Posted by Trejkaz
Wed, 24 Aug 2005 02:01:00 GMT
This is all over the web right now so presumably you’ve heard all about it already, but Google Talk is about to be unveiled and the Jabber interface is already open. :-)
The most interesting thing we can see from right now is that they support a SASL authentication method called “X-GOOGLE-TOKEN”. Presumably that means that they will be using single sign-on between their IM client and their existing web applications. Whether the IM client turns out to be a web application as well remains to be seen.
Now, let’s watch the number of Jabber users in the world rise, and sharply. :-)
Added later… Looks like the client is out. Windows only for now, but it looks pretty slick compared to all the other IM clients out there.
Just wait until they get server-to-server and phone calls working on this baby.
Tags google, jabber, talk
Posted by Trejkaz
Thu, 18 Aug 2005 13:31:00 GMT
Version 0.1 of my SnipSnap Plugins is out.
Features:
- {xmpp} macro which displays an XMPP address with optional status. Status indicator can now show the full status string, or the link, or both, using parameters to the macro.
- JabberIDLabel label type, for adding Jabber IDs to Person-type snips. Uses the same rendering as XmppMacro, so status works here too.
- Weblog posting via Ad-hoc Commands. The bot finds the user snip(s) whose JabberID labels match the sender’s bare JID. It then posts to every weblog specified in Weblog labels.
Integration with the newer CommandBot, which is based on JSO instead of Smack. A better implementation would show a drop-down list of weblogs to post to, but I didn’t get that far.
This is the first and most likely the final release of this software, and bugs are likely to exist. Interested developers are encouraged to improve the code and release something better.
Me, I’m moving onto working a Jabber status indicator into Typo. :-)
Tags jabber, snipsnap, software
Posted by Trejkaz
Wed, 17 Aug 2005 09:25:00 GMT
The code has been cleaned up and CommandBot 0.3 is out.
The important changes are:
- Implemented a basic conversation framework for interacting with the bot via chats;
- Implemented a basic roster class for getting presence of contacts;
- Improved reliability of automatic reconnection;
- Added ability to specify the resource priority in the configuration.
This brings CommandBot up to the required functionality to use my SnipSnap plugins, so those will be cleaned up and released next.
Tags commandbot, jabber, software
Posted by Trejkaz
Fri, 24 Jun 2005 07:00:00 GMT
I’ve been thinking a lot lately of the kind of things I want to do with integrating Jabber into SnipSnap, or any other weblog/wiki/social web site.
I’m starting to think that SnipSnap is becoming horribly inadequate, because I want to tinker with things like authentication. And with the amount of attention lately focused on Ruby on Rails, perhaps I need an excuse to venture into that area instead. :-)
Read more...
Tags jabber
Posted by Trejkaz
Fri, 27 May 2005 12:00:00 GMT
As promised, the first public version of my CommandBot is released.
Next come the SnipSnap Extensions, which will need a little rewriting for some of the changes I’ve made in this version.
Update: Make that a lot of rewriting. Obviously if it were only a little rewriting, I would have finished ages ago. :-)
Tags commandbot, jabber, software
Posted by Trejkaz
Tue, 17 May 2005 06:04:00 GMT
I’ve been wanting to release my Jabber integration code for SnipSnap for a while now. The only thing stopping me was that it depended upon a large slab of JSO integration code (tentatively named CommandBot) which was in really bad state.
I spent the past weekend (and an evening or two) tidying up the CommandBot code and getting it into presentable form for embedding in other people’s apps. Code-wise, it’s about ready, but I do need to slap the licencing crap into all the files, and then throw it into Subversion before I can think about releasing it.
The initial version will be 0.2, and I’ll mark it alpha just because it’s in a state of flux. As far as stability goes, I haven’t seen it play up yet, in many months of constant operation.
Tags commandbot, jabber, software
Posted by Trejkaz
Wed, 30 Mar 2005 10:39:00 GMT
Well, that was a spot of hell.
First, my original web host for this site decided that the Java process was using too many system resources… D’oh. I guess that’s Java’s weak spot, after all.
