asterisk
-Making free long-distance calls
-Gauging VoIP readiness on an enterprise network
-Using SIP, H.323, and other signaling specifications
-Providing low-layer security in a VoIP environment
-Employing IP hardphones, analog telephone adapters, and softphones
-Setting up voice mail and recording conversations

Let  "VoIP Hacks" serve as your introduction to the world of VoIP and
teach you how to use it to save money, be more productive, or just impress
your friends. If you love to tinker and optimize, this is the one
technology--and the one book--you must investigate.

VoIP is among the many web telephony technologies covered in depth at
O'Reilly's Emerging Telephony Conference (ETel), to be held January 24-26,
2006, in San Francisco.  Not "Yet Another VoIP Conference," ETel examines
the best of what's happening at the cutting edge of the entire IP
telephony spectrum now, and how new technology is being deployed by
forward-thinking pioneers. More information can be found at:
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/etel/.

Additional Resources:

Several sample hacks, including, "Wire Your House Phones for VoIP," "Skype
with Your Home Phone," and "Build a Standalone Voicemail Server in Less
Than a Half-Hour," are available online at:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/voiphks/chapter/index.html

For more information about the book, including table of contents, index,
author bio, and samples, see:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/voiphks/

For a cover graphic in JPEG format, go to:
ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/graphics/book_covers/hi-res/0596101...

VoIP Hacks
Ted Wallingford
ISBN: 0-596-10133-3, 306 pages, $29.95 US, $41.95 CA
order@oreilly.com
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Sebastopol, CA 95472

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