XMPP Jingle - The Next Generation VoIP

ouvid.us - Twilio Experiment

2011-08-07T10:59:00.000-07:00

Last Monday I had an idea for an useful web based service that could be built using Twilio. A purely web based call center service, with queue management, alerts, easy to install on a website.
On my spare time at night this week, I manage to build an early version of the product hacking some PHP and jQuery. It turns out to be very productive and straight forward. (I hit some bumps, but Twilio Support and Documentation was very helpful)

ouvid.us is already live and although limited amount of features, it is fully functional!
You can create an account for free, create queues, add other users to attend to your queues, add a Call link to your website/blog etc...

The problem this project solves is: Small and Medium business would have high costs on maintaining a Call Center system. ouvid.us solves the problem, by enabling a pure web based Call Center Service.
Please try it out and let me know what do you think.

Twilio Evaluation:

Pros:

I'm a fan of simplicity, and Twilio got it right
Easy to setup, debug and release
Great Documentation and Examples
Good Support

Cons:

Lack of support for SIP, XMPP and Jingle
Sometimes the FlashPlugin Crashes and needs to be killed manually
No Paypal support

Internet 10 Commandments

2011-07-21T15:36:00.000-07:00

The thing is, on Internet...

you don't choose your users. The users chooses you.
you can't sell fake for long. The Collective intelligence prevents that.
the success of the company is proportional to the talent of the people that works on it.
your product needs to be good, regardless if it is free. Actually, it needs to be good specially if it is free. As more people will talk about it.
what you call user base is nothing but a bucket of thin air. Email address doesn't mean anything. You have active users or you are fading away.
companies must know that good ideas and feedbacks can and will came from all levels of the company. You ignore it, you miss the point.
user expectation is an everyday task. You miss it, they migrate. Yes, your competitor is only one click away.
to succeed you need to know how to "count cards". There is no meaning-less statistics.
developers are artists. They need inspiration, motivation and freedom.
this post might be totally WRONG! Or not...

Skype Client XMPP Support for Facebook

2011-06-28T12:15:00.000-07:00

Skype released a beta version for Windows with support for Facebook Chat. They are doing it through XMPP directly from Skype BETA Client.

Packet Trace with the proof that Skype Client now connects to Facebook using XMPP.

Once again XMPP moves forward in becoming the universal bus for 'realtime' communications.
Companies that are not understanding the importance of being 'realtime' will soon realize that their time is gone.

Hopefully in the future we also have support for other open alternatives for Audio/Video Communications on Skype like Jingle and Jingle Nodes. Like Google did adopting the Standard Jingle.

Standard Jingle on Google

2011-06-23T14:22:00.000-07:00

After many year after its creation and early adoption, Google finally announced the switch from their own Jingle variant to the Standard Jingle Version created, approved and maintained by XMPP Foundation.
This comes in the right moment after the previously GIPS Media Company now owned by Google itself, announced the OpenSource WebRTC Project. Which intends to provide multimedia and realtime communication capabilities to Browser like Firefox, Chrome, Opera, etc...

Google intend to bring rich communication also to their other browser products like Orkut, iGoogle and even adSense with Ads that could place direct calls to the announcers.

This will enabled direct compatibility to the already know Jingle Clients Jitsi, OneTeam, Pidgin and others. The amplifier of this announcement is that soon we may be seeing native Jingle Support on Android OS, which will make a great and powerful opposition to Skype Mobile Market.

Nimbuzz was the very first Mobile Company to runs their entirely Voice Services over Jingle since 2007. They would have immediate benefit if they were allowing XMPP Federation, which currently is blocked. For now they support GTalk Calls but requires the user to have a Google account registered (which is not a big problem, but not as handy as it could be).

Hopefully Jingle Nodes will also be adopted soon as the default mechanism for Relay Sharing Discovering for Jingle. Stay tuned for more good news.

XMPP Server SRV Record Tutorial

2011-05-21T14:26:00.000-07:00

With the new Openfire Version (3.7.0) released in March. I noticed a change in the S2S (federation) integration and would like to share the tips to help the setup to be done by other XMPP System Admins.

To prevent connection issue among the Servers it is required the registration of the SRV records according to the example:

In the case of the domain minhaempresa.com.br and the jabber domain to be xmpp.minhaempresa.com.br the following records are required:

_jabber._tcp.xmpp.minhaempresa.com.br
_jabber._tcp.minhaempresa.com.br
_xmpp-server._tcp.xmpp.minhaempresa.com.br
_xmpp-server._tcp.minhaempresa.com.br

All the registration must point to your jabber domain, as noticed below:

marcelo@hellboy:~$ dig srv _xmpp-server._tcp.minhaempresa.com.br

; <<>> DiG 9.7.3 <<>> srv _xmpp-server._tcp.minhaempresa.com.br
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 11368
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;_xmpp-server._tcp.minhaempresa.com.br. IN SRV

;; ANSWER SECTION:
_xmpp-server._tcp.minhaempresa.com.br. 86297 IN SRV 0 1 5269 xmpp.minhaempresa.com.br.

;; Query time: 16 msec
;; SERVER: 200.175.5.139#53(200.175.5.139)
;; WHEN: Sun May 15 00:24:00 2011
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 89

I've have faced this situation when migrating a customer server that was upgraded a from a previous version of Openfire. If you don't register the domain fixing SRV record, S2S functionallity will not work.

* This is an authorized translation from the Blog Mundo OpenSource written by Marcelo Terres. Especial thanks for the great and simple guide for setting up DNS SRV records required for an XMPP server.

Open Discussion Day - 19th May

2011-05-19T07:01:00.000-07:00

On May 19^th is celebrated Open Discussion Day, a promotion day dedicated for open communication systems and protocols.
Communication is a natural necessity and should be open and available for everyone.
If you care about your own freedom of choice on how you IM and Call your friends, like you currently have with your email, from which you can send and receive emails from every server. Consider using an XMPP solution for such.

XMPP is free to use, and they don't restrict you to one provider or one client or even server.

Related Posts:

XBox Skype 3D Video Call Support

2011-05-12T00:03:00.000-07:00

Right after Skype acquisition by Microsoft, I already have sources talking about Skype native support on XBox 360. That will be great as it is quite handy, well positioned camera in millions of living rooms around the world.
Besides the comfort of having Video Calls sitting in your couch, you also need to expand the possibilities of the experience, as XBox Kinect Camera has much more than just lens. It is equipped with:

Multi-Array Mic
Dynamic Motorized Tilt
3D Depth Sensors

Put it all together and the result will be an awesome:

Video Call with 3D support

If Microsoft is smart enough to foresee all those possibilities, they have a great and vast ground to explore with Skype.

Skype acquired by Microsoft

2011-05-10T14:42:00.000-07:00

Mourning post about Skype future...
Although it have the policy to be closed and stuff. It was nice to have it at least providing the platform choice for their users. I hope that at least in that aspect Microsoft doesn't come to screw up.

In other aspects it may help the World to get rid of MSN Live Network, which has being the biggest technical / protocol failure all time for Instant Messaging and Communications. Including yearly Protocol Hacks and Updates, with fallback servers and periodical outage.
It would be a superb evolution for Microsoft to get rid of the technical garbage pile of MSN Live Network and applications, replacing it by Skype.

Phone Numbers and Telecoms will be affected and we are getting closer and closer to a phone number extinction. This acquisition not only confirms it, but also will speed it up. In that sense it is a positive move.

If you want to see yourself free of those monopoly battles use:

Jitsi.org - Open Source Fully Featured Jingle and SIP Video Client

Used in combination with fastvoip.com you get a very cheap (sometimes free) solution for calling international phone numbers

OneTeam.im - Open Source Jingle Client with Native Jingle Nodes Support

Android Video Call over Jingle

2011-04-29T00:31:00.000-07:00

Finally! Google released what they already had. Video Call on Android!
As we know Google Talk already offers Video Calls even on gmail web client, now they extended the support also for Android 2.3.4.
The technology behind it, is the same behind gmail Video Call, XMPP and Jingle.

As GTalk also support XMPP Federation, Jingle is one step ahead towards World domination!

ISP and Operators Take Another Hit on VoIP Blocking

2011-04-14T10:51:00.000-07:00

"In view of those characteristics, Advocate General Cruz Villalón considers that the installation of that filtering and blocking system is a restriction on the right to respect for the privacy of communications and the right to protection of personal data, both of which are rights protected under the Charter of Fundamental Rights. By the same token, the deployment of such a system would restrict freedom of information, which is also protected by the Charter of Fundamental Rights."

The text above was extracted from the public document: http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2011-04/cp110037en.pdf

This also mean that VoIP filtering applied by Vodafone and other operators in Europe, is illegal.

The more stupid Operators blocks VoIP more the market drives to an IM based communication, which they cannot block. They are the responsible for sinking their own business due their greed and incapacity of adapting to a new communication era. Innovate or fade.

Operators that blocks, filter or censor rich communication like VoIP and Streaming, they have a much shorter lifespan than you might think.

Promissing Alternative for XMPP API

2011-03-09T00:15:00.000-08:00

Recently I got a comment in the blog about hXMPP which is an alternative for multi-platform code.
I spend some time checking their Jingle Code and also how easy is to use the examples. The result is that the developer should be proud. It is a very nice accomplished work.

Specially in Browsers with WebSocket support, that may be the way to go. For now thay have good BOSH Support.

Check the project and examples at: http://hxmpp.disktree.net/

Give it a try!

2011 OpenSource Stuff

2011-03-02T14:06:00.000-08:00

A lot of things going on at the same time, and also a lot of work to be done. So brief post with updates I consider important for OpenSource, XMPP and VoIP.

Some announcements worth mentioning:

Jingle Nodes in Campus Party Brazil

2011-01-10T14:45:00.000-08:00

Jingle Nodes Project will be presented in Campus Party Brasil in a very special way. Besides the keynote, there will be also 3 Educational workshops where the protocol and current solutions will be discussed in practice:

Installing an OpenSource IM Server with support for Audio and Video.
How to customize and adapt a VoIP Client to suit your personal or company needs.
How to build your own VoIP Client using OpenSource APIs.

When in Campus Party Brazil make sure you check out the talk about Jingle Nodes and how you can get independence in your daily communication, therefore protected against "digital dictatorship" blocks like the Skype Block in China and Nimbuzz Block in Syria.

Skype Down, the Closed P2P Issue

2010-12-22T13:48:00.000-08:00

You may be wondering why Skype is Down if it is a P2P network. That is not hard to answer, it is a closed P2P Network which the Fallback Servers and Main Nodes are entirely dependent on Skype itself. So if something goes wrong with them, there is no real fallback like you would have in a distributed regular P2P network like BitTorrent, UseNet or Jingle Nodes.
The main issue is that only Users from within Skype can share the Routes, but not users on different Networks and Domains like you can do with Jingle Nodes.
Skype official response was that they were creating "mega-super-nodes"? I don't know what does that mean, but I'm sure it still have same single point of failure of the current system. Until Skype don't come up with a Federated System, where providers, services and users can share Routes, they will always suffer from outages. And of course the most affected are the users and business that depends directly on them. Nearly 20 Million Users are suffering from the outage.

Open Standard Free alternatives that can provide reliability and superior quality:

Clients with Jingle Nodes Support:
* Nimbuzz (Mobile and Desktop)
* SIP Communicator (Jitsi) (Desktop)
* OneTeam (Desktop)

Services with Jingle Nodes Support:
* Nimbuzz (Free)
* Talkr.im (Free)

Don't wait for Skype to come up with "hyper-ultra-mega-super-nodes" to migrate to reliable software.

