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Can you hear me now? No, I don't have that app

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Re: Can you hear me now? No, I don't have that app

#41

Post by pjc50 »

philtar wrote: post #35
darklajid wrote: post #30

Ignoring my 'XMPP would be nice, but at this point is probably not succeeding' lament: I do hate the situation on mobiles so much. Everyone I know agrees that text messages are a thing of the past, useless, limited and (artificially) expensive. But the solution seems far from obvious. WhatsApp was as close as a general solution as I've seen so far (Disclaimer: Don't have an account, didn't use it). Now people are mov…

There's no way email work like IM. You're missing the I part, instant. Start two conversations on two different devices, one convo using email and the other using an IM program. Look at how fast they get out of sync.

I don't think there's any technological reason why email should necessarily be slower than IM, that's something of an accident of history in the technology.

Re: Can you hear me now? No, I don't have that app

#42

Post by icebraining »

fenesiistvan wrote: post #15

We already have open standards for unified communication: H.323 (old), XMPP and SIP. Also there are a lot of companies using and/or offering great software based on these open protocols: check Asterisk ( http://www.asterisk.org/ ) or Mizutech full stack offer ( http://www.mizu-voip.com/ ). There is only one problem: When VoIP companies grows, all of them are switching to (at least partially) proprietary protocols. Th…

We have XMPP, but http://op-co.de/blog/posts/mobile_xmpp_in_2014/

Re: Can you hear me now? No, I don't have that app

#44

Post by anonymoushn »

joosters wrote: post #40
anonymoushn wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is worse. If you try to run an online IM aggregator like the Meebo of old, Microsoft (Skype) will block your IPs and Blizzard (BNet chat) or Facebook (WhatsApp) will sue you off the face of the earth. What's more, many services in this category have recently gone from trying to make the world better to trying to make it worse. eBuddy and imo.im shut down their IM aggregators entirely to build their own private IM…

Do you know why imo dropped their interopability? Were they pushed or did they really believe that they could strike out on their own?

I have not been at imo recently enough to say. Georges talked to Time about it[0]. My guess is that nobody has been given $19B for making the world more open and connected, only for making yet another walled garden.

[0]: http://time.com/13461/why-imo-dropped-third-party-im-support...

Re: Can you hear me now? No, I don't have that app

#45

Post by pjc50 »

userbinator wrote: post #5

It's odd that, despite there being an open protocol for realtime chat that is over 25 years old, older than HTTP or HTML, I would guess that the majority of the population hasn't heard of or used it. On the other hand, almost everyone has heard of and uses email, which also dates from around the same time period. > A unified communication service would not only allow me to communicate easily on any device it makes se…

Which protocol are you referring to - IRC? talkd?

Voice and video are fundamentally different from messaging because they are connection-orientated; I think it's a mistake to conflate the two.

SIP is actually pretty good when the firewall punching works. I suspect there are enough cases when it doesn't for that to be a problem. And of course, if it's hard to monetise then it's hard to advertise, hence the proprietary push.

Re: Can you hear me now? No, I don't have that app

#46

Post by pjc50 »

m_mueller wrote: post #22

We need a multi step process to get out of this whole communications calamity: 0) Acknowledge there is a problem. 1) Have a client/service based on open standards and frictionless end-to-end encryption for ALL major OSes (Mobile + Desktop). 2) Get people to use it by building a lucrative business model around it (without giving up openness) and throw money into advertising. 3)-5) Repeat for Voice. 6)-8) Repeat for Vi…

"open standards" pretty much equals "no business model", unfortunately - at least for something end-user orientated like this.

Re: Can you hear me now? No, I don't have that app

#47

Post by Nullabillity »

darklajid wrote: post #30

Ignoring my 'XMPP would be nice, but at this point is probably not succeeding' lament: I do hate the situation on mobiles so much. Everyone I know agrees that text messages are a thing of the past, useless, limited and (artificially) expensive. But the solution seems far from obvious. WhatsApp was as close as a general solution as I've seen so far (Disclaimer: Don't have an account, didn't use it). Now people are mov…

What's wrong with Hangouts? Skype has been desyncy and slow for me, but my only issue with Hangouts so far has been that almost nobody else uses it.

Re: Can you hear me now? No, I don't have that app

#48

Post by marcus_holmes »

United857 wrote: post #12
marcus_holmes wrote: post #10

I just want to point out that our current internet is not http-based. It's ip-based. The World Wide Web is http-based but that's not the same as the Internet. This would be nit-picking, except it's not. There is a global unified standard for communication. It's called the Internet Protocol (ip for short). If we moved SMS messages off SMS and onto ip we have WhatsApp (or any other superficially similar service). If yo…

You're confusing network layer standardization (IP) with the application layer (HTTP, etc.)

elucidate... I'm pretty sure I'm clear on the difference there...

Re: Can you hear me now? No, I don't have that app

#49

Post by m_mueller »

pjc50 wrote: post #46
m_mueller wrote: post #22

We need a multi step process to get out of this whole communications calamity: 0) Acknowledge there is a problem. 1) Have a client/service based on open standards and frictionless end-to-end encryption for ALL major OSes (Mobile + Desktop). 2) Get people to use it by building a lucrative business model around it (without giving up openness) and throw money into advertising. 3)-5) Repeat for Voice. 6)-8) Repeat for Vi…

"open standards" pretty much equals "no business model", unfortunately - at least for something end-user orientated like this.

I'm not sure about this - it could also be that the medium simply isn't mature enough yet. I mean look at the international phone network - they somehow managed to get everyone in the same boat - you don't need some special service just because you want to call up Australia. Yes, they don't all have the same standard, but at least they are interoperable.

Similarly, why do we need proprietary standard to charge money for a service? As a consumer I don't care about whether a protocol is open or closed, instead I care about a) what percentage of people here and abroad it can connect me to and b) the reliability of their servers. Making it proprietary is just detrimental to (a) in the long term while gaining the provider some mid term benefits by shutting out competition.

Re: Can you hear me now? No, I don't have that app

#50

Post by gcb0 »

m_mueller wrote: post #32
gcb0 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most promising at Never heard..

My foreign language skills tend to increase between the second and third coffee, sorry about that..

The language was fine... Just saying I've never heard of the one you say is most promising regarding adoption numbers
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