Text messaging on the OpenMoko platform
Hi, I just wanted to chime in on the discussion about IM support and text messaging in general. For clarity's sake I'll start a new thread with a relevant subject line. First of all I'd like to say that, at least here in Finland integrated IM protocol support would be the killer application for a mobile phone. IM is pretty much ubiquitous among young people here, with MSN and IRC as the two major protocols used. That said, just slapping some kind of IM support onto a touchscreen phone isn't going to automatically turn it into the next must-have gadget. In fact, I'd daresay that people will have pretty steep expectations for something like this. Such as: On the feature side: - Integration so that the used network platform becomes a minor detail and messages are organised in more relevant ways (as mentioned in this list earlier). - A UI which scales to a considerably higher number of messages and a considerably higher frequency of messaging events in comparison to current phones. - Support for as many messaging protocols as possible. (Jabber is nice, but in the real world no-one uses it and they most certainly aren't going to switch. I'd quess that the most important protocols are SMS, e-mail, MSN, IRC and AOL/ICQ, with Skype, Jabber/GoogleTalk and MMS being a bit less important) On the input side: - An on-screen qwerty keyboard for two-thumb input in landscape orientation - A traditional on-screen phone keypad for one-thumb input in portrait orientation - Clear visual feedback of each keypress on both keyboards (the iPhone-style of showing a bigger pop-up above the button just pressed is a good starting point, possibly accompanied by some kind of halo effect) - A touchscreen and cpu which can keep up with kids' fingers (meaning something like 3-5 keypresses/second all with instant visual feedback) P.S. Sorry about the earlier double posts. It seems that GMail has implemented a nifty new feature which silently deletes all incoming messages which have been sent through the same GMail account. (Thus meaning that the only way to see if my mails actually reach the list is to search through the archives or wait for someone to answer them) -- Jani-Matti Hätinen ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Text messaging on the OpenMoko platform
Just a comment abou Jabber usage. As most of you might know there are transports that make it possible to connect to MSN / ICQ through Jabber and that is being used by several companies to leverage IM services compatible with legacy systems. I'm currently working with one myself :) I'm using Ejabberd as a Jabber server and have PyMSNt allowing our users to connect to their MSN contacts through our service. What if we could have Jabber support in OpenMoko and use some sort of transport/relay to connect to legacy protocols? Don't you think this would work? This way wwe only needed one protocol implementation. Regards, Sergio Bessa Jani-Matti Hätinen wrote: Hi, I just wanted to chime in on the discussion about IM support and text messaging in general. For clarity's sake I'll start a new thread with a relevant subject line. First of all I'd like to say that, at least here in Finland integrated IM protocol support would be the killer application for a mobile phone. IM is pretty much ubiquitous among young people here, with MSN and IRC as the two major protocols used. That said, just slapping some kind of IM support onto a touchscreen phone isn't going to automatically turn it into the next must-have gadget. In fact, I'd daresay that people will have pretty steep expectations for something like this. Such as: On the feature side: - Integration so that the used network platform becomes a minor detail and messages are organised in more relevant ways (as mentioned in this list earlier). - A UI which scales to a considerably higher number of messages and a considerably higher frequency of messaging events in comparison to current phones. - Support for as many messaging protocols as possible. (Jabber is nice, but in the real world no-one uses it and they most certainly aren't going to switch. I'd quess that the most important protocols are SMS, e-mail, MSN, IRC and AOL/ICQ, with Skype, Jabber/GoogleTalk and MMS being a bit less important) On the input side: - An on-screen qwerty keyboard for two-thumb input in landscape orientation - A traditional on-screen phone keypad for one-thumb input in portrait orientation - Clear visual feedback of each keypress on both keyboards (the iPhone-style of showing a bigger pop-up above the button just pressed is a good starting point, possibly accompanied by some kind of halo effect) - A touchscreen and cpu which can keep up with kids' fingers (meaning something like 3-5 keypresses/second all with instant visual feedback) P.S. Sorry about the earlier double posts. It seems that GMail has implemented a nifty new feature which silently deletes all incoming messages which have been sent through the same GMail account. (Thus meaning that the only way to see if my mails actually reach the list is to search through the archives or wait for someone to answer them) ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Text messaging on the OpenMoko platform