Jingle Nodes Updates

2010-11-14T09:09:00.000-08:00

Jingle Nodes will complete 9 months of official Specification published. As suggested by @luissoeiro, I will summit what happened so far.

Erlang Relay based on exmpp fully compatible with ejabberd and Tigase

jn_erl_0.1.0.tar.gz

Openfire Plugin, it is a simple and plug and play Plugin for Openfire

jingleNodes.jar

OneTeam client from process-one with full support for Jingle Nodes

http://oneteam.im/

Talkr.im a public XMPP Server from process-one with full support for Jingle Nodes

http://talkr.im/

Professional Logo contributed by Fernando Lins

Jingle Nodes Selo.png

Jingle Nodes Presented in 3 key events and confirmed other

SIP Communicator announced Jingle Nodes Support is being added to main Version

http://sip-communicator.org/

Special thanks to NLNet that sponsored contributions and ignited the project

http://www.nlnet.nl/

How to contribute to Jingle Nodes:

Writing Code and Discuss the Specification - All fixes, patches and suggestions are always welcome (Jingle Nodes Group)
Talk about the project - Talk about Jingle Nodes simplicity and how it's easier than other alternatives
Propaganda - Add a Jingle Nodes Image to your Blog or Website (Jingle Nodes Selo.png)
Write a Tutorial - Describe how you are making use of Jingle Nodes
Testing and giving feedback - Your opinion matters!

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

2010-10-25T14:10:00.000-07:00

Skype have closed one more third-party this week. Nimbuzz announced that, like Fring, they were forced by Skype to stop supporting it in their Clients.
It is even more evident now, that the good signs about Skype Openness we saw beginning last year are completely flushed now, probably due their eagerness of pursuing an IPO and new management.
Although, what they did not count is the bad impact in their own user base and public image effects of such blocks. It proves once more that companies should not rely on Skype as something solid to build product features. Not only that, according to Skype, third-party MUST not build product features based on their services.
Skype also claim they have an API. Really? Not exactly, they have a Client SDK/API. And why it matters, is that if a client or device want to make use of it, they need to have exclusive granted privileges for a black box piece of software to be embedded and shipped within your product. Yes, if you want to support Skype, you need to build your product on top of that, and also make sure the product is exclusively Skype friendly. If that wasn't enough they also say that they do not guarantee for how long the piece of software will be valid.
Skype wants to do what AOL did, trying to force their users to install their Software and only use their own Browser/Client to access Internet.
The Bad.

SIP is widely adopted worldwide specially among technical people, geeks and behind the curtains, even used as base landlines telephony like in Netherlands.

The interoperability is something achievable theoretically, meaning that several different SIP Clients can talk to each other
SIP release the Telecom from the "Dark Ages" to the "Modern Times", showing that Telephony could be done using IP and good software
Vast majority of Communication equipments and platforms have support for it.
It enabled the possibility to create huge portfolios of Value aggregated Services based on Legacy Telecom Centrals
It is responsible for the cheap VoIP as we know it
Most terminations that Skype buys, are provided via SIP
Estimated numbers of SIP Providers worldwide is bigger than 50.000
SIP Providers can sell termination minutes not only to end users, but also to other Providers

Although there are some not pretty facts about SIP:

SIP Protocol is not as practical and simple as it should be by 2010
SIP is not extensible, the current attempt of extending it (3GPP) is failing badly, taking more than 10 years of pure specifications, without any success to reach mass market. The current result is a HUGE stack of workarounds badly described and full of contradictions
SIP Calling is great and almost straight-forward, but Messaging, Presence, Contacts and Extended Services are way too complex for current Market Status
SIP is always backed by big corporations that tries to mystify it, trying as much as possible to postpone the life-cycle of the protocol.
The current Market needs and demands extra features than only Calling. There is no such thing as a mass market SIP based service with extensive features like: Presence, Contacts, Whiteboard, Video, File Sharing etc.
Apple Facetime is a frustrated attempt to use SIP for extended Video Call service ( Why frustrated? A service that works based on "trial-error" and does not have interoperability support in 2010, is a failure by default ). Apple end up implementing a half-SIP, half-XMPP, half-STUN solution. Which is completely closed for interoperability. It claims to implement it ALL, and supports NONE.
The complexity of the protocol makes it hard and restricted to highly specialized developers, which have their jobs lifetime guaranteed, but decreases the potential mass adoption of the protocol. The Ugly.

Jingle in the other hand is based on an extensive protocol XMPP, which has incredibly easy to read and implement specifications. Besides having default support for Contact List, Presence, Messaging, Gateways and all sorts of extensions: http://xmpp.org/extensions/
Google Talk, Facebook, Nimbuzz and thousands of companies worldwide have their Messaging and Presence services based on XMPP.
Jingle is heavily discussed in this blog, so no need to go in depth:

It is extensible, huge evolution Potential
It is simple, easy to implement
It is portable for Mobile Devices
It is probably what soon Facebook will use for their Calling Services
Has standard support for distributed Nodes: Jingle Nodes

The Good.

Facetime and Video Call Matrix

2010-10-20T13:40:00.000-07:00

Today Apple released Facetime for Mac OS, making it possible to have easy and H264 quality Video Calls between IPhones, IPods and Mac Desktops/Laptops.
besides the lack of Device Capability Discovery, meaning that you need to know who has support for it based on Trial and Error. Hard to believe for a 2010 Technology.
The moment also calls for attention of the extremely fragmented market of Video Call Clients Interoperability.

Current Status, October 2010:

Oct 2010

Prediction, January 2011:


Jan 2011

All the Buzz aside, Facetime still pretty limited, due:

Strange Username/Device setup
Confusion about device/contact support
Lack of simple start/stop Video buttons
3G support
Interoperability

I still hope a XMPP Jingle Based Messiah to come and solve the fragmentation and interoperability matters.

Jingle and Gaming

2010-10-14T11:02:00.000-07:00

I've being discussing too much about VoIP on Jingle and we are almost forgetting that Jingle is also very suitable for Realtime Games, that requires very low Latency.
Having Multi-Player games using Jingle doesn't mean all the commands, events and actions will be sent in XMPP Format through IQs.
Jingle can also be used to negotiate direct TCP or UDP ByteStreams which is the most suited for low latency Games like Shooting Games for instance:

So if you are looking forward to build Multiplayer Games, you may consider ejabberd or Openfire a ready to use platform for such.
This is an insight post, so please fell free to send question and ideas as comments.

Gravity

2010-09-22T12:13:00.000-07:00

Imagine that in the beginning was only a small ball with hyper mass and for some reason this mass expanded extremely fast, but so fast that it cause the three-dimensional space to echo infinitely creating the dimensional effect we call "time". Time is the dimension that contains all infinity spaces.
Gravity is the "inertia" of the timeline that we are situated. Basically it tries to pull back the matter to the earliest state as possible in a state-less way.
From a Macro Cosmo perspective there was only one incident and everything currently tries to converge back to the previous state, which is all the mass in a single point of space and time.
Gravity like most of the other effects we see in regular physics, does not keep state of each previous state, except for the most relevant one.
For instance no matter how many rocks diverged the flow of the water in a river, from a higher perspective, the river will always follow its course like no rock, had changed the movement and the water form at previous points of the river course.
Gravity keeps the original shape, course and intensity as most as possible. Mitigating the essence of this energy. Which is one of the most basic ones in the universe.
The energy can be defined and resolved as a recursive movement of energy always trying to go back together to the original state, usually perceived by the nearest and easiest bigger mass around.

Meaning that to stop gravity you will need to stop time as we know it.

Jingle Nodes Proxy and EU Surveillance

2010-09-11T01:37:00.000-07:00

"The German Pirate Party has disclosed some secret documents on how the EU is planning to monitor citizens. The so called INDECT Documents describe how a seamless surveillance could (or should) be implemented across Europe. The use of CCTV cameras, the internet (social networks) and even the use of UAVs are mentioned as data sources. Two of the nine documents can be downloaded from the German Pirate Party's website (PDFs in English)."

When I read this news on Slashdot.org, as an enthusiast of civil freedom, I immediately downloaded both documents available in the Link. But what I found was more interesting for me than the news itself. In the "The communications framework architecture" section, the document contains the following diagram:

They not only use XMPP and Jingle, but also Jingle based RTP Server/Proxy which is the essence of Jingle Nodes Specification. Specially if we refer to the very beginning back on the Jingle RTP Proxy in Openfire (2006):

2006 - Diagram for Openfire RTP Proxy

It is very cool to see how new technology is overwhelmed for a while, before the real life adoption starts.

In regard of the EU Surveillance, I hope they don't manage to use it for Surveillance but to provide Free and Open Communication alternative for Citizens. Because that is actually what the Architecture in the document and Jingle Nodes are about.

European population cannot accept what Egypt did and now India is trying to do with all Internet Communications system, install a dictatorial, monitored and censored Internet communication. This don't only harm Citizens Freedom but also basic rights of privacy.

For those people who believes these are anti-terrorist measures, stop acting like an ignorant blind animal, and remember that is way easier and anonymous for a terrorist to buy a pre-paid SIM card place one single call and then throw it away, to actually use Internet Communications. The main interest is "Command-and-Control" the ability to control Prices and Profits through a basic human necessity: Communication.

STOP

~~Surveillance~~

and

START

Open Communication!

Facebook VoIP Architecture and the Death of Phone Numbers

2010-09-04T01:43:00.000-07:00

As we know Facebook supports XMPP for Chat, meaning you can use your preferred XMPP Client to use Facebook for Chat. But do you really think Facebook rolled out XMPP support only for Chat?
If so, you are indeed wrong.
Facebook wants to expend their communication profile. Like others like Google, MSN, Yahoo, Skype, etc, they also want realtime interaction meaning Voice and Video communications.

Reasons:

Facebook users have more Facebook Friends than contacts in their phonebook.
People change phone numbers and your are not automatically updated.
Phone Numbers belongs to Operators/Countries, your Facebook account is much more personal.
You can control who can call you. On regular phone you are often victim of unwanted calls.
Phone Calls and SMS are more expensive them IM and VoIP in most cases.
Facebook average number of Contacts per user is way bigger than Skype.
Skype is too limited and close to create the same loyalty that Facebook always had.
If they also open this for XMPP Federation, it would indeed speed up the death of "phone numbers" as we know.

Technology:

As Facebook already have support for XMPP Chat, certainly they will use XMPP Jingle.
For Media Relay and Distribution Points? For sure Jingle Nodes will be the simplest, fastest and most reliable way to delivery Multimedia for their gigantic number of users at once.
How would it look like for browser users? They will use new advanced browser features to have Jingle Clients running on it. Like GMail already have for a long while.
They already have the PERFECT routing and presence in place, XMPP for Chat, same exact route can be used for Jingle if Facebook enable support for IQ routing in their XMPP network.

Overall Picture:

This post is a proposition of how Facebook will do their Voice/Video support in near future. The use of Jingle and Jingle Nodes is not confirmed at all. But sure will be an extremely bad idea of Facebook to do not do it like described above! I challenge them to do it better and more open than this.

Yet about Google Call

2010-08-31T12:59:00.000-07:00

Due the amount of comments and emails received, I will reply to them in a post.

How does the Authentication works?