And then, for those who don’t already know, the ZIM Jabber server went down from hardware failure around 5 days ago. As this was my main means of communication (I have an account on Jabber Australia as well, but a few of my friends either don’t have secondary accounts, or aren’t on my secondary roster) it significantly delayed getting this web site back up and running at the new location. :-)
The best bit of it all is, the spool files got corrupted when the server crashed, and they got corrupted at random. I could either sift through all the files with an XML validator, or I could use a godlike tool like rsync which will figure out which files need syncing and do it all automatically. I think I’ll take rsync, thanks. :-)
So all the spool files are back and happy, but a few people might have lost a couple of contacts if they added them on the day of the major crash.
But hey, at least it’s alive again. Now I proceed onto making my personal web sites work again. :-)
Tags jabber, meta
Posted by Trejkaz
Fri, 11 Feb 2005 12:36:00 GMT
This has been a great week for MSN Messenger, hasn’t it?
The first I heard of it was about four days ago. Users of our Jabber server were reporting “issues with the MSN transport.” Upon inspection (it doesn’t take much… Psi says “Remote Server Error”, which in Jabber.ZIM speak means “not our problem”) it turned out to be Microsoft’s problem.
Scattered reports of MSN being down then flooded in over the next few days. Whirlpool forums alone had about a dozen reports of outages. Google News has enough coverage to sink a small fleet. Microsoft themselves have finally been forced to admit that they’re having problems, which they normally strenuously deny. :-)
All in all it’s been pretty funny. Why?
It’s been funny because over 10 million users have finally realised that reliance on centralised systems is a bad idea. That’s right, everyone on Jabber servers over the past few days, have enjoyed a network which cannot go down. We have been laughing our goddamned arses off at you MSN users, because you continue to love the service even while it’s down and can’t connect. We think that kind of dependence, whereas extremely sad, is even funnier than it is sad. Ha, ha, ha. Suck it.
And while the service continues to flicker on and off over the next few days, please make an effort to remember us Jabber users. Because after all, what would we do without our entertainment? We’re counting on you, guys.
Trejkaz out.
Tags im, jabber, msn
Posted by Trejkaz
Wed, 02 Feb 2005 23:06:00 GMT
If you are the sort who likes to do a Google search for something on a regular basis just to see if it drags up new stuff, this service might appeal to you.
PubSub.com
When you enter some search terms on PubSub, it creates for you a unique RSS feed which will always contain the newest results of that search. Then you just stuff the URL for the into your favourite news aggregator, and it pulls up news, blogs and random web junk related to the thing you searched for. And it does this at absolutely no cost. I wonder where they get their money from. :-)
They also have a Firefox sidebar which receives PubSub updates on the fly, effectively using XMPP (the protocol behind Jabber) for something which isn’t instant messaging. You get the updates more or less as soon as they discover them, which is as fast as news can get. :-) It’s also something which will increase the number of Jabber users even though the users never realise they’re using it, which is pretty damn cool in itself. :-)
Anyway, in my case, I did a search for instant messaging and learned quite a few new things this week.
I don’t think I’ll ever stop using PubSub now. :-D
The best thing I discovered this week was the release a new plugin for IDEA called IDEtalk, which allows multiple people on a network to chat, show their work to each other, and do a few other things, all through the IDE itself. We’re gradually getting used to it at work and it’s already starting to pay off in time savings from not needing to walk across the room so often. :-)
Tags firefox, idea, jabber, pubsub, rss
Posted by Trejkaz
Wed, 19 Jan 2005 15:00:00 GMT
I’ve been looking for ways to get free or nearly-free SMS access to Australia, so that we can create a little gateway to it from jabber.org.au and improve our visibility.
The main problem is that services like ICQ have all shut down their free service, along with almost every other free web gateway in the world. Everyone who hasn’t shut down their gateway yet is blocked from this country one way or another.
The bulk SMS shops seem to be the most flexible way to do it, but so many of them charge 15 cents for each SMS that you wonder how they’re still in business (though the answer is obviously that they pay far less than 15 cents themselves.)
The best exploit right now seems to be getting a $79/month Vodafone plan. The plan caps at $79 until you spend $500. Then you just spend that entire $500 on SMS at 25 cents per message, making up 2000 messages at around 4 cents each. It gets shady though if we have to recover the cost, since Voda probably wouldn’t take nicely to us reselling their service.
Has anyone been here before? Know anyone who would sponsor an effort like this?
Tags jabber, sms