AdhearsionCon registration opens, Web telephony developers take note

I know what you’re saying: Adhear-what?

AdhearsionCon. Now open for registration.

Developing telephony apps these days has never been easier. Programmers have a variety of languages to choose from, several frameworks and APIs to refer to, and none of them cost much (or at all). Better yet, the inevitable convergence of telephony and Web has brought us innovative mashups and, in my view more importantly, a new generation of telephony and voice app developers. These developers are well-versed in Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, etc., savvy with third-party APIs, and immensely comfortable with Web technologies.

You may have heard of Twilio, Tropo, Teleku, QuickFuse, and the like. You definitely know about Skype, Asterisk, and Google Voice. And perhaps a bit curious about SIP. Not many folks have heard of Adhearsion (myself included), but it’s definitely something worth digging into.

For starters, Adhearsion is a framework written in Ruby to help developers code voice apps for the open source PBX, Asterisk. Why Ruby? Why Asterisk? (Check the FAQ, jack.)

It’s also open sourced and backed by one of the biggest names in cloud-based voice app development, Voxeo.

I would encourage any developer — Web or voice or anything else — to check it out, especially if you’re in the Bay Area. After all, I believe the world is a better place with you knowing how to bend open source telephony to your will.