That is one key reason for using their established XMPP channel for placing the calls. The user is already authenticated in GMail and Google Talk. So the request is sent through the authenticated XMPP network to their XMPP Component responsible to offer SIP Gateway. From that moment one the component will convert the Jingle Signaling from the Google Talk to SIP and use your Google credentials to authenticate in their SIP Services.

Which Codec is being used?

G711 is the only one that I could trace, although the Plug-In indeed support iLBC and others. The reason behind it, is that G711 is a supported codec in most all PSTN, Media Gateway or other interconnection with Legacy Telecom. Alternatives would be transcode, which is out of the question due CPU load, drop of quality etc... Or use proprietary G729 which requires the payment of extremely high royalties per client/channel.

Will they succeed in making money?

Google "Cows" may produce some "milk", but I doubt Google consider that as an important income resource. The feature is much more related with PR and positioning about THE REALTIME company, than anything else. Having most of what Skype does in their closed client, in a browser and using open technologies is a direct confront to Skype's model. IMHO, Phone Numbers are dead, and will be ripped out of the market in less than 5 years from now.

Are the API for Audio/Video Streaming available for third-party usage?

That I could not figure out. Tried document or formal info from Google without success. May someone could assist us on that matter with some Javascript reverse engineering, or a Google guy, that wanna share that with us. Please let us know :)

Is there any client supporting it already?

No, it is not yet available in any client that I'm aware. But I bet that as soon Google appears with a formal specification and documentation, that will happen very very fast.

Thanks for all the questions, I hope I have answered most of it.

Google Call over Jingle with a SIP Gateway on their XMPP Server

2010-08-27T00:54:00.000-07:00

I just confirmed in my Wireshark that Google Call on Gmail uses exactly what I recommended in a previous post back in 2009 when they acquired Gizmo5. And YES, it's Jingle!
Their wise choice of having a portable and extensive protocol(XMPP) as the bus and having specialized technologies like SIP, will grant them a flexibility never seen before on platform and device portability.
Their master plan is to be able to delivery mass market a cheap and alternative method for calling the old fashioned telephone numbers. And sure they have the right platform and tools in their hands:

Android

Almost all Android phones have with GTalk application pre-installed, which already runs a nice XMPP Client, besides other great alternatives like Nimbuzz.

Now imagine what Google can bring to the market without much effort due their choice of using Jingle extension of XMPP for their service? Google Call support on Android phones. That is the key and reason behind this service.

Overview Diagram:

Google Call on GMail

2010-08-25T11:34:00.000-07:00

Google Call, as I mentioned before in a previous post, was added as a Calling feature direct to the browser.
I hope this take down Skype monopoly built on top of a closed and proprietary fuzzyware.

Google now has the most powerful position on VoIP world and soon will take down Skype eagerness for a proprietary/closed network.

Google's solution is built on top of a plugin, which is embedded on new Chrome and also easy to install on other browsers. They are using Standard XMPP and Jingle at Client Level with SIP in the backend, Streaming RTP with Standard Codecs directly from the browser. ( NO CRAP FLASH TRANSCODE USED! )

Google Call offer several advantages:

Browser Based
Open, so they can make use of third-party clients for it ( Do you need more reasons??? )

VoIP everywhere, browser or in your favorite Client. Solid Model.

Hope Nimbuzz adds support for it soon!

You can try it here: http://www.google.com/chat/voice/

As you asked how it works:
Google is making use of recent acquired GIPS Company Technology to add native RTP streaming directly to the browser.
For PSTN Termination, Google is using Gizmo5, together with previous Google Voice partners.
I promise to post deeper technical information like protocol details and Codec later on.

Jingle Nodes at FISL 11

2010-07-20T15:49:00.000-07:00

New Jingle Nodes Specifications will be presented at FISL 11. Besides the regular updates about the specifications, it will also be discussed Jingle Nodes adoption plan and current implementations.

FISL takes place in Porto Alegre and it is the biggest OpenSource and OpenStandards event of Latin America.

Other XMPP topics like Openfire and ejabberd deployments (presented by the current Openfire maintainer Guus der Kinderen), and also clients like OneTeam/SIP Communicator Jingle Nodes Demo etc.

Especial Thanks to:

NLnet Foundation who sponsored the development of the prototype APIs for Server and Client. And the whole campaign of the specification publish.
Fernando Lins for the awesome and professional new Jingle Nodes Logo.

Skype API Available for Beta

2010-06-23T13:11:00.000-07:00

This story was commented in this blog several times. And so far nothing significant really happened. Why Skype keep trying to fill the gaps of its solution on leafs and not in the root of the problem?

Skype understand the importance of standing as a Service provider and no longer a simple Client provider. Something that cannot be accomplished without massive adoption in different devices, platforms and software.
Although we can reflect once again about the approach that has being used by them.

Skype API is something that will work only for Skype Network. The flexibility of the service goes immediately to the ground. So if you implement it, make sure you know you won't be to re-use the code somewhere else.
They are claiming some openness based on an old client side SDK API model. Which dismiss all potential of the currently heavily deployed solutions like SIP, which is everywhere, from Servers, Platforms, Hardware, Gateways etc... I'm not a SIP fan, although strategically would be wiser for them.
Skype shares bandwidth without user concerns. Would you be up to risk embedding such black box into your own application or Product?
Most IMPORTANT! Latest Skype IPhone client mention about not being free anymore from certain date. So if you are looking forward to implement Skype, bare in mind they can actually start charging for their services or clients at some point, which may turn your "FREE" application useless.

I'm glad they are moving forward towards Openness, but I still think they have a long way until having it done properly.

Apparently they may need to speed it up since Apple announced that Facetime on IPhone 4g, will use Open Standards including SIP, STUN and ICE. Which is a mature P2P technology heavily used and deployed and of course the same as we are using on XMPP Jingle Specifications.
Open Standard P2P already won this 'battle' which Skype still persists to fight.

GMail VoIP Coming Soon

2010-06-11T05:09:00.000-07:00

Sooner than we though GMail will integrate VoIP services. This happens right after GIPS acquisition, and quite way too late after Gizmo5 acquisition.
Gizmo5 had for a long long time such widget but was using several layers of software from server side transcode, flash capture and an extra plugin.
I really hope they are thinking hard to have their widget based on embedded browser features. As it would be quite simple to embed a real VoIP(RTP/Codec) API in Google Chrome at least. That will really move the perspective on Broswer based VoIP to a new level!

The whole market will also appreciate if they make such API as open as possible so other could also create their browser based VoIP Clients.
We would even be pleasured if such API to be available also on Android Devices.

Google don't disappoint us.

Presenting The "Vital Ratio" Theory

2010-05-31T14:39:00.000-07:00

On Internet we are surrounded by Applications, Services, Platforms, Mashups, Widgets and all kinds of useful and specially UN-USEFUL applications.

The most tricky question on Internet Business World is, "how much does your business costs?". Specialists and Marketing people tends to base their stats and values on "BUZZ" or general opinion, or even Polls (THE WORST TYPE EVER!)

I'm not a Marketing Guy, neither Specialists. As a generalist programmer I could come up with a much more mathematical oriented model. Which is not perfect, of course, but is the best and more reliable that I've seen in my limited ignorance.

The Problem:

How to measure the health of an Internet Business? Can you it be profitable?

Solution Approach:
If you think the Internet as an Human Body, or a Live Organism, you can give values to the Vital Organs for instance:

Heart
Lungs
Brain
Liver
Kidneys
Stomach
etc

Internet has also Vital Organs and Organic Systems, which are composed by necessities within a time period. So if we could define which systems("Organs") does Internet has and what are the current demand and values. Theoretically we could define a mathematical model to define the importance of Internet Systems.

Thesis Draft

Internet Systems Health can be measured by the mathematical model to presented in this blog later on.

Internet Systems can be divided in several categories, which together composes the Internet Ecosystem:

Protocols
Services
Applications
Network
Users

If we ponder the values of each of these elements based on their interdependency and vitality for the overall system, we can use those as axiomatic constants for evaluating the target product proportionally. I will try to illustrate using a scale from 1 to 10.

Protocols - 2
Services - 6
Applications - 4
Network - 10
Users Daily - 8

To be continued...

STUN Discovery via JIngle Nodes

2010-05-30T14:19:00.000-07:00

After a few months finally I got time to review and update Jingle Nodes Specifications. It is not yet submitted to xmpp.org, but you can sneak peak for now at: Jingle Nodes [Temp]
The most relevant change is that Jingle Nodes now will support STUN Tracking, which means that users can also share known STUN Servers. This is very handy and most of all, it is very easy to access STUN Servers as they not require authentication for Public IP Discovery.
After all, the most popular XMPP Servers in the market already offers embedded STUN Service (ejabberd STUN).
Google Talk Network also provides STUN Services, so they can also be shared through Jingle Nodes.

Another minor fixes and changes were also added.
Please fell free to read and submit critics and comments to it.

Google Acquires GIPS

2010-05-18T12:29:00.000-07:00

Today was announce the conclusion of the buying process of GIPS by Google.
What does that mean?

Here are some hints:

HTML5 predicts lots of extra features that needs to be provided by the browser. Which means that they are really looking forward to remove the crappy dependency of Adobe Flash, which currently is required for 99% of all Browser Based Voice Over IP Applications. Which besides the Adobe Plugin requirement, also requires traffic and negotiation passing through Adobe Media Servers... (Adobe shall get what they deserved for their manipulation, never supporting Standard RTP Streams)
GIPS was the best in the market "Quality Wise". They always offered top quality codecs and APIs to main Real Time Communication Companies from Desktop Skype to Mobile Nimbuzz.
Goggle already used not only GIPS software but also GIPS iLBC codec. Which is a great quality for low bandwidth Internet Communication with extra awesome packet loss support.

In resume GIPS was a very great choice!

Semi-Fiction Fact:

Google looked for some solution and buying the whole company was the easiest and quickest way to get it done...

Mobile VoIP is now Illegal in Egypt

2010-03-18T12:57:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-10T12:34:00.000-08:00

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

2010-03-05T10:57:00.000-08:00

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

2010-03-05T09:57:00.000-08:00

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?

Running Code

2010-02-18T16:01:00.000-08:00

It has been just a few days since Jingle Nodes alpha XEP was dropped in XMPP.org inbox, and we already have running code :)
Talkr.im announced today that they are running a Jingle Node Public Relay in their Server, and every Talkr.im user can make use of it for Jingle Calls.

They are running the code from http://xmppjingle.org (Erlang Version), which holds main Jingle Nodes Contributions.

In order to consume their Relay services you just need one IQ Packet (see http://xmpp.org/extensions/inbox/jingle-nodes.html )

Lets see who will be the first to distribute a Jingle Client with Jingle Nodes support!

XMPP Facebook Jingle Support?

2010-02-11T12:36:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately Facebook XMPP doesn't support IQ routing between users meaning "NO JINGLE ALLOWED!".
This is bad not only for the Users, but also bad for Facebook, which could be happy right now, with VoIP support.

Let's hope they improve their services in order to fully support XMPP allowing users to experience the best of IM Freedom!

Anyway, this is an important step for XMPP Community which just got 400 Million potential users.

Jingle Nodes goes to FOSDEM

2010-02-04T11:40:00.000-08:00

Jingle Nodes is going to XMPP Summit 8 and FOSDEM, both events occurring simultaneously in Brussels, Belgium from 5 until 8 of February 2010.

If you are going to the summit, feel free to ping me about Jingle Nodes for ideas, question, contributions etc.
Attending FOSDEM you are invited for a quick talk about how Jingle can provide an Open alternative to Skype (for Skype as well).

