Mobile VoIP is now Illegal in Egypt

The Government of Egypt made mobile VoIP officially illegal this week.
It would even be acceptable if it was for all VoIP, but not. VoIP still acceptable if provided by the State Hold Telecom Companies of Egypt.
Main blocks includes Skype and known international SIP providers. Although I'm not the biggest fan of Skype closed protocol, I consider this completely unfair and offensive against Skype.

More than a political problem for Egypt citizens this is a crime against their freedom.

It is more than clear that the only reason is money, as State Telecoms were almost bankrupt end of last year. This is a criminal behavior aiming the State and not Citizens that should be condemned by other countries as well.

Jingle fortunately still not blocked, so if you blocked on Egypt, feel free to re-enforce mobile VoIP usage over Jingle.

Suggested Clients:

• Nimbuzz on Symbian, Windows Mobile, Android and IPhone
• Native GTalk Client for Maemo

IPhone Over 3G

I proudly announce that we have the first Jingle based VoIP Application on IPhone that supports Calling Over 3G!
This application is Nimbuzz, a fully featured Client that supports VoIP via Nimbuzz Contacts, NimbuzzOut, Skype, GTalk, Yahoo, MSN and it is also a SIP Client. It is the Mobile VoIP Freedom Gadget.
The battry consumption really rocks if compared with regular SIP Clients, plus the benefit to be able to receive and place calls, through different methods without any extra battery consumption.
The Application is Free on Apple AppStore and it is also available with VoIP support for Symbian, Android and Windows Mobile.

It uses XMPP and Jingle as the main bus for their services, enabling also the usage of your Nimbuzz account through other Clients like Adium, Pidgin, PSI, Empathy, Pandion, etc...

Jingle Nodes - So far

After Jingle Nodes got submitted to XMPP.org inbox, the number of visits on the website and the Specifications grow at least 100%. This is a great step towards an OpenStandard P2P VoIP.
Imagine that the very first implementation was in Openfire in 2006, which was kind of rejected by several Jingle Developers(due STUN/TURN promiss) but accepted and used by SIP Community back there(which knew STUN/TURN are painful for P2P). 

In summary we already accomplished:

• In 2010, we have the specification on XMPP.org inbox: http://xmpp.org/extensions/inbox/jingle-nodes.html
• In 2010, we have the specification accepted as 'Experimental' on XMPP.org: http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0278.html
  
• Server Side Component 100% ready to use - Check http://xmppjingle.org for Download and Sources
• Client Side API (60% done) -  Check http://xmppjingle.org for Download and Sources
• Demo Client (Under Selection) - If you are a Client developer of an OpenSource XMPP Client and have interest on Jingle Nodes supports, you are a potential candidate. Contact us.
• Sea Beyond - Paris, 17th December 2009: Jingle experimenting session and a presentation, which is a new technical event that explores the future of real-time communication technology. It is organized by ProcessOne, an authority in XMPP and real-time communication software. 
• FOSDEM 2010 - XMPP Devroom @FOSDEM 2010 Presentation and Investigation about other P2P Solution adopted by Jingle Developers
• Talkr.im - The free IM service Talkr.im is running a public Jingle Nodes for their users. 

Special thanks:

NLnet foundation financially supports organizations and people that contribute to an open information society. And NLnet is sponsoring Jingle Nodes Contributions and Developments which also explains the fast development and accomplishments of the project. The community of OpenStandards and Specially all involved with Jingle Nodes project are proud and thankful for having such a great foundation helping and incentive towards XMPP and Jingle Freedom.
Jingle Nodes is a specification based on implementation and deployment needs, meaning that we have it first running and compiling, for later publish of the complete specification. Which makes it a ready to use technology and not only a technology paper. Thanks NLnet :)

What we have in the horizon:

• An Official recommend demo Client.
• A New Better Professional Logo contributed by Fernando Lins
• More Corporate and Public Deployments.
• Specification Improvements and Approval.
• Adoption in major Jingle Clients.
• Events. We LOVE Events and Invitations!

Rapportive - Useful

Recently I installed http://rapportive.com/ which is an add-on for Firefox and Chrome, which uses the Google ads space in your gmail, to show information about the sender of the current mail you are reading.
Basically your gmail will look like this:

It works very well and the important message about this kind of tool is the relevance and the ubiquity of contact lists nowadays. I currently use a Firefox add-on XMPP Client, which makes almost everything that I usually for Social Network and Work related stuff, to be inside my browser.

Dear Google, why don't you use the same space for 'Buzz' Timeline?