I had recently put up a wanted ad for an apartment in the city. Had a few legit responses this morning and then I get this email from a fella who goes by the name “Asif”.. heh.
So we send a few emails back and forth – then he pops up on XMPP, I accepted not knowing who it was. I decided to blog it in hopes to make others aware (I have been fooled before). Now I would usually leave out personal information but this was clearly a SCAM!
Here is the conversation :
This gets better.
If you read within the convo he states that it is him sitting in his bedroom – I decided to investigate further…
Not only do the pictures of the place make it impossibly priced (just happened to be the exact amount I was looking to pay) – the guy was adamant about sending his ID and proving who he was – the damn pictures didn’t even match! The guy in the bedroom looks like Gates!!
Be careful – pay close attention to detail and never trust a man trying to rent his place from overseas.
Do you think this is a scam? Let me know.
As most of you Cogeco subscribers know, Cogeco is implementing a new “Pay Per Gigabyte” plan for any cap overages – according to the DSLReport forums – this should be fully functional as of June 1st. So I have taken the initiative to give these crooks a run for their money and TAX their service like all hell. A few days back when I received my 100GB cap email, they said they would credit my account for any overages (for this month… how generous…) – I immediately fired up hellanzb and logged into Merlins Portal. This screenshot is just the tip of the iceberg:
Take that Cogeco!
Anyway, my download queue is almost empty – I encourage you all to take advantage of their generosity.
Since the majority of my work as of late has been completely telephony based – I thought I would share some of my experiences with you (you may have noticed the last 5 or 6 posts – all Asterisk)
So here’s some neat stuff I have learned in my recent integration endeavors.
1. Asterisk can do almost anything, the System() function opens a huge window of possibilities.
Here’s why :
I needed to feed my fish while I was away on vacation and had to cook up a quick way to do this before I left. I setup a computer with a minimal Debian Etch install and attached a string to the cdrom drive. I then tied the string to a flat piece of plastic that would scrape along the top of the aquarium lid when the drive was ejected – thus dropping food into the tank. I then grabbed the machines public key and wrote a quick script to ssh to the box and eject the cdrom upon dialing an extension. Neat huh?
2. Asterisk + cURL = limitless possibilities.
Here’s why :
cURL is an extremely powerful application as it can send requests to a remote server – with ease. Just read the man page and you will see this is one of the coolest things ever. Not only can we post any information available to the server, we can grab info from the web and send it over the phone as well. I used it to create Asteristickies and it really was a breeze to set up.
3. We have only scratched the surface.
Here’s why :
Now that TTS is rock solid and voice recognition is on it’s way to the open source world (thanks Google) – we can integrate a whole new level of voice + web. Want to post a call to your blog? just have your * box transcribe it for you. Looking to adjust the temperature of your house? read you your email? This is already available and ready for action. The best part is this is only the beginning.
Every day I am looking for new creative ways to make Asterisk do something neat just because it can. I am looking forward to the day when E.164 is globally used and there is an Asterisk box in every home.
I got an email a few days back regarding the Jabber interaction with Asteristickies with some great suggestions for future features :
Hey Greg!
Wow, watching the forum, you’re really going to town on this! Awesome stuff.
I’ll have to install a newer build!
Perhaps you could think about a dream integration I have for
Asterisk/Jabber IM…
Imagine this:
- You have a jabber account
- You have a PIAF box.
You build a script that does this:
1 – When an incoming call comes in to a specific DID, you get the
following Jabber text message:
You have an incoming call to NXX-XXX-XXXX from ‘John Doe’
What would you like to do?
1 – let call go to voicemail (default; same as not responding)
2 – transfer to NXX-NXXX (pre-configured number)
3 – transfer to number entered in IM
4 – TTS text you type.
So, for example, if you were sitting in a meeting and an important
call notification came in,
you could, for example, TTS “I’m in a meeting, I’ll call back in 10 minutes”
Or, if you expecting a very important client call, force a transfer to
your cell phone. A way to
circumvent standard behaviour.
For this to work, it must all happen between the 1st ring and the
timeout to voicemail.
I think this would be a VERY awesome integration… don’t know how to
do it on linux, as I’m a
.Net Windows guy. I’ve built a mashup on Windows + Linux but just for
concept testing.
So I decided to investigate further – this is what I came up with.
Still only a proof of concept, you can imagine how this could benefit those with mobile devices and support teams.
I have successfully rolled out call transfer and call out, next in line are TTS (almost ready) and call forward.