For agenda check: http://xmpp.org/summit/summit8.shtml

The great portion of it will occur on Friday 5, the XMPP Hacking, a great opportunity for XMPP and Jingle developers interop what they have built. Less talk, more code!

Why Skype UI OpenSource?

2009-12-13T02:51:00.000-08:00

When legacy proprietary companies start all of a sudden OpenSourcing their software, a lot of questions are raised. Of course they have their own explanations for the facts, although frequently are not the whole true about the fact.
Since Skype announced their OpenSource UI, I received some email asking why would that happen and what are the reasons behind the curtains.
Here is a personal explanation based on some facts:

Background Story:

Skype started their business in a market almost empty of competition. VoIP indeed existed, but was NOT directed to end users, neither mass market.
OpenSource would not make sense as it usually (for big companies) takes way more time and money to build solutions on top of standards then creating your own black box with the solutions of your own problems and challenges inside. And the lack of demand for a standard format was about 99%.
Another reason is the "secret" factor, as the first ones, they have to create all the buzz around their holly grail and of course ensure the domination.
That is why(among other reasons) Skype made their business on top of proprietary routing algorithms and proprietary protocols and encryption.

Early VoIP Market:

In the other hand for very small VoIP services the picture is different as they started on top of OpenSource platforms, even in a time that most of them were experimental. The reason is, the target market was massively smaller than Skype targets. And of course the money to invest was way smaller as well.
SIP adoption was adopted in almost 99% of the rising small providers that started popping up everywhere in the world.
Interesting fact is that most pioneer small VoIP providers started with virtual PBX system, not even SIP routers and big platforms. Basically "grow on demand" strategy was adopted as well.

Current VoIP Market Snapshot:

VoIP is way more spread in the world since Skype started the massification. We have large number of companies building equipments, client soft-phones, VoIP platforms etc...
We have a ridiculous huge number of VoIP providers which anther ridiculous range of different prices and quality.
SIP is the main driver for major market. It is used on landlines in Europe and US, it is massively used in company PBX and telephony of big companies. Which are the main source of PAYED VoIP services.
Skype is smaller in amount of users and revenue, if compared to all SIP Providers together.
Google acquires Gizmo5 a medium VoIP provider fully operated over SIP. Yes it has direct relation.

Consequences to Skype:

Skype ubiquity is restricted by their Desktop Client or their very limited IPhone client.
Skype still growing the amount of Desktop users. But the amount of paying users is still and tends to get lower.
Skype interoperability is null, as it is based on proprietary system and specifications.
Competition makes more money and the migration from old Skype users to new VoIP alternatives is big. As educated users knows now how to change and why to change to cheaper and flexible services.
We have more SIP enabled equipment and computers than Desktops with Skype client installed.

Skype Strategy Turn:

OpenSource their SILK codec as already mentioned in this blog.
Open SIP Gateway for Business Users. In order to start competing in a very profitable market slice.
Bought the patent of their VoIP routing solutions. In order to prepare for an interoperability round.
Aim for alternative and relatively "virgin" markets like mobile, Linux, netbooks etc:
Release more usable mobile clients.
OpenSource as much as possible for Linux as current client is really crap and also Linux users in general don't use closed source applications.

The Reason in Resume:
Skype wants its ubiquity and revenue back, and for that they are investing huge resources in Openness and Standardization, as it is what their market needs and demands nowadays.

In a mash-able hyper-connected world, who is closed and not interoperable will fade.

Movies Bot and Bots website

2009-12-05T14:58:00.000-08:00

movies@xmppguru.appspotchat.com

If sometimes you are at a video rent store, or in a torrent site searching for something to watch, and you often run out of convict opinion this is your Bot. Just send a message containing the name of the movie, and it will reply with a recommendation.

I'm sure the Movies Bot can save you some money and time regarding "trash" movies, which by the way are big majority nowadays specially in Hollywood.

Of course you won't always agree about the opinion, but I'm pretty sure it will give you wise and precise alerts before renting/downloading really BAD movies!

Just give it a try and let us know the reliability of the answers.

NEWS!!!

Now you can follow the xmppguru and its extensions, go to http://xmppguru.appspot.com and check out in realtime latest questions and answers from other users.

quotes@xmppguru.appspotchat.com - a Self-Help Bot (or Not)

2009-12-04T16:45:00.000-08:00

quotes@xmppguru.appspotchat.com

Yet Another XMPP Bot! This time it is meant for nice quotes that should increase your "anymus" at work, in a boring day or in both at the same time as usual. After checking that more than 25% of all messages to xmppguru@appspot.com where about personal problems and assistance requests, I decided to build something to help those poor XMPP users.
So basically the recommended usage is:

Swear to the Bot! Use bad words freely. He always understand you... (This is a MUST, if you don't say anything he won't help you)
Get a nice quote back that eventually will help you with motivation or pushes.

You can use the xmppguru extension by simple adding it to your GTalk's / Jabber Contacts: quotes@xmppguru.appspotchat.com

Examples of general usage
To receive a quote, simple express your feeling.

Chat Message: I hate this rainy day!!! Screw it!
quotes@xmppguru.appspot.com: "Sometimes water is better than snow..." - Someone from somewhere

Chat Message: what the f*** you are not helping shi*** bot!
zaptin@xmppguru.appspot.com: "" - "Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress." - Gandhi

It is not scientifically proved, but it might help. At least, in the worst case, will be an always online friend that is always willing to hear your complains. Always there in your roster.

URL Shortener XMPP Bot

2009-12-03T16:15:00.001-08:00

zaptin@xmppguru.appspotchat.com

XMPP Provides easy and clean ways to build XMPP Bots, as I showed on the previous post, we can use Google AppEngine to create 24h online, zero-maintenance Bots. Yes, I don't need to host this. Google is doing the job for now, for free, let it be.

You can use the xmppguru extension to Short URL simply add it to your GTalk's / Jabber Contacts: zaptin@xmppguru.appspotchat.com

Examples of general usage
To request a Short Version of your URL just send a message containing the URL.

Chat Message: http://pixagle.appspot.com
zaptin@xmppguru.appspot.com: http://zapt.in/D5 -> http://pixagle.appspot.com

Chat Message: xmppjingle.org
zaptin@xmppguru.appspot.com: http://zapt.in/D1 -> http://xmppjingle.org

This is quite handy, avoiding all the hassle to visit one of the other URL Shorteners just to have a smaller URL.

XMPP Bots - XMPPGuru

2009-12-02T13:46:00.000-08:00

xmppguru@appspot.com

XMPP Provides easy and clean ways to build XMPP Bots, as I showed on the previous post, we can use Google AppEngine to create 24h online, zero-maintenance Bots.

One interesting Bot is a Guru One, the main objective of this Bot is to clarify topics, answer general knowledge questions and retrieve hints for general opinion.
You can add it to your GTalk's / Jabber Contacts: xmppguru@appspot.com

Examples of general knowledge:
Question: What is Aerosmith?
xmppguru: Aerosmith is an American hard rock band, sometimes referred to as "The Bad Boys from Boston" and "America's Greatest Rock and Roll Band".

Question: What is an atomic bomb?
xmppguru: nuclear weapon: an explosive device whose destructive power is due to the uncontrollable release of energy from the fission of heavy nuclei, usually uranium-235 or plutonium-239, by neutrons sustaining a rapid chain reaction

Question: Who invented the harpoon?
xmppguru: Endangered Species question: Who invented the harpoon cannon? Sven (or Svend) Foyn (1809-1894) was a whaler born in Tønsberg in southeast Norway. In 1856, he invented the bow ...

Examples of general opinion:

Question: What is a good song?

xmppguru: What is a good song to "give" someone who you are …

Question: Do you trust god?
xmppguru: The Bible tells us to have faith: (Hebrews 11:6 NIV) And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he ...

The Bot is not meant to have conscience neither deep lexical interpretation, the goal is to answer your question when possible, something directly with a straight answer, but something also vague hints.

For unknown answers the principe is the same of Horoscope, but in a scientific way.

the best way of discovering how it works, purpose and functionality is by testing it.

Sometimes you will be surprised even asking by your full name. In the same way you will be surprised by crappy answers. Enjoy!

Google App Engine XMPP Services Example

2009-11-29T07:33:00.000-08:00

Google App Engine released the XMPP Services a while ago. The service started very basic and bad, but since then, it is improving a lot and have potential to be really worthy to build XMPP Services over it.
Unfortunately currently you might only be able to write bots. Which is not that bad specially for developers that are starting with XMPP and App Engine.

The documentation is not that good so far, but it was enough to create an EchoBot Demo App, you can download the full source here.
To use it, just explode the folder, make sure you have Google App Engine SDK configured, set your application ID, and deploy.
I strongly recommend to use Eclipse AppEngine Plugin for those tasks.

Quick Tutorial

Receiving Messages are handled by your application like an HTTP Post Request:

@SuppressWarnings("serial")
public class XmppbotServlet extends HttpServlet {
 public void doPost(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse res)
   throws IOException {

Parsing Received Messages is piece of cake. AppEngine API is handy in that sense:

 XMPPService xmpp = XMPPServiceFactory.getXMPPService();
        Message message = xmpp.parseMessage(req);

Creating a Response Message is also very simple:

JID fromJid = message.getFromJid();
  String body = message.getBody();

  // Create an Echo Message  
  Message response = new MessageBuilder().withMessageType(
    message.getMessageType()).withBody(body)
    .withRecipientJids(fromJid).build();

Now we send it back, without any specialist XMPP Knowledge required.

boolean messageSent = false;
  SendResponse status = xmpp.sendMessage(response);
  messageSent = (status.getStatusMap().get(fromJid) == SendResponse.Status.SUCCESS);

  if (!messageSent) {
   // An Error Occurred
  }

Now you can create an XMPP Bot with just a few line of simple Java code.

Remarks:

Your Bot will auto accept every XMPP contact add request, which is quite handy too. To test your Bot, just open your XMPP Account in your preferred Client. And add the contact: YourAppName@appspotchat.com
It will auto-accept your request, and if your service is running, it will be shown as available.
You can also use aliases like: Whatever@YourAppName.appspotchat.com

Erlang Version of Jingle Nodes Services is Working!

2009-11-20T17:48:00.000-08:00

We are moving very fast with the Erlang version of the Jingle Nodes Services API, after 2 weeks of finishing the Pure Java Version, with great help from contributors, we have a working Erlang Version.
I invite you to check the code at: Jingle Nodes Source
It is based on the excellent exmpp library which besides being rich featured, is also pretty straight forward to use and reliable.

The current version can provide fully working relay channels, but still lacking some features:

Detect Inactive Channels
Purge Inactive Channels
Tracker Services Provider

And indeed we have some bugs to be catch.

Contributions are really welcome!

How to Contribute?
Check the current opened issues: Jingle Node Issues
Send me an email with your intentions or if you wanna go one step ahead, patches are also accepted.

Gizmo5 is Now Part of Google's Family

2009-11-11T00:57:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Google announced the purchase of Gizmo5, a SIP Service provider, that is being around for quite sometime. And I already received some emails questioning about Jingle's future in Google, as Gizmo is a fully SIP based services. So here comes the summary:

Why Gizmo5 and not Skype or other VoIP Service Providers?

Gizmo uses SIP, which is an Open Standard. Buying anything closed and proprietary would cost Google a lot of money and huge drawback on integrations.
Gizmo is a much more open and known for its interoperability with other SIP Providers. Skype has absolute ZERO interoperability and it is mainly a closed P2P service, which Google already solved in a way more elegant way.
Main focus on calling from and to PSTN. Last thing it needs is another P2P Service.

What happens with Jingle on GTalk now?

Nothing! Google needs the flexibility that it offers and specially the natural integration with XMPP Wave Services. I don't see Google releasing Wave Services over SIP for now.
Jingle is by far the best solution for Internet Calling, and this is not a fact only mentioned by XMPP fans, but also by SIP Developers (Asterisk, SER, YATE, etc...).

Will GTalk support SIP now?
That is a tricky question, as there are two very close solutions, with pros and cons that I can't judge from Google's perspective what is better. Basically Google can solve it through:

Jingle/SIP Gateway, XMPP has a very reliable way to interconnect legacy gateways. Nimbuzz for instance already have all its SIP Services working through their XMPP Jingle Clients. They support third party SIP Providers and recently they also have released an embedded solution for calling to PSTN called NimbuzzOut.
Include a SIP Stack in Google Talk Clients. Which is not big deal. As we are plenty of SIP client side solutions and it is very easy to embed.

The point here is that I personally don't think Goggle is willing to implement SIP on their widgets of web chat voice/video solutions like we have already on GMail. Making Jingle/SIP a necessity anyhow if they also want to allow their users place calls to PSTN also from a Website Flash Widget.

IMHO Google will probably go for a Jingle/SIP gateway, solution that I quite like for two reasons:
I already build such solution, and it works incredibly good! And has great scalability as well.
I also worked last year in the draft specification document that describes the integration Jingle/SIP Interoperability in Media Sessions.
If Google allows me to suggest: Go for Jingle!

Media don't stop trying to criminalize VoIP

2009-10-28T13:28:00.000-07:00

It seems that media don't stop trying to criminalize VoIP. The most manipulated newspaper of the world, New York Times, tried again to make using VoIP looks like a crime or a terrorist behavior.

We from the OpenSource and Open Communications communities want to expose our feelings with a short sentence: "Shut Up!".

We are completely tired of your excuses for market manipulation in favor of Carriers Monopoly.

Ignored Facts:

Basically you can by a prepaid SIM Card without ANY identification and place calls worldwide for less then 10 Dollars!
Mobile and Landline Calls can be encrypted with simple software installed in your device.

The only reason that would make criminals use VoIP providers over pre-paid mobile is the price!

If they are right, lets enumerate all the elements related to a crime:

Criminals usually eat fast-food, as they don't have time to cook at home. Making MC Donald's the food supplier for criminals.
Criminals uses Ford and GM Cars for Bomb Cars. Ford and GM is manufacturing bombs with 4 wheels.
Criminals use sunglasses to disguise themselves, making RayBan a "camouflage" provider.
Criminals uses Windows, as they usually use Cyber Cafes computers equipped with this "criminal friendly" Operational System.
Criminals buys ammunition and weapons from the same manufactures that provides them to the police and military. WAIT THIS ONE IS NOT A JOKE!

Where are the attacks to weapon and ammo manufactures in the News?

Jingle Nodes in Practice - Sea Beyond

2009-10-26T08:10:00.000-07:00

Jingle Nodes will have a experimenting session and a presentation on Sea Beyond, 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.

During the development sandbox portion of the event, we will have coding sessions of:

Adding Jingle Nodes Services to an ejabberd server
Placing Jingle Calls using the created service

For the presentation session, I will be showing what is XMPP Jingle and how it is dropping the Voice Over IP complexity, making XMPP Multi-Media Sessions a reality.

The first Sea Beyond event will take place on December 17, 2009 in Paris, France, from 9:30. The formal program will conclude at 19:00, but will be followed by an opportunity to share a drink and talk with other guests and speakers.

Yet About Your Freedom

2009-10-25T05:20:00.000-07:00

The hype of having everything through mashup services, has a big impact in your freedom. Which most of the time is overwhelmed by Internet mass.

Using the "great" argument of not having to setup or create an account, sounds very nice in a first analysis, as it might seen that you are not getting another service to be attached to.
Well, it turns out that this is not true, first because you are probably exposing the information and account settings from the previous service to the new server, the only difference is that you don't need to do that manually.
But what really makes it really worst, is the attachment factor, that is created on interdependent services like applications inside facebook, orkut, twitter etc...
Once you are using a service that depends and requires other, and this service is really important for you, it attaches you extending you level of dependency through the overhead of being stuck sometimes with services that you no longer need, or never needed.

Think before getting attached to interdependent services. Make also sure the level of account exposure is really defined in a proper and clear way, as most of these integrations are not clear at all about account exposure among different services.

XMPP can support your freedom by exposing all these services through a protocol, which does the integration in a open and defined method, making you able to choose and define dependencies and exposure of your data.
In that sense you might even start your services through Google Wave, and later decide to stop and provide through your own XMPP network. Or even having Intranet services integrated in a safe and limited network.

Powering your freedom!

Jingle on IPhone over 3G and Apple's Plan Exposed

2009-10-21T13:14:00.000-07:00

Recently I posted about Jingle achievements, so today I will use the hook to explain how Jingle fits in Apple and also Carriers plans.

As we know main communication suites that we have for Apple Devices are based or at least related with XMPP (IChat, Adium, Bonjour Protocol, etc...).

You might also have noticed that there was no native application on IPhone capable of doing IM or VoIP Calls.

I presume you know the reasons right? IPhone was subsidized by Carriers in order to kick off usage of GPRS Data and increase SMS traffic. Creating the bases for the non sense block of VoIP over 3G on IPhone, as the main goals were conflicting.

Apple always knew that they could not block it forever, although why not block for a while, as we don't have any potential competitor and we can get some extra revenues?

These are all no longer valid, old facts.

The current market is different in many important aspects, such as:

There are competitors for IPhone market.
SMS Traffic is reached its maximum peak as it is fated to die due: IM, MicroBlog, Push Notifications, etc...
WiFi HotSpots are way more spread nowadays.
VoIP Providers Usage is stronger than ever.
Carriers started the surrender and changed the focus to DataPlan and aggregated services. 3G is the new goal for operators as they MUST offer an Internet solution or be switched to a WiFi alternative.
Nokia Platform Maemo is completely focused on Internet Services and Communications.

Let's put the pieces together and reverse engineer the plan based on current available facts:

Apple opens Jingle/P2P Job Positions on September.
One week after Motorola announces their Android Phone, Apple announces 3G Calling won't be blocked on AppStore anymore for AT&T and Verizon.
US Carriers blogged and announced to be Data Plan friendly.
Nokia Maemo N900 will be release with tons of IM and Communication tools in a matter of weeks from now.

Conclusions:

Having 3G Calling supported on AppStore is the best path to avoid complains about a native App that could do VoIP natively. Which turns out to be very handy to be done using Jingle as the main target is not landlines, but other IPhone/Apple Users, consuming DataPlan and not cannibalizing the last remain landline traffic opportunity. Besides the easy path as Apple already have XMPP based applications. Meaning:

Apple will release a native IM Application with VoIP Capability for IPhone/IPod and Apple products. It is very likely to be Jingle based.

Apple still rely on Carriers for IPhone massive distribution. Meaning:

From now on, Apple will do as much as possible to push 3G usage up. Including Adobe Flash Capabilities in order to increase audio/video streaming usage.

Java and Jingle Nodes

2009-10-19T12:32:00.000-07:00

For a couple of months, I was wondering if Java would be suitable to provide relay services, in case of a Java Jingle Client wanted to enable it.

Of course Java is perfectly suitable for using a Relay Service, no doubt about the trivial statement. But is Java suitable to be used on providing it?

Researching on Internet I found nothing but rumors and assumptions. So I decided to try it myself. I agreed with a Jingle Node Project Contributor to provide a Java Relay Channel Class just like we have the C++ version using Boost. And I would provide the UnitTest Cases in order to measure added latency. This weekend with the code in our hands we ran the tests.

All the tests were conducted using loopback interface in order to prevent real network to influence in the results.

You can find the Test Case in Jingle Nodes Repository:

RelayChannelTest.java

Results running 10 simultaneous channels processing and relaying 30 packets, the overall average values after 100 tests, for Latency was:

Max: 52ms
Min: 7ms
Avg: 10.0ms

Surprisingly the results are very satisfactory for Client Side Relaying. And I have to admit that the Java Code is by far more elegant and simple.

This means that SIP Communicator is not only a good candidate for Jingle Nodes usage, but also a great candidate to also provide Jingle Nodes relaying features.

For comparison criteria I created an extra test case based on a single Relay Channel using a C++ and a Java Channel measuring the added latency by using a Relay, instead of direct traffic. The results were the following:

C++/Boost-ASIO Latency:

Max: 16ms, Min: 2ms, Avg: 3.0ms

Java NIO Latency:

Max: 90ms, Min: 2ms, Avg: 5.0ms

I strongly encourage Java and C++ Developers to do a try out and spicy the discussion.

Skype submission of SILK Speech Code to IETF

2009-09-28T13:50:00.000-07:00

SILK is a speech codec for real-time, packet-based voice communications.  Targeting a diverse range of operating environments, SILK provides scalability in several dimensions.  Four different sampling frequencies are supported for encoding the audio input signal. Adaptation to network characteristics is provided through control of bitrate, packet rate, packet loss resilience and use of discontinuous transmission (DTX).  And several different complexity levels let SILK take advantage of available processing power without relying on it.  Each of these properties can be adjusted during operation of the codec on a frame-by-frame basis.
This is description of SILK in its IETF draft, which looks promising. Although that doesn't change much the closed behavior of Skype. Their main intention behind it is actually start being effectively used inside companies and being available in a wider range of supported devices.  
It is very early stage to say if Skype is in fact moving towards open standards. Besides IMHO, that is really not big deal, as being open won't bring that many benefits to the open standards and open source community. The biggest openness step Skype still needs to take is about the cryptography as the P2P topology still close but is actually a simpler solution than humans might think. Jingle Nodes is aiming for same results and honestly I truly believe we will have similar approach in a simpler, safer and more balanced way by July 2010 when the first prototype phase shall be finished.


Congratulations Skype, you are now one step away from the dark closed side.

Jingle Roundup - Accomplished So Far

2009-09-27T03:11:00.000-07:00

XMPP completed 10 years in 2009 achieving dazzling results, which consolidates Jingle ground in terms of the main requirement.
But what Jingle by itself accomplished so far? What lies in Jingle's Reality Horizon? What is the biggest negligence ?

Lets enumerate the accomplishment followed by further explanations why it succeed:

Google Talk is using Jingle from its beginning. Absolute successful decision in scalability and simplicity aspects:

There was no better solution for Google Talk Voice Capabilities then using Jingle as it makes use of the already consolidated XMPP Protocol and Transport. Which combined with ICE capabilities (which are indeed more suitable for Jingle than to SIP), allowed Google to have a mass service deployed with optimal reliability, minimal resources and tiny complexity.
The easy interoperability with Google Mail was certainly another great example of Jingle consolidation in Google's Real Time Internet Business and Services.

"Imagine deploying in a short period a service for millions of users, with quality and reliability, without P2P support and using a secondary protocol stack/transport also requiring extra set of Servers and Services?
Google knew from the beginning that having SIP Stack running together with an XMPP Stack was indeed an overhead and unpractical for future browser and mobile based applications." - Personal Quote

Nimbuzz started their evolution to Jingle in December 2008, due trivial reasons. As mainly a mobile application, having dual stack clients was completely unpractical:

Battery consumption is too high to maintain several opened sockets and threads.
Multi Platform Support requires minimalistic solutions in order to keep up to date with Manufactures Releases. Usually several phone models are released every month. Embedding a SIP Stack is way more complex that extending an existing XMPP implementation to support Jingle. Development cycles should be minimized and Jingle proved so far to be the simplest and most efficient way to provide Internet Calling Services.
As a mobility enabler service, it is very likely that the Internet connectivity will be a wireless connection(3G, public WIFI Hotspots, etc...). Meaning that packet loss and NAT are almost constants. Using SIP via UDP requires intense KeepAlive and Packet retries is unpractical for bandwidth and battery consumption.
Nimbuzz application proved that SIP is interoperable via XMPP Gateway, meaning that legacy integration is doable and can enable Jingle Only Clients to support SIP Registration and Both Ways Calling. This wasn't achieved so far for SIP Server having a Jingle gateway like asterisk. As it only supports one way calling and no registration.

When talking about features build using Jingle, Coccinella has by far the biggest set of it. And as the most successful user of Jingle Extensibility this client has a lot to tell:

Communicate with Whiteboard, sketch to explain your words. Collaborate on diagrams. Enter mathematical formulas like on paper. Draw together for fun. You decide how you visually communicate.
Communicate with Voice, handsfree communication for people who love multitasking. Discuss while working together in the whiteboard. Make a call while working on a document. It is all possible.

So in summary, what Jingle really accomplished so far?

Jingle is a scalable solution with outstanding and graceful support for P2P. Google Talk proved it.
Jingle makes much more sense in mobile platform than SIP or legacy protocols. Nimbuzz demonstrated it.
Jingle extensibility is not only theory, in practice is much easier to have collaborative multimedia sessions over Jingle than in legacy protocols. Specially due the possibility to have that done via P2P. Coccinella assured it.
Simplicity and accuracy, in the sense of implementations. Most Jingle client and services are built with much less complexity than ANY other protocol. All clients proved it.

Current Specifications:
XEP-0166: Jingle

XEP-0167: Jingle RTP Sessions] (formerly: Jingle Audio Content Description Format)
XEP-0176: Jingle ICE Transport

XEP-0177: Jingle Raw UDP Transport
XEP-0179: Jingle IAX Transport Method
XEP-0181: Jingle DTMF
XEP-0234: Jingle File Transfer
XEP-0251: Jingle Session Transfer
XEP-0262: Use of ZRTP in Jingle RTP Sessions

Google AppEngine Limiting Telephony Application

2009-09-21T11:11:00.000-07:00

If you sign up for a Google App Engine account you will have the following statement in the Terms of Service:

"You agree not to use the XMPP API to operate or to enable any telecommunications service or in connection with any applications that allow users to place calls to or receive calls from any public switched telephone network."

Google basically is blocking any usage of XMPP to communicate with telephony networks. In practical terms is limiting any usage of XMPP API for a SIP/Jingle or H323/Jingle Gateway, etc...

Although it is not that bad, once it implicit allows the usage for Pure Internet Calling purposes. It remind me about the all discussion around FCC, on Google "fighting" with Apple to get his Application into IPhone AppStore.
As I mentioned before, all this overrated discussion is possibly part of a Marketing Plan to Advertise the Google Voice Service, as it showed itself a big failure so far.
Once Google is following exactly the same bounds of restrictions as Apple in the App Engine.

This post does not have as intention, judge the Apple or Google for their games and strategies. But it has the purpose of warning and public awareness about Voice Over IP Market, now played by new powerful players.

How to use your SIP Server with Nimbuzz Client

2009-09-01T07:52:00.000-07:00

You can use Nimbuzz Client (Mobile or PC), which is a XMPP Jingle Client to connect to your SIP Provider or Personal SIP Server(Company Asterisk or iptel.org Services for instance). This proves how powerful and inter-operable Jingle is.

There are some requirements in order to use it:
* Your SIP Server/Provider MUST be connected to the Internet in a public IP.
* Your SIP Server/Provider MUST provide or act like a RTP Proxy. (Asterisk does that by default)
* Your Nimbuzz Client MUST be connected to the Internet, through a connection that doesn't block UDP/RTP Traffic and also allows TCP connections to port 5222, which will be used by the XMPP Connection.

How to setup with your own SIP Server(General):
1) Setup your SIP Server using your domain on port 5060. Setting up a SIP Proxy is optional.
2) Enable RTP Proxy, in order to guarantee audio both ways, even when users are behind NAT.
3) Create the users/passwords.
4) Make sure to configure your firewall correctly enabling UDP in/out traffic to Internet on port 5060 and in all the port range used by your RTP Proxy (usually 15000 to 65000).
5) Log on Nimbuzz Client using your Nimbuzz Account, go to SIP Settings and use the credentials that you created previously:
Username: user01@yourdomain.com
Password: pass
Proxy: (Leave it blank if you didn't setup it)
6) Done, you now should be able to place and receive calls in your Nimbuzz Client using your own SIP Server. (Refer to troubleshooting section in case of issues.)

How to setup with using SIP Provider(iptel.org in the example):
1) Log on Nimbuzz Client using your Nimbuzz Account, go to SIP Settings and use your SIP credentials that you created previously:
Username: userABC@iptel.org
Password: pass
Proxy: sip.iptel.org
2) Done, you now should be able to place and receive calls in your Nimbuzz Client using your SIP Provider. (Refer to troubleshooting section in case of issues.)

Troubleshooting:

* If you cannot even get registered to your SIP Server/Provider:
Double Check your credentials on Nimbuzz SIP Settings and also in your SIP Server Configuration.

* If you cannot get Calls completed:
Debug the SIP Signalling and also refer to your SIP Server Call Routing Configurations. (In Asterisk check for extensions.conf).
When using a SIP provider contact your provider for details of how to place calls(Number format, Valid Destinations, etc).

* If you cannot get Audio Both Ways:
Make sure your SIP Server/Provider has RTP Proxy enable. It is very likely that if you are experiencing this situation, you or the person you are calling to, is behind a NAT.
The interoperability of this service depends on RTP Proxy availability to guarantee both ways audio for users behind NAT.
Check you SIP Server Configuration or contact your SIP provider for further details and support.
Once the RTP Proxy is SIP Provider/Server responsibility.
Also make sure you are using an Internet connection that does NOT block UDP/RTP Traffic. This is a requirement. If using 3G check with your carrier about UDP/RTP restrictions.

I hope this article clarifies a little how to integrate to your SIP Services. If you already using/used another provider, please post comments about how you did it.

ejabberd STUN Server

2009-08-26T06:10:00.000-07:00

ejabberd is now much more Jingle friendly with its STUN server.

STUN (Simple Traversal Utilities for NAT) is a powerful address/network discovery tool, that can helps NAT traversal, which is the main requirements for a media(audio/video) sessions.
NAT traversal techniques are required for peer-to-peer and Voice-over-IP (VoIP) applications. Most techniques requires discover services from a publicly-routable IP address.
STUN is a method that uses the server only when establishing the connection, which saves bandwidth costs server-side, decreases latency and also boosts quality.

Jingle protocol uses STUN in a very efficient and easy way, making STUN the perfect combination for Jingle enabled Clients in order to provide peer-to-peer and great quality media sessions.

Check the diagram to understand why do you need and what can you do with a STUN Server on ejabberd:

Check it out:
svn co http://svn.process-one.net/ejabberd/trunk/src/stun/
http://svn.process-one.net/ejabberd/trunk/doc/guide.html

IM Status Message

2009-08-24T10:11:00.000-07:00

Many people use their status messages of IM clients and micro-blog to express their feelings.
Looks pretty cool and very often you have the response or support that you want.
Some weeks ago I had a discussion with a friend about the actual meaning of a feeling can easily get lost in so short chunk of characters.

So today I put on my status text: "Biggest mistake of nature: Incompetence doesn't hurt."
I was actually making reference to a news where cops missed shots and hit innocent people, injuring some and killing one.

But it turns out, that the floating and vague phrase had impact in several colleagues and even ex-colleagues on my roster. Asking what was going on, if any project/people was failing, delayed or something.

I still think that the beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, and the same sentence can have several meanings if read by several people.

So before you put status message about DRM for instance: "I hate you, you MUST die!", you should be careful, as besides people are not sure about it. In fact it pops up a doubt and the attention of everyone in your roster: "Who is he referring? Would be me?". The same thing can happen if you put "I Love You!". For sure there are some people that you definitely don't want to think this is for them.
Remember, your status will be showed usually to all your friends and co-workers.

In the other hand status messages shows themselves as really powerful broadcast tool, use it wisely, so you can get also very fast and good results with it.

"Writing a blog post..."

Jingle Relay Nodes Full Description

2009-07-31T00:23:00.000-07:00

In the creation of the very first version of the Jingle Protocol, one of the main goals was to achieve a P2P enable protocol, that would depend on XMPP for routing, but would be also able to negotiate sessions and exchange content without main proxy servers like present SIP deployments.

After 5 years we still don't have any massive deployments containing and fully supported the current specifications, and even the closer to the specification ones are suffering when P2P is not possible and relay is required and there is no available ones.

SIP in the other hand is not very efficient and simple for P2P methods but is widely deployed around the planet as it is much simpler to deploy and although with higher costs, can provide media connectivity.

Jingle Nodes comes in place with the goal of making more nodes available, as it makes the task of having public relays close to trivial, as you just need to run an XMPP client with a Public Node Policy available for everyone. Also makes every buddy in your contact list a potential Node.
Another positive point is that a client don't need to implement a Relay Node if not applicable, it only needs to implement the Usage specification that would be no more than two or three pages of specification as the main logic is on server side.

A few words about Jingle Nodes
Jingle Nodes and Super Nodes are intend to provide easy to use Jingle Relay Type Candidates that can be used in ICE-UDP and also on RAW-UDP Jingle Sessions.
Relay Candidates can provide NAT Traversal for users that don't have STUN/TURN Support, but also for users with STUN/TURN support that the negotiation failed.

What about similar architecture and approach?
The unique similar project is Skype, which is a closed and non inter-operable network.
Skype Network works in a similar way except that on Skype you can't choose whether share your bandwidth or not. And as a closed protocol you can't do anything about it.
On Jingle you can choose to share with:
* everyone
* nobody
* only buddies
* only whitelist
* blacklist
* etc...
In other words you are free to choose and decide about your device and network.

Another similar technologies but with less coverage is STUN/TURN.
STUN is very nicely designed technology, and it is responsible for almost all P2P VoIP traffic available nowadays. The idea is very efficient and assertive.
I also like TURN security and assertion, but it doesn't seem like the market already adopted it very widely to serve as the default VoIP relay system. But both lacks badly in simplicity and implementation timeframe.
TURN RFC is something about 80 pages, which makes it very complex and unpractical for "thin" clients like mobile voip clients, where vendors needs to release a version for almost each new mobile phone model.
Jingle Relay Nodes uses the benefit of the embedded security and flexibility of XMPP to provide the same functionality of Relay, but in a much simpler process and minimal implementation.
So we can finally have XMPP Clients doing VoIP with a pure XMPP Stack Client.

What is it that people really need?
People needs to talk. End users don't necessarily care about which protocol or connection type is being used in the call, but if it effectively has audio and with reasonable quality.
The Jingle Nodes try to promote the beauty of P2P, but without dropping the Jingle Responsibility with the end user, which is call completion.

What does Jingle have and what needs to be done?
Jingle already have specifications for Direct Media, P2P based on ICE-STUN, but it needs an extension to cover Jingle Relay Nodes.
The long term goal is to have Jingle widely deployed across the world and collaborate to this adoption by providing "easy to use" and "always works" solutions.

More on Jingle Relay Nodes

2009-07-29T15:02:00.000-07:00

SIP Communicator is Coming Back To The Family

2009-07-22T04:22:00.000-07:00

After putting on hold Jingle support for some time, Emil Ivov, the SIP Communicator Founder, told me today that they are adding Jingle again in early 2010. And it will also come fully packed with new and powerful features like ICE P2P communication and Video support!

He mentioned that SIP Communicator project have now a speed boost, as they graciously received funding from NLnet foundation, concerning the completion of the ice4j stack, Jingle telephony, brand new support for file transfer, and multi-party conference calls for SIP and Jingle/XMPP.

Some Super Cool Expected Features:
* Jingle ICE - Enabling P2P and server-less communication
* Jingle Video - Enable real time Video chat
* H264 Codec - Provides great video quality with regular bandwidth usage
* ZRTP - Secure and encrypted Audio/Video Streams

Stay Tuned for More Jingle Happy Days!

Adobe goes P2P - XMPP and FMS

2009-07-21T15:08:00.000-07:00

After Google requirement of having a P2P method to provide Voice and Video on GMail, Adobe finally put some effort and released a very decent support for P2P on Flash Player 10.
It is called Stratus and you can also you it as we do in UDP-ICE, we can have several alternative and fall-back methods, including RTMP as a last resort.

Adobe was probably holding this at all costs as they were afraid on the reduction of amount of FMS license sales. But it turns out that at some point they needed to open it, so they could get bigger market share, as not everybody can afford 100% of Audio/Video proxied on their networks.
This also means that every company now can have their own Voip Services and also full featured Video Conference Platforms running internally using only an ejabberd and FMS on server side and browser based application on client side.

I tested myself the UDP based traffic, and the quality as expect actually much better with compared with the Slow and Lagged RTMP TCP based solution, specially in long distance and high latency networks.

Check it out at:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/stratus/

Looks like now we have more consistent reasons to have kind of Flash RTMFP Transport in Jingle.
You can also see a very cool tutorial on this link (Flash P2P Tutorial).

Why use Jingle?

2009-07-18T02:58:00.001-07:00

Back in early 2006 I was working at Jive Software with Matt Tucker in a presentation for OSCON.
We were very excited as it was just after we published the very first Smack-Jingle version containing also the first implementation of Jingle ICE protocol in the world that was based on XSF Standards.

This presentation makes a parallel between SIP and Jingle and also exemplify why Jingle can solve P2P issues on SIP. The illustration of how ICE works is also awesome!

Check the presentation here:
Jingle-Cutting-Edge-Voip

Cheers Matt!

Jingle Nodes Preview

2009-07-17T17:31:00.000-07:00

I've been working on Jingle Nodes XEP from the past 3 months. But as I usually do, I implement it beforehand so I can make sure I don't release any sci-fi specification.
So far the results are satisfactory and sounds promising even though the implementation is at very early stage.
I will post below some nice features to be covered and a RTP Diagram showing some use cases:

Main Goal
Jingle Nodes and Super Nodes are intend to provide easy to use Jingle Relay Type Candidates that can be used in ICE-UDP and also on RAW-UDP Jingle Sessions.
Relay Candidates can provide NAT Traversal for users that don't have STUN/TURN Support, but also for users with STUN/TURN support that the negotiation failed.

Similarity
Skype Network works in a similar way except that on Skype you can't choose whether share your bandwidth or not. And as a closed protocol you can't do anything about it.
On Jingle you can choose to share with:
* everyone
* nobody
* only buddies
* only whitelist
* blacklist
* etc...
In other words you are free to choose and decide about your device and network.

Diagram

Jingle Client Developers with interest in helping creating prototype or being early adopters are welcome. Leave a comment and you will be contacted.

Mobile Voip over XMPP

2009-07-17T16:37:00.000-07:00

Mobile Voip is one of the hottest trends now on new generation phones. But what's the most efficient way to do it?
In a time that calling is not the absolute main feature, but another in a combination of: Calling, Presence and Contacts. Telecom companies choose to go for SIP/SIMPLE IMS based systems.
Well it turns out that we all know that it exists but we never saw it live in a mobile in front of us. I mean, at least in a way that the battery survived more that 4 hours or so.

Analyzing IMS specs you will notice that it is nothing but a lot of work around in order to let SIP do what he wasn't meant to do from the beginning. And another question that pops up is interoperability, as the specs are quite open to interpretation in several aspects.
Work-arounds like XCaps which is just a web service but behind a cool name and lack of a defined and more strict way for contact management are leading IMS implementations through a long off-road track. A race that they don't wanna quit as they spent billions of dollars acquiring already obsolete plataforms.

In the other hand XMPP have shown that Presence and Contact List are very simple doable things and that this can inter-operate successfully among different networks, devices and even protocols.
And now it has another advantage, which is the mobile Voip ability. Already deployed live for millions of users on Nimbuzz Network.
One of the coolest features of Jingle it is his almost natural way to deal with P2P negotiations, which leads to much better and reliable negotiation of media specially when compared to SIP.
XMPP Jingle demystified Voip showing the real simplicity behind it, removing all the obfuscated logics behind SIP tags, branchs, CSeqs and transactions. (Check MiniJingle as an example)

All this packed together can guarantee that whatever the market wants in next months and years, XMPP is way ahead when dealing with extensibility, simplicity and interoperability.
Which are the strongest tendencies for near future communication.

Friday's Top 5 - Must Die Applications

2009-07-17T00:47:00.000-07:00

Big companies are always trying to overuse their versions, dragging them to the limit of "durability" seeking for extra profit. But just like real waste, this is not healthy for software ecosystem.
We all are annoyed by software waste, specially that ones that drag us in order to keep backward compatibility.
Something that big companies also don't tell is that backward compatibility is always responsible for at least 25% of overall costs of a new version. So now guess who pays for that? YOU!
So this Friday's Top 5 is dedicated to all crap waste software and technology that stays among us.

5. RealNetworks Real Player
"In order for your browser to display the following paragraph this site must download new software; please wait. Sorry, the requested codec was not found. Please upgrade your system."
I still don't believe when some people say that they saw a web site using it. The lowest usability, compatibility and flexibility you can achieve in a media player.
Besides the original format never took off specially due special requirements and slowness.

4. Norton Uninstall Tools
Why would you want an application to uninstall another? I understand that on Windows 95 Mud Times, but now with a huge set of different softwares and different installation procedures and mainly decent ones with correct unistallation, why would you use Norton Unistall?
And more, we are almost in 2010, I can't believe you still using operating systems that don't provide at least a regular package and installation manager.
(If you are an user, starting changing your OS to something good(Ubuntu, MacOs, Debian, etc...) before going to such solutions.) But this one is unused that don't even pollute our software environment.

3. Windows Vista
Red, Pink or Brown? Red!
Windows vista is the most non-baked OS that was shipped out this decade.
Containing lots of ridiculous newbie issues, regarding graphic cards, permissions, security, usability, stability and specially performance.
What about compatibility? That was quite a disaster on very first versions. The IT economic crisis might have some relation with this...hehehe
Well, I don't have to describe one of the biggest reason to start using Linux ever.

2. IE6
Better known as "Microsoft Bug Collection", Internet Explorer 6 still being used for a lot of unresponsive people all over the world. And also causing a lot of work to Web Developers in order to achieve compatibility with one of the worst piece of software ever dragged.
It is said that browser compatibility consumes at least 30% of development time and effort in a Web application, and it gets even worst when it comes to Web 2.0 applications.
IE6 is considered the scariest nightmare for the Web Developers, Users and whoever gets closer to it.

1. IPV4
The Number 1 Enemy of: Voip, Security, Scalability, Flexibility, P2P etc...
Considered obsolete since 1995 with the creation of RFC1752, IPV4 is being dragged causing a lot of side effects including hundreds of thousands of companies, software and even protocols in order to solve its problems and limitations.
A great example is ICE specification for P2P Connection, contains more than 70% of dedicated content, that didn't even need to exists if IPV4 had fade out already.
Besides IPV4 being a obsolete old guy, we own it lots of respect for being one of the biggest drivers for Internet the way it is nowadays.
We love and hate you IPV4!

FISL10 Presentations

2009-07-16T11:38:00.000-07:00

On June 2009, I was invited for two talks on FISL10 in Brazil.
The first one was about XMPP Freedom and its master plan for world domination.
The second one was a hands on session implementing a Jingle Client in 40 Minutes using MiniJingle.

Attending to wishes I'm dropping them here as Drop.IO which is in my opinion one of the coolest and newest tools on the web regarding file sharing and collaboration. Cheers and Congrats to Drop.IO XMPP Team!

XMPP and Mobile Freedom - Download
Jingle CookBook - Download

Google Voice - So... What New?

2009-07-15T11:47:00.000-07:00

Google Announced officially the release of Google Voice.
Besides all market posts and mass comments, the set of new or innovative Voice Features so far are empty. They are just trying to move backwards in time when talking about obsolete and non simple features.
I honestly was expecting much more than a service binded to a real mobile number attached to a formal operator.
In a time that everybody is questioning the meaning of a phone number in the "post email ERA", Google came and released a service based on operator number.
When it might be a short term boom, but as other examples, this might achieve some success not for an innovative concept, but based on Google fame. Google fans probably will use it just to be recognized as early-adopters.
Where is the Interoperability? The Extensibility? The Open Service API? It seems like some basic principles of new Internet where forgotten somewhere under operators shoes.

In short words: "Google Voice does basically what your phone and your operator together always did."

If you are really looking for something that your phone never did before, try Nimbuzz Mobile and feel the real sensation of doing something that your phone never have done before.

Nimbuzz will show you that a "phone number" is the last thing in the world that you need in a full communicator solution.

Nimbuzz uses XMPP and Jingle in order to provide the biggest and feature rich mobile platform ever.

My Fridge XMPP Client

2009-07-13T03:51:00.000-07:00

No, it is not a Jetsons Episode! A few weeks ago I spoke with a guy from an appliance Industry, and guess what?
XMPP is being tested as the solution for domestic devices interactivity.
Meaning that in some years you will probably check in real time the presence of milk and ice cream in your fridge directly from your phone, wherever you are! (Via Nimbuzz?)
Interesting things you might be able to do:
* Monitor you food consumption at the end of the month.
* Check whats missing at the supermarket. Goodbye to shopping lists.
* Check if you forgot your oven on, and be able to turn it off remotely.
* Speed up the cooling of your beer before you get home.
* Get updated in real time and receive pictures in case someone break into your house. Directly in your phone.

I cannot tell the company name, but they promised to have something in the Brazilian market by 2011 as pilot.

Check some Jetsons and Inspector Gadget episodes for more ideas.

IM Freedom? Not yet...

2009-06-29T11:49:00.000-07:00

Back in 80's electronic Mail, used to work only inside same network and protocols.
The reason was that the electronic Mail first appeared as a feature of proprietary communication platforms. Which usually is combined with market domination attempts.
In other words company A, didn't want to support company B, as they wanted the customers(medium/large corporations back there), to keep buying from the same vendor. Which used to guarantee long term agreements and easier support, as they were required to know only about their own solutions.
After some time the unavoidable happened, some integration companies started appearing. And after another period, some companies started using SMTP as a ready-to-use and plug'n'play platforms with out-of-the box interoperability with other networks, companies and vendors.
With TCP Protocol, we also had a time when Microsoft tried to force everybody into a crappy and proprietary protocol called InetBios. Which also caused same nasty effects before fading out.
The pattern always repeated:
1) Control Tryout;
2) Gateways;
3) Migration to a common and inter-operable solution.

