.NET Developer in a Linux world

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Jingle & the outside world

I've been thinking again about Jingle. Spoke to some Asterisk guys, also met some great guys in the Freeswitch project. Discussed some ideas etc.

I really like Jingle and where this is taking us but I'm left a bit confused about some solutions I need to solve. Currently Jingle is mostly a client to client protocol. But what if we want more. What if the Jabber server has a PBX behind it. I envision something like:

jingle.server.com (supports Jingle Audio/Jingle IAX perhaps)
This allows us to map services such as voicemail@jingle.server.com etc.

What if we just wish to dial 555-5555 and call that real phone number?

I see a world where msn.server.com may gateway Jingle Audio, to MSN audio technology. So how will the client know where to call 5555555?

I think the client should be able to figure this out via Discovery. I don't think all Jingle destinations will be user JID's per say. I may want to dial 5555555@jingle.server.com, but how do I assume this?

Perhaps this is where Discovery comes in. Along with the jingle.server.com service responding to Discovery queries saying it supports jingle, perhaps there needs to be an identifier that says it supports anonymous alphanumeric calls.

This means the client can basically query and figure out "where can I call PSTN?" jingle.server.com replies "with me" then when I want to dial 5555555 I just dial 5555555@jingle.server.com.

That way even if I am on jabber.org, if I am registered with jingle.server.com when I discovery my gateways asking which supports PSTN I can dynamically find one and dial out of it.

A whole other problem though is, what if I have multiple gateways supporting PSTN, how do I give priority to one, or how do I say, well this gateway gives me cheap north american rates, so dial out for these numbers there, but if I dial a China country code go out another gateway because its cheaper.

Jingle seems clear to me client to client, but beyond that I get a bit foggy.

Thanks go out to Tony from Freeswitch for his time discussing ideas.

Please comment :)

I just got news that Peter Millard, long time Jabber client developer has recently passed away. I want to send my respects out to his family, friends and coworkers. I haven't spoken to Peter in several years but every time I did he was very friendly. A link to stpeter's blog says it best.

Friday, April 07, 2006

Nexxia in action

I've been meaning to do this for a week or so but just haven't been able to find the time. It's a grind at work lately but I decided to make time.

I've recorded a screen capture video of Nexxia Messenger's current build running on a week old build of Mono. Basically just displays System.Windows.Forms on Linux in general usage of Nexxia such as logging in, the UI, chatting etc.

Hoping to display some of the VoIP UI next time. I'm really looking for feedback of the main window and phone plugin as I'm finding the UI pretty crowded. But I would imagine 99% of the time the phone plugin would be minimized.

If anyone would like me to convert this video to another format please let me know. Also any comments/ideas would be great!

Video (Windows Media 9)
Video (Flash Player)

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Poker time

I've always been a big poker fan but haven't been able to play as often as I would like. I don't think I've played for a few months now. We used to have a weekly game here at the office but I haven't been able to get enough people worth while to do it lately.

I decided to play a bit online. Nothing serious. It was a 20 person tournament. I decided I was going to play a tight aggressive style. I was pretty quiet most of the first half of game. I was still hovering about the initial chip count for most of it.

I got a couple good hands, bet very aggressive and it started to work out for me. After not very long I was 2nd in chip count for the tournament with 11k. They merged the taples into a final table and I started off pretty aggressive and jumped to 22k, still in 2nd as the first place guy had 60k so I was quite far behind.

I was happy with my play so far. I really like tournament play as people play more honest. Non-tournament play seems to be more all over the place and hard to read people etc.

Anyways shortly after I got pocket kings, which I decided were going to be good enough and I went head to head with the chip leader. Not so long later I got exposed to what always beats pocket kings. Yes. If you've played poker you've been there before. Doh!