On Tuesday 06 February 2007 10:56:37 Sergio Bessa wrote: What if we could have Jabber support in OpenMoko and use some sort of transport/relay to connect to legacy protocols? Don't you think this would work? This way wwe only needed one protocol implementation. Sure. Many of the public Jabber servers come with ICQ, MSN, AIM etc transports. It's not entirely as straight forward to use as direct connections to those networks in most Jabber clients, but I'm sure it could be done that way. Then again, while XMPP is quite nice for normal usage on the net, maybe we need a different protocol, namely one that is VERY bandwidth efficient (XML is not really famous for that, a binary protocol could potentially do much better) to keep GPRS costs low? ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Text messaging on the OpenMoko platform
On ti, 2007-02-06 at 09:56 +, Sergio Bessa wrote: As most of you might know there are transports that make it possible to connect to MSN / ICQ [...] What if we could have Jabber support in OpenMoko and use some sort of transport/relay to connect to legacy protocols? Don't you think this would work? This way we only needed one protocol implementation. I for one think it's a good idea to concentrate on Jabber support on the OpenMoko itself. Jabber is open, versatile, extensible, already has options for gpg-usage for us heavy security nuts, etc. And I don't wish to put down the legacy protocol gateway support (the use of which should be made as easy as possible, of course). This would simplify the software needed phone-side. So, we'd need reliable servers with legacy gateway support. I wonder if FIC would consider providing an appropriate Jabber server to customers. This would enable pretty easy default setup phone-side (basically, if you'd use the FIC server, you'd just have to provide your preferred username and password; if you'd want legacy access you'd also of course have to give eg. your MSN account). Can be done without FIC, of course, but it would be nice to have some trusted server that agrees to be the default and provides the legacy transport support :) -- Mikko J Rauhala [EMAIL PROTECTED] University of Helsinki ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Text messaging on the OpenMoko platform
Hi Gabriel. Gabriel Ambuehl schrieb: On Tuesday 06 February 2007 10:56:37 Sergio Bessa wrote: What if we could have Jabber support in OpenMoko and use some sort of transport/relay to connect to legacy protocols? Don't you think this would work? This way wwe only needed one protocol implementation. Sure. Many of the public Jabber servers come with ICQ, MSN, AIM etc transports. It's not entirely as straight forward to use as direct connections to those networks in most Jabber clients, but I'm sure it could be done that way. Then again, while XMPP is quite nice for normal usage on the net, maybe we need a different protocol, namely one that is VERY bandwidth efficient (XML is not really famous for that, a binary protocol could potentially do much better) to keep GPRS costs low? It woud be great to keep a clean, well known messaging protokoll at the base. For reducing the bandwidth usage, I would have two ideas in mind: - gzip the xml communication (like soap Web-Services over HTTP do). - Use the binary XML-Representation WAP Binary XML (WBXML) Both solutions would need a server-side gateway, but full-blown xml could be used as fall-back, very easy. Sebastian. -- tarent Gesellschaft für Softwareentwicklung und IT-Beratung mbH Heilsbachstr. 24, 53123 Bonn| Poststr. 4-5, 10178 Berlin fon: +49(228) / 52675-0 | fon: +49(30) / 27594853 fax: +49(228) / 52675-25| fax: +49(30) / 78709617 durchwahl: +49(228) / 52675-17 | mobil: +49(171) / 7673249 Geschäftsführer: Boris Esser, Elmar Geese, Thomas Müller-Ackermann HRB AG Bonn 5168 Ust-ID: DE122264941 ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Text messaging on the OpenMoko platform
