instant messaging

Group messaging is the next big thing

Download Squad suggests that group messaging is going to be the next big thing in mobile communications:

The next big thing in mobile communications seems to be group messaging, and that’s no real surprise. If we take a look at the currently entrenched communication platforms, not many of them do more than messaging one-to-one or one-to-a-few well. Sure you can have group chats using traditional IM protocols, but they are inherently transitory.

I have to agree with them somewhat. I don’t know if that’s necessarily going to be the next big thing or if it will be big at all, but it is something that is needed. Today. By many people.

Living in Cyprus, a rather small country with not many ties to technology, I am often much behind the needs of my friends from more populated areas. There is usually a three to five year gap between the time when my American and English friends form a new communication need, and the time when I do so. And more often than not, this gap is enough for a good solution to the problem exist before I even have the actual problem.

With group messaging it is different. At least in the last part. I need it now. Yesterday even. And there is nothing uniform, free, and convenient. Email and Skype are the two tools I use for those purposes the most right now. But neither of them, no together, they solve the problem. They are good enough for when I am (as well as other group members) are online and at their computers. But more and more often we really need a solution that bridges mobiles and desktops.

Features that I personally need are:

cross-platform client (Linux/Windows/Apple desktop, Android/iPhone/Blackberry mobiles, and also web)
server-side history with synchronization
offline messages (if the participant is offline, you should still be able to send the message and he should receive it when he comes online)
persistent groups (I don’t want to redefine same groups over and over by adding individual members to chat)
persistent chats (same chat can continue for days or weeks, while there can be more than one chat in progress with the same group, so archiving has to be smart)
UTF-8 and multilingual support
attachments and web friendliness (thumbnails for pictures and videos, highlighted URLs and email addresses, etc)
basic styling (mostly for quotes and code snippets)
ideally, integration with Google/Facebook/Twitter/Oauth or something else that would save me the trouble of yet another registration, pair of credentials, and all the hard work for contact/group building.

Adding Google Apps GTalk account to Pidgin

Google Apps help page is a little bit outdated and I had to spend a few minutes working out the solution, hence this post. Here is how you add your Google Apps GTalk account to Pidgin.

In Pidgin, click on the Accounts menu.
Select Manage Accounts.
Click ‘Add…‘ button.
Select XMPP protocol.
Specify account’s local part in the Username field. For joe@example.com that would be joe.
Specify account’s domain in the Domain field. For joe@example.com that would be examle.com.
You can ignore the Resource field and leave it empty.
Specify account’s password in the Password field.
Switch to Advanced tab.
Change Connection security to ‘Use old-style SSL’.
Change Connect port to 443.
Change Connect server to talk.google.com.
Press Save. You are done.

Virtual presence with Twitter

Twitter is many things to many people. It’s a lot of things to me too (status updates, communication channel, notes application, self-reminders, etc). But for the last couple of days I am having a new experience with it – virtual presence.

Last year I attended Greek Blogger Camp. It was a lot of fun. This year however I didn’t manage to get in due to some work obligations. However those guys who are there, they twit a lot (particularly Stefanos himself). That sort of brings me there without any travelling.

Yes, I miss a lot, I know. But getting SMS updates with pointers to what is going over there helps quite a bit. And not only I get a part of the atmosphere, but also some helpful tips from the presentations that are going on. Then, with Google in my hands, I can dive deeper into the subject, and even somewhat participate in the discussion there by twitting my questions and getting answers.

This digital world sure is amazing!

Mibbit – IