Foreword
Welcome to the 6th roundup of the XMPP community worldwide.
This edition has been written by Nicolas Vérité with contributions from Will Sheward, Cédric, and Mickaël Rémond. Contributions are welcome for future editions.
Mats Bengtsson passed away
It is with great regret that we learned though Mari Lundberg and Sander Devrieze, that Mats Bengtsson, lead developper of the Coccinella XMPP client, passed away in november 2008. Rest in peace Mats.
10 years of Jabber
Jehan is hosting an event celebrating 10 years of Jabber and has issued a call for sponsors and papers. The event will take place at Carrefour Numérique in Paris, France, on Saturday, the 28th of February.
Talks and articles
Social networks based on XMPP
At the 25th Chaos Communication Congress in Germany, Jan Torben gave a talk on “Privacy in the social semantic web : Social networks based on XMPP”, the slides are available in PDF format.
Low bandwidth XMPP
Isode has released a whitepaper dealing with “Operating XMPP over Radio and Satellite Networks”, or constrained and low-bandwidth links. They gave a talk on this subject at the High Frequency Industry Association meeting in San Diego last week. Slides are available in PDF format from Isode’s blog.
Introduction to Jingle
Peter Saint-Andre has written an article in Unified Communications Magazine, entitled “Give me a Jingle (It’s a Multi-Protocol World)” presenting Jingle to SIP people.
Real-time trading system
Though we have almost no information, Artur Hefczyc chatted with someone developping a real-time trading system in which Tigase XMPP Server is the critical messaging piece, another piece of evidence that XMPP is widely used as a secret competitive advantage in many companies.
Developing a lingua franca for instant messaging
David Banes has written an article for IDM Magazine, entitled “Developing a lingua franca for instant messaging” (PDF), comparing e-mail ten years ago to IM today.
Pidgin user survey
Pidgin develoment team has released the results of its user survey: though it’s focused on Piding only, some figures are very interesting.
Push technologies
Zac has put online a good explanation of push technologies, in an 8 minutes video, using pen+paper presentation technologies.
XMPP/Jabber presentation in Toulouse, France
Simon Chemouil et Geoffroy Youri presented XMPP/Jabber, on wednesday 21st of Januray, at Toulouse, France. Toulibre is the LUG that hosted the event, the video is available for download in Ogg Theora (666 MB, 2h27), and the slides in PDF: part 1 and part 2.
Services and software
idsoftware’s Quakelive uses XMPP
ProcessOne reports that Quakelive, idsoftware’s new online first-person shooter game, is using XMPP for its chatrooms and presence, as it is showed by screenshots and demos. They use the GaimTheory platform, which has XMPP involved.
Cleartext announces XMPP IM SaaS
Sydney based messaging SaaS provider Cleartext has launched a new XMPP based instant messaging service called ClearIM.
Pizzja
David Ammouial has released Pizzja (“pizz-yah”), a Jabber component that allows you to control a single connection (resource) to your Jabber account using several clients. It is written in Python under GPLv2.
Enomaly’s Elastic Computing Platform (ECP)
Elastic Computing Platform (ECP), from Enomaly, is a virtual infrastructure management software, that uses XMPP as its core “decentralized command and control” component.
tribook.net has XMPP
tribook.net is a software for training tracking: hardware, runs, trainings, best performances, calendar, and competitions results. Olivier Anguenot has added XMPP chat features, allowing chat sessions with coaches and other community members, as well as file exchange.
KsirK network mode
KsirK, the strategy game, in version included in the fresh new KDE 4.2, has a network mode based on XMPP.
Kopete has Jingle
Still in the KDE 4.2 world, Kopete, the desktop environment’s instant messaging application, has now audio conversations features via Jingle.
Ubiety: opensource C# library
Ubiety [yoo-bahy-i-tee] is an XMPP library written in C# by Dieter Lunn, published under LGPLv3 license.
Desknote
Desknote is a multiplatform (Linux, Mac OS X and Windows) microblogging GTK client for the menéame platform, written in C#/Mono and released under the GPLv3 license.
ActionMessenger
ActionMessenger is a Ruby on Rails framework for instant messagging inspired by and similar to Action Mailer, written by Daniel Noll under a BSD license.
JAXL
JAXL (“Jabber XMPP Library” or “Just Another XMPP Library”) is an XMPP library written in PHP, under the GPLv3 license.
shaim
shaim is a multi-protocol instant messaging application written in C# for Windows only, and published under a BSD license.
Jabber Feed 0.4
Jehan has announcedJabber Feed 0.4, a WordPress plugin, allowing to cross-post to PubSub. It has now TLS, SASL, automatic creation and configuration of PubSub nodes, SRV records, and much more…
identi.ca evolutions
identi.ca open micro-blogging platform based on laconi.ca software underwent an update, adding a new visual refresh, groups, and much more.
headstock
Sylvain Helegouarch has released a Python library under the modified BSD license, named headstock, that can run under IronPython 2.
Prosody 0.3.0
Matthew Wild has announced Prosody 0.3.0, the most notable change being its license, from GPL to MIT/X11.
Apple’siCal Server using XMPP’s PubSub for push-notifications
AppleInsider has a lengthy article about the upcoming Mac OS X Snow Leopard, saying “Apple’s iCal Server, […] is being updated to use XMPP publish-subscribe, an IETF open standard branching from the core of the Jabber IM service.” Remonder
Specifications
Many specifications have advanced their state since last roundup:
Last call
- XEP-0232: Software Information This document specifies an extended data format whereby XMPP service discovery responses can include detailed information about the software application that powers a given XMPP entity for including detailed data about the in service discovery responses.
1.0 / Active
- XEP-0205: Best Practices to Discourage Denial of Service AttacksThis document recommends a number of practices that can help discourage denial of service attacks on XMPP-based networks.
- XEP-0245: The /me CommandThis specification defines recommended handling of the /me command in XMPP instant messaging clients.
Retracted
- XEP-0208: Bootstrapping Implementation of JingleThis document provides guidelines to XMPP client developers for bootstrapping implementation of Jingle technologies.
Initial
- XEP-0258: Security Labels in XMPP This document describes the use of security labels in XMPP. The document specifies how security label metadata is carried in XMPP, when this metadata should or should not be provided, and how the metadata is to be processed.
- XEP-0257: Client Certificate Management for SASL EXTERNALThis specification defines a method to manage client certificates that can be used with SASL External to allow clients to log in without a password.
- XEP-0259: Message Mine-ing In servers that deliver messages intended for the bare JID to all resources, the resource that claims a conversation notifies all of the other resources of that claim.
Deffered
- XEP-0209: Metacontacts This document specifies an XMPP protocol extension for defining metacontacts and grouping member JIDs.
- XEP-0165: Best Practices to Discourage JID Mimicking This document recommends best practices to discourage mimicking of Jabber IDs.
- XEP-0227: Portable Import/Export Format for XMPP-IM Servers This document specifies a file format for importing and exporting user data to and from XMPP-IM servers.
Afterword
Once again, a busy period for the XMPP community worldwide, further advancing the capabilities and ubiquity of XMPP.