On Tuesday 06 February 2007 12:06:08 you wrote: It woud be great to keep a clean, well known messaging protokoll at the base. For reducing the bandwidth usage, I would have two ideas in mind: - gzip the xml communication (like soap Web-Services over HTTP do). - Use the binary XML-Representation WAP Binary XML (WBXML) Both solutions would need a server-side gateway, but full-blown xml could be used as fall-back, very easy. Actually, TLS specifies (though its optional I believe, but openssl seems to support it) compression mechanisms, so some Jabber servers might already be able to use compressed connections without any real intervention... But one could also think about Jabber to wbxml and then still compress it with some good algorithm.. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Text messaging on the OpenMoko platform
On Tuesday 06 February 2007 12:16:12 Gabriel Ambuehl wrote: On Tuesday 06 February 2007 10:56:37 Sergio Bessa wrote: What if we could have Jabber support in OpenMoko and use some sort of transport/relay to connect to legacy protocols? Don't you think this would work? This way wwe only needed one protocol implementation. Sure. Many of the public Jabber servers come with ICQ, MSN, AIM etc transports. It's not entirely as straight forward to use as direct connections to those networks in most Jabber clients, but I'm sure it could be done that way. Then again, while XMPP is quite nice for normal usage on the net, maybe we need a different protocol, namely one that is VERY bandwidth efficient (XML is not really famous for that, a binary protocol could potentially do much better) to keep GPRS costs low? There is a crowd called MXIT(http://www.mxit.co.za) that provide a mobile messaging app and service that is based on Jabber(Ejabberd if I remember correctly). What they have done though is modified the client to server protocol to make it more efficient. Unfortunately it makes their server incompatible with other jabber clients. On the other hand they implement the normal server to server protocols so you can still chat with people on Google talk and other jabber servers. Personally I prefer the idea of trying the compression option in TLS that was suggested as we then are not changing the protocol and are therefore not limiting the number of servers we can connect to. I currently use Kopete on my desktop for my IM needs. I have it hooked up to my Google talk account, a South African Jabber server, 2 MSN accounts(1 for personal and 1 for work) and occasionally hook it to other jabber servers I test in the office. While not being efficient cost wise if we are on GPRS/3G etc, it does make life easy for me and I would like to see this sort of flexibility in Open Moko. Right now I have 3 IM apps on my Nokia N80 so that I can connect to MSN, MXIT and Google Talk. -- Rodney Arne Karlsen AKA SmilyBorg LPIC-2, Linux+ Cellphone: 083 445 0720 Website: http://smilyborg.za.net/ MSN Messenger: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Google Talk: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity. - Albert Einstein ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Text messaging on the OpenMoko platform
Lol, this would lead to commercial server side applications implemented as a pay per month ASP service - last time I discussed this on the list the 'email storm' about only having open source free software lasted a week. I made the decision to sit out most of these conversations until I have a unit in my hands and then start paying developers to right code as part of my team. When the product is ready we'll show rather than talk. Regards, Dean Collins Cognation Pty Ltd [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] +1-212-203-4357 Ph +1-917-207-3420 Mb +61-2-9016-5642 (Sydney in-dial). From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Florent THIERY Sent: Tuesday, 6 February 2007 7:25 AM To: Gabriel Ambuehl Cc: community@lists.openmoko.org Subject: Re: Text messaging on the OpenMoko platform My opinion is, if we really want to turn the OpenMoko platform to it's maximum extend, we'll have to associate it with a server-side component (running all the time, such as a WRT or NSLU2 device), a multiprotocol IM gateway, a remote storage feature (sshfs?), an imap webserver, a web gateway... Everything tunneled into a secure-as-possible connection. Example: http://www.bitlbee.org/main.php/news.html for IRC (server side) ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Text messaging on the OpenMoko platform
On ti, 2007-02-06 at 12:24 +, Florent THIERY wrote: The best would be: - using a plain text protocol : irc would be great, but prevents further extension (webcam over ip or voip), so SIP might be better Yes, irc is notoriously inflexible. Thus my wish for Jabber. As for SIP, I don't think it's the best thing for this job... VOIP, sure, text messaging/file transfer/etc, iffy... - using a compressive transport layer (tunneling into ssh, with compression ?). TLS (and apparently its implementations in gnutls and openssl) support compressed transport (which makes sense, since if you don't compress before encryption, you don't compress). A good compression layer should in theory negate much of the XML overhead, at least if you keep mostly persistent connections. My opinion is, if we really want to turn the OpenMoko platform to it's maximum extend, we'll have to associate it with a server-side component (running all the time, such as a WRT or NSLU2 device), a multiprotocol IM gateway, a remote storage feature (sshfs?), an imap webserver, a web gateway... Everything tunneled into a secure-as-possible connection. You can do nice things with your own persistently available server, yes, but one shouldn't be necessary to mostly enjoy OpenMoko. You mentioned a web gateway; I assume you mean a web proxy that's tunable to eg. recompress images smaller (and crappier) and such to make gprs browsing a bit faster, and stuff like that - if you didn't, I do ;) -- Mikko Rauhala [EMAIL PROTECTED] University of Helsinki ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Text messaging on the OpenMoko platform
You can do nice things with your own persistently available server, yes, but one shouldn't be necessary to mostly enjoy OpenMoko. Of course, it shouldn't need it, but an associated distro / dedicated app for computers may unleash features. And can become a paid service if you don't want to run into the hassle of maintaining your own webserver (with professionnal grade backup and availability services...). You mentioned a web gateway; I assume you mean a web proxy that's tunable to eg. recompress images smaller (and crappier) and such to make gprs browsing a bit faster, and stuff like that - if you didn't, I do ;) Yup, i did. Still, the need for refactoring isn't that big, thanks to the awesome screen resolution of the neo... Makes me think of opera mini's refactoring process. Sadly, the lack of EDGE is a huge impairement for internet-based services usability (google maps, wikipedia, geomashups...) :-( Plus, mobile carriers (at least in France) aren't going in the direction of unlimited data access, more like you MUST buy all the features from me and it's illegal to circumvent it. No wonder french mobile carriers have the highest rentability per client in whole europe. Florent ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Text messaging on the OpenMoko platform
Am Dienstag, 6. Februar 2007 schrieb Mikko J Rauhala: You can do nice things with your own persistently available server, yes, but one shouldn't be necessary to mostly enjoy OpenMoko. You mentioned a web gateway; I assume you mean a web proxy that's tunable to eg. recompress images smaller (and crappier) and such to make gprs browsing a bit faster, and stuff like that - if you didn't, I do ;) Well, that idea is used by most (afiak all) german providers for mobile internet. They offer a tool to disable it (to have the option on the phone itself woul be great!), but most people don't even care on the picutres being totally crappy... So I think this feature (the compression) should be avaliable on carriers side, not on the openmoko side. Of course not every carrier will do so, but in my mind you cannot ask FIC to offer this service... that will cause GBs of traffic per day, if enough users buy and use the phone. Greetings, Fabian Off ___ Telefonate ohne weitere Kosten vom PC zum PC: http://messenger.yahoo.de ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Text messaging on the OpenMoko platform
Fabian Off wrote: Am Dienstag, 6. Februar 2007 schrieb Mikko J Rauhala: You can do nice things with your own persistently available server, yes, but one shouldn't be necessary to mostly enjoy OpenMoko. You mentioned a web gateway; I assume you mean a web proxy that's tunable to eg. recompress images smaller (and crappier) and such to make gprs browsing a bit faster, and stuff like that - if you didn't, I do ;) Well, that idea is used by most (afiak all) german providers for mobile internet. They offer a tool to disable it (to have the option on the phone itself woul be great!), but most people don't even care on the picutres being totally crappy... So I think this feature (the compression) should be avaliable on carriers side, not on the openmoko side. Of course not every carrier will do so, but in my mind you cannot ask FIC to offer this service... that will cause GBs of traffic per day, if enough users buy and use the phone. Why on earth should the service be free? As long as there is an open standard for the proxy, so others can implement it, potentially at lower cost, or users with reliable computers connected to the net can run it there, a pay-for service from FIC may be a nice complement for the phone. A 'one stop' email, compressing web proxy, backup, ... site, with a small free allowance may be quite a nice thing for users. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