It seems like we don't notice it, but, we are in the exactly epicentric(fase 2) point of the IM Monopoly tryout. The only difference is that it is lasting too long, as we have a mass of ignorant people that just accepts whatever the mass market push into their computer.
This is one of the most cruel monopoly ever! Proprietary IM networks REQUIRES you to have an account on their service in order to allow you to communicate to your friends!
In other words: "They make you drop your freedom of choice in order to keep in touch with your already converted friends!"
Stop this now! Start using federated or aggregation like nimbuzz.com and fight for your freedom putting pressure in order to speed up their surrender!

Never give up your Freedom!

Start demanding the same freedom that you have in or email service, phone, etc...!

XMPP BOTs

2009-06-28T16:44:00.000-07:00

A very cool and unexplored feature of XMPP is the easy way to build and deploy automated BOTs.
This is something that is not that easy to do on proprietary networks like Skype, MSN, Yahoo etc...
I will soon start to post here some XMPP BOTs including sources in order to build a collection.

Another great factor is that XMPP BOTs are totally about interoperability meaning that if you run in a XMPP Server with interoperability enable, you can have this BOT in your contact list even if you are not connected through that server. This is totally awesome!

If you have any BOT stable and interesting enough to worth a post, please send me the code and it might be added to the collection.

Let's start building another powerful and exclusive weapon against proprietary networks!

Nimbuzz, Jingle and XMPP at FISL10

2009-06-23T14:08:00.000-07:00

I will be at FISL10 this year talking about XMPP mobile freedom, also presenting Nimbuzz as an use case.
I will also talk about Jingle and how to implement a client in minutes using Smack, Minijingle API and PJMedia.

Follow my twitter for updates: http://twitter.com/xmppjingle

Nimbuzz Jingle/SIP Gateway

2009-06-21T14:28:00.000-07:00

Nimbuzz recently announced that they converted all their clients to Jingle.
Considering the amount of supported Calling Gateways by Nimbuzz, it also means that they have not only a SIP/Jingle Gateway but also: Jingle/Skype, Jingle/MSN, Jingle/Yahoo, Jingle/Flash, Jingle/...

It is one more time proven that Internet Users no more need several applications running in their computers or mobile devices in order to chat with other User in different networks like MSN, Skype, Yahoo, and all the other closed networks.

Looks like Nimbuzz is one step ahead on protocol unification when talking about single stack network solutions, doing ALL other networks did using several protocols and stacks, using only ONE big Joker, XMPP.

And XMPP proves again to be a perfect ecosystem for integration, interoperability, flexibility and extensibility.

I'm very excited about what going to happen when interoperability break through Instant Messaging, Social Networks and Microblogs. In my very personal opinion, whoever is ahead will win the race, as timing is and always were everything on Internet.

Quote:
"How big will the Cloud composed by: GTalk, Twitter, Nimbuzz, Facebook, AOL, GoogleWaves and all other players that already announced the convertion?"

Jingle Logo Proposal

2009-06-21T03:12:00.000-07:00

I needed to create a project logo for one of my projects: minijingle.
When fooling around with XMPP logo, I came up with a proposal for Jingle Protocol logo instead.

The reasons that I like it is because it makes reference to XMPP Logo, with the J of Jingle and also to a musical note, meaning the "media" side of the protocol.

This is just the first proposal, let's see what the XMPP and Jingle fans think about it...

I will post the vectorial format here later, so we can have community contributions. (But don't forget to mention the Author! Open Source doesn't mean anonymity)

Erlang RTP Proxy

2009-06-20T13:49:00.000-07:00

If you question yourself why move to an Erlang RTP Proxy if you are using openSER, Asterisk, or any other SIP based service. I can also say that the benefits don't seen so clear too.

But it turns out to be coolest solution for Jingle Raw-UDP Proxies! As you can integrate with your EJabberd as a module.

Check http://code.google.com/p/erlrtpproxy/ for the RTP Proxy application.

I've developed several RTP Proxy based on XMPP for the last few years, including Openfire RTP Bridge, which is pure Java and embed in all Openfire deploys.

Stay tuned! I will publish the RTP Proxy Module for EJabberd soon!

But I can give you a hint that this one looks specially promising:

Jingle for dummies

2009-05-28T13:36:00.000-07:00

I found this old diagram from 2004, describing a easy way to use ICE on Jingle. It also describes in a very simplistic way how it works.
Main differences from regular ICE, are that in the suggested flow, there is no need for STUN connectivity check, everything is done by an ECHO service that justs replies every UDP packet to the sender.
The relay candidates are also not retrieved from a TURN Server, but from an XMPP Service that provide ready to use relay candidates.
Skipping STUN Conn-Check and TURN complexity.

This proposal will be used as an inspiration for Jingle Super Nodes XEP.

Price of shadows

2009-05-22T07:12:00.000-07:00

When you are buying a product, are you buying what?
Are you buying the material? the design? the quality?
Which of these values that you actually judge before you buy is real?
If everything you see, buy, taste and feel, only have abstract values. What makes them so necessary for your reality?
Aren't the work, or the consequences of production, the raw products used, values that you should also take in count when buying, build or acquiring something?
No if you try to judge that based on labels or advertisement that promises that, but in fact in real world is just another marketing campaign trying to just build up more value for something that has no absolute value?
Fair Trade? Forest Friends? Green Friendly? Eco Conscience? What all of these means in practice?

What was the last real thing you bought?

Were you buying only shadows with label, with functionalities or abstract value aggregation?

What if the ones that produces the good stuff, behind the curtains, are the exactly same one that produces the bad stuff, so it makes sure he can sell for both markets?

Keep thinking...

Single Stack or Die

2009-03-20T23:07:00.000-07:00

The current Internet is a real Babylon. A huge number of new protocols, languages, scripts, etc... Are being created every year.
The consequence of that is 30% of current internet development efforts is to be compatible and updated with most of them.

Jingle on Streets

2009-02-07T07:11:00.000-08:00

It is really cool to now how many new Jingle implementers.
In Jingle Thingle 2009 I noticed that the big SIP Companies were not only just present in the meeting, but also demonstrating and testing their Jingle implementations.

We know that Google is being using Jingle on GTalk to provide Voice and File Transfers for several years, but what we don't know or maybe we didn't summarize is:
* AOL Messaging migrate to XMPP.
* Nimbuzz migrate several millions of Mobile Clients from SIP to Jingle.
* Twitter solved their scalability problems with XMPP.
* CISCO the most important SIP vendor, bought Jabber.
* OpenSER has a XMPP interoperability module.
* Asterisk has now embed support for Jingle.
* YATE has the first real full featured PBX using Jingle.
* Nokia is planning to launch a smart phone with XMPP/Jingle embeded support.

So it really seems like the simple facts that in Jingle you can negotiate several transport types, several contents in the same session opened the minds of these SIP companies to have a look on it. And the fact of Jingle in real use cases is more reliable and much easier to
implement than SIP, consolidating the protocol as the internet age multimedia signalling negotiating protocol.

Follow Jingle specification evolutions at:

XEP-0166 - Jingle
XEP-0167 - Jingle RTP Sessions
XEP-0176 - Jingle ICE-UDP Transport Method
XEP-0177 - Jingle Raw UDP Transport Method
XEP-0234 - Jingle File Transfer
XEP-0251 - Jingle Session Transfer

SIP Providers P2P Try-out Fails

2008-12-23T05:07:00.000-08:00

Some SIP providers and server developers thinks that it is possible to guess if a user can send/receive RTP traffic direct in his IP if the SIP Signaling network is public IP.
WRONG!

The correct way to do this is using a connectivity check algorithm (STUN, ECHO, etc...) based on the UDP Channel that you may use to send/receive the streaming.

SIP Providers, stop doing guesses about User Agents NAT description based on the signaling channel.
This kills the interoperability of your SIP Services.

Pretty Little Random World

2008-12-20T18:26:00.000-08:00

Did you ever wonder why everything is random in our reality?
People Tastes, DNA, plants size and forms, animals behavior, human habits, weather, quantic atomic behavior, Friends Humor, etc...
Everything in nature is random this is an old fact.

But, why? What is the cause and goal of this?

To give a try I will start explaining the paradox of the random concept:
"Random is everything that causes a reaction that cannot be predicted before the respective action."
So to affirm that an action produces a random reaction, you MUST know that you cannot predict the reaction. But can you prove that you cannot predict the reaction?

"If everything is random, how can you predict that a reaction is random, if the reaction is random?"
Conceptually a random reaction can repeat forever(infinity times) given an unique action, and still be considered random.

So in fact, what is "Random"?

To explain the Random, you always need to rely on the infinity concept. Which brings even more doubts as infinity still something not clear for human minds.
In an orthodox proposition:
"Random is a reaction that given infinity tries, can generates different results."

Conclusion:
It is not possible to prove that a reaction is random if you cannot counter prove against the infinity. Which means that every affirmative that a reaction is random it simply another random guess.

This conclusion also explains why all human attempts of generating artificial "pure random" failed.

raXacuca Project is LIVE

2008-12-20T18:18:00.001-08:00

raXacuca Project has the objective of to prove people that Google cannot answer all questions.
With logical trivia and Math Puzzles raXacuca proves that logical thinking is necessary and mandatory.

All users compete simultaneously answering unique questions that they cannot find the answers simply typing the problem in a search engine like Google.com.

It still alpha version, but I hope it can motivate people to start thinking again.

Try it out: http://www.raxacuca.com

* Only Portuguese Version for now.

Python Encoding

2008-12-20T18:13:00.001-08:00

Python uses UTF-8 for encoding python files. But for some reason Google App Engine does not.

You MUST include this right in the very first line of your .py file:


#
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

Remember the it MUST be in the very first line of the text so the encoding comment: # -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
Will be positioned exactly in the 2nd line with is mandatory according to Python specification.

Hope it helps.

Python Time Comparison Tricks

2008-12-14T05:23:00.000-08:00

Cool operator overflow feature in Python brings a lot of abstraction.
When comparing Date and Time this brings an easy way to do it.



# Imports
import os
import datetime
from datetime import timedelta

# Get current time value:
current=datetime.datetime.now()

# Advancing Time (examples hours, minutes, days, seconds):
# Advancing 1 hour and 30 seconds
adv=current + timedelta(hours=1, seconds=30)

# Getting Delta Time
diff = adv - current
# Comparing
if diff > timedelta(hours=1):
  bigger=true
else:
  bigger=False

Very easy!

UnMount Python

2008-12-09T16:16:00.000-08:00

After years of personal resistance finally I did it.
I took one of my nights to learn Python.
The main reason was:

Check how Google App Engine is being able to support so much Transactions.

Other reasons:

Check if it really throws Identation Error?
Will I take 50% of my time doing Identation?
Does it really count my Whitespaces?
WHY!?!?

The conclusion was that Python it is very easy and full of well implemented frameworks with a quite good performance.
What really called my attention was the high-level data structures with a simple but effective approach to object-oriented programming.
It totally worth it. Specially for replacing the my old fashioned Perl Scripts.

* About the WEIRD whitespace stuff: I would say it sucks. But maybe it is my brain that is not yet prepared to process code snippets without my old friends "{}"

Hello World Code Example:

print "Be careful not to fall off!"