An Introduction to @Tropo
Tropo is a Cloud API for voice, SMS, and IM. It's kind of similar to Asterisk wherein you can use it to build your own digital PBX by writing up some simple code. But really, it's more than that. Because it not only supports voice, but SMS and IM as well, the integration possibilities for this API are endless. Need to send out voice and text alerts to people? You can do that with Tropo. Need to have conference calls with other people? You can do that with Tropo. Need a support hotline with automatic call queueing, call recording, on-call games, text-to-speech and speech recognition support, and a way for customers to pay by phone? I think you get my point by now.
How To Setup Asterisk@Home
About 5 or 6 years ago, a high school friend of mine, Alex Blank, approached me and asked me to help him out with an article he had been asked to write on the Asterisk@Home (now Trixbox) PBX system. At the time, I had a pretty rough idea about what a PBX and VoIP was, and Asterisk was fairly new, so I had quite a bit of catching up to do in order to understand where we were going with this.