Redial: Interactive Telephony

Shawn Van Every Shawn.Van.Every@nyu.edu
Fall 2007
H79.2574.1

Important Resources:

Syllabus (this page): http://itp.nyu.edu/~sve204/redial_fall07/
ITP Telephony Listserv: Subscribe
Class Wiki: https://itp.nyu.edu/~sve204/cgi-bin/pwiki/wiki.pl?RedialClass

Administrative:

Office Hours:

Tuesdays 2PM to 4PM and Fridays 3 PM to 5 PM
Signup: https://itp.nyu.edu/~sve204/cgi-bin/pwiki/wiki.pl?OfficeHours

Grading:

20% Assignments
25% Class Participation/Attendance
25% Final Project
15% Midterm
15% Presentation

Attendance:

Mandatory, unexcused absences will affect your final grade. If you are going to be absent, please let me know ahead of time if you can.

Tardiness:

Excessive lateness will affect your grade. Don't be late.

Laptops:

Laptop use is prohibited while other students are presenting or during discussion. While I am lecturing you may use them for note taking or class related work. In other words, respect your fellow students and don't check your email.

Reading:

Required:

Asterisk The Future of Telephony, Second Edition - O'Reilly - Jim Van Meggelen, Jared Smith and Leif Madsen
(First Edition, Published under Creative Commons and available online at: http://www.asteriskdocs.org/modules/tinycontent/index.php?id=11 or http://itp.nyu.edu/~sve204/redial_fall07/AsteriskTFOT.pdf)
Wired for Speech - How Voice Activates and Advances the Human-Computer Relationship - Clifford Nass and Scott Brave

Websites:

Asterisk Documentation Project (seems to be down)
voip-info.org
O'Reilly Emerging Telephony

Assignments:

This class will have weekly homework assignments, readings along with a midterm and final project. All are required. Failure to do assignments or participate in class discussion on readings will adversely affect your grade. Assignments will be posted on syllabus each week. Please check syllabus for current assignment even if they aren't mentioned in class.

Presentations:

VoIP and Internet Telephony are fast moving areas. Telephony in general has a long history and has had dramatic effect on culture and society around the world. Unfortunately, 14 weeks is not enough time to cover all of the emerging technical aspects nor the rich cultural and societal impact that telephony has had. In order to add more variety into the course material each student will be assigned to a group to give a short (15 minutes maximum) presentation on one historical, cultural, societal or emerging technical aspect that we are not covering in course material.

Weekly Rundown:

Week 1 - September 6

Introductions: Syllabus, Examples, VoIP basics and Asterisk
Handout
Assignment:
  • Find some interesting examples of using the phone for performance, information retrieval, social purposes and so on. Add them to the class wiki and prepare to dial or otherwise show/talk about in class.
  • Get up and running with your Asterisk account. Try some simple commands in your Dialplan such as SayDigits, Playtones, Playback, and so on. Use the Asterisk book or voip-info.org as a reference.
    • Reading:
  • ART BY TELEPHONE: FROM STATIC TO MOBILE INTERFACES
  • Chapters 1 and 5 (Ignore "Using the Dial() Application") of Asterisk: The Future of Telephony

    • Week 2 - September 13

    Asterisk 101: Voicemail, Manager Interface, Basic Unix and more with the Dialplan
    Handout
    Assignment:
  • Try out the Voicemail System
  • Using the Dialplan, build your own Voicemail System
  • Try something else out using the Dialplan
    • Reading:
  • Chapters 5 (again) and 6 in Asterisk book
  • VoIP Hacks Handout

    • Week 3 - September 20

    Softphones and Dialplan (Continued): Advanced Commands
    Handout
    Assignment:
  • Get up and running with a softphone.
  • Create a find me, follow me application.

    • Week 4 - September 27

    Programming Asterisk: PHP 101, AGI Scripting
    Handout
    Assignment:
  • Create a wake-up call service, get as fancy as you like

    • Week 5 - October 4

    Programming Asterisk Continued
    Bridging to the Web
    Handout
    Assignment:
  • Get familiar with PHP programming and try some simple AGI scripting.
  • A good idea would be to duplicate one of your previous assignments using PHP and AGI
  • Brainstorm for Midterm: Email me your thoughts

    • Week 6 - October 15 (9:30 AM, Rescheduled from Oct 11)

    Midterm Workshop and Review
    Notes
    Assignments:
  • Midterm Work
  • Remeber to document and add your URL to the wiki

    Week 7 - October 18

    Show Midterms

    Week 8 - October 25

    Controlling Devices by Phone (by Network)
    Using Phones to Control Displays (with Processing)
    Handout
    Kate Hartman's phones & objects
    Dan Shiffman's Processing and Asterisk Tutorial
    Assignment:
  • Create something new with a networked object and Asterisk or with Processing and Asterisk
  • Read Chapters 1 through 4 in Wired for Speech

    • Week 9 - November 1

    Speech Synthesis (Festival)
    Guest Presentation: John Riordan from Junction Networks
    Handout
    Assignment:
  • Try using Festival in one of your projects, try out the different voices and what can be done with SABLE
  • Read Chapters 4 through 8 in Wired for Speech

    • Week 10 - November 8

    Speech Recognition (Sphinx/Lumenvox)
    Guest Presentation: Mark Spencer
    Handout
    Assignments:
  • Try using Lumenvox
  • Start thinking about final projects, put together a draft proposal
  • Finish up Wired for Speech

    • Week 11 - November 15

    Guest Presentation: Moshe Yudkowsky
    Final Project Proposals
    Additional Topics

    Week 12 - November 29

    Final Project Workshop 1
    Additional Topics

    Week 13 - December 6

    Final Project Workshop 2
    Additional Topics

    Week 14 - December 13*

    Let's See it! Show final projects, Expect guests

    ** IGNORE THE UNIVERSITY CALENDAR, CLASS WILL BE ON DEC 13 **

    Additional Topics (depending on time):

  • Phreaking
  • VoiceXML
  • iChat/AIM/Skype/GTalk/Yahoo Messenger and the like
  • Emerging VoIP Topics: Presence, Web 2.0 APIs and whatever else comes up
  • SIP to SIP dialing and IP only phone networks (Free World Dialup, ENUM)
  • Basic Telephone Electronics
  • Asterisk GUIs
  • Streaming from Phone