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Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

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Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#91
post #81
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.mattermost.org/ is doing it

Yup, been looking into it the last couple of days because Slack is devilishly slow in China, and it seems to cover most of the stuff you'd want from slack plus the things GP mentioned. Really cool stuff.

[deleted]

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#92

gchat was great. I really wish Google build on Hangouts to integrate SMS like iMessage. Having a proper desktop SMS client is the only reason I ended up going back to IOS a few months ago. I can understand why they dropped XMPP. I'm not sure if they really violated their 'don't be evil' motto as much as they recognized that other services were improving on their dime. I like Slack for corporate environments, but IRC…

If you use Google Voice the sms (and voice) integration is very seamless.

I should have mentioned that I'm in the neglected nation of the north. I do have a google voice number that was grandfathered in from Grand Central, but the GV number is in Seattle.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#93
post #58
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a system with an open specification that checks all the boxes in terms of features (not quite end-to-end encryption yet, but it's being worked on) and is not controlled by a company Half of the people reading tune out very quickly around this point. Most people want something that solves 80% of their problems with 20% reduction in headaches.

The only major problem I still have with Vector is that despite Matrix the protocol specifying ways to register and authenticate accounts using various web apis like oauth[1] Vector is always pushed as the premium Matrix webclient but it doesn't support anything but username / password. You would be amazed how many people simply refuse to create new username / password pairs in 2016. And its a good thing. We should b…

So what you're saying is that username/password is still the only choice for privacy minded people.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#94
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a system with an open specification that checks all the boxes in terms of features (not quite end-to-end encryption yet, but it's being worked on) and is not controlled by a company Half of the people reading tune out very quickly around this point. Most people want something that solves 80% of their problems with 20% reduction in headaches.

Do you mean end users, as in the type of people systems like Slack market to, or are you referring to the failures of previous systems that made open specs and interoperability a goal? If the former, Matrix the specification and overall system is not what would be sold to the end user. Like you say, most of them don't care how it works or about the philosophical or political reasons why you might choose a system like…

That was exactly the deal with the old google talk. Most of its users never knew or cared about xmpp and interserver comunication. It just worked.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#95
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. Homeserver software doesn't care where it's hosted. If you want it to federate with other homeservers on the Internet, it will need to be accessible from outside your local network, of course.

Is anyone working on it that I could help?

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking. The only practically usable homeserver software right now is Synapse (https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse), an implementation in Python built by the Matrix core developer team.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#96

Just about every week now there is a top story on HN about the disastrous state of interoperable messaging in the digital world. Every time it comes up, I implore people to look into Matrix ( https://matrix.org ), a system with an open specification that checks all the boxes in terms of features (not quite end-to-end encryption yet, but it's being worked on) and is not controlled by a company. I really hope to see it…

We had jabber for a decade at least. The battle for messaging market share doesn't seem technological.

Heck you even had the option to federate private servers so one could address users across hosts.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#97

I think gchat had a horrible ux. Slack is better compared to a simple to use irc. In fact the only thing it really has over irc is UI/ux.

> I think gchat had a horrible ux

Even more reason to keep it compatible with XMPP so that one could use it with his favorite XMPP client.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#98
I remember Gchat as a constant struggle to try and turn off unwanted functionality in Gmail.

I also remember Gchat as being one of a a number of a number of instant messaging options from Google that had very unclear market position and operability (I honestly didn't know that gChat was talking with Google Talk, I thought those where different)

At least now, it is only Hangouts I can't log out of, and at least it doesn't show up in gmail.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#99

Just about every week now there is a top story on HN about the disastrous state of interoperable messaging in the digital world. Every time it comes up, I implore people to look into Matrix ( https://matrix.org ), a system with an open specification that checks all the boxes in terms of features (not quite end-to-end encryption yet, but it's being worked on) and is not controlled by a company. I really hope to see it…

We had jabber for a decade at least. The battle for messaging market share doesn't seem technological. Heck you even had the option to federate private servers so one could address users across hosts.

But Jabber was XML based. Matrix is JSON Based!

If only we would've chosen the right technology, people would've used it.

https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0295.html

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#100
post #48
post #46

Who is building the open-source Slack? Four things are needed: 1. Good support for multiple active clients, including mobile. If I see a message on desktop, I shouldn't get notified on mobile. If I read on one client, when I reconnect on another, it should show me the convo starting where I left off. Etc etc. 2. Eternal history (ideally configurable by users/channels) with decent search. 3. A few basic bells-and-whis…

http://www.mattermost.org/ is doing it

The android client is very annoying to use as it doesn't follow the standard android UI guide lines. Can't swipe in the menu etc.
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