Lately there has been a shift in how people are using telephones and more and more people are switching to VoIP telephony packages like Vonage. However there is an open-source solution to this and it is called Asterisk. For the do-it-yourselfer techie who has an old computer sitting around this is a gold mine. Unlike the other VoIP options out there i.e Vonage and Skype Asterisk is different because it is not a service like the other two but it does all those things over your own server. The best difference about this telephony toolkit is that it is like Skype + Vonage * 10=Asterisk. It offers so many more options and since it is open-source it grows and grows as to what you can do on it. Now I really find this interesting but I dont know how long this blog entry would go on for if I wrote out all the cool stuff asterisk can do so instead im going to provide you with some links that can better explain some of the technology involved and the implementation.

Asterisk home page: http://www.asterisk.org/
Systm podcast Asterisk Video: http://revision3.com/systm/asterisk/

So I suggest you try it you can really enhance your home phone experience.