My cell phone is sort an information nexus for me. All of my contacts and calendar items are in there, with two-way Google Sync. I get multiple email mailboxes on my phone. And, occasionally, I place or receive phone calls. I don’t have a landline telephone, either.

One thing I miss, though, is having a good phone on my desk. Something with a good speakerphone, and something with a receiver that’s comfortable to hold.

I’ve been thinking of setting up Asterisk, perhaps in a virtual machine, and getting a good VoIP handset. We have a bunch of Grandstreams at work, but the Cisco 7970 is about as sexy as a telephone can get. (It’s also, apparently, a real bear to get working with an open-source system.) Of course, most people with Asterisk probably do something normal, like running several phone lines, or even a T1 or two, into the box.

Here’s what I’m thinking, though. Skype works pretty well, although you need to pay a bit of premium for a dedicated incoming number. (Still, it’s quite reasonable compared to the phone company.) It’s only supported in a non-free Asterisk plugin, though. But what I’d really love is to be able to cram my iPhone into the middle of an Asterisk-based PBX. And it turns out it’s possible with chan_mobile, although I haven’t worked with it and their domain (not linked here) lapsed and was picked up by spammers.

CloudVox is also very cool, though I haven’t though of any good uses for it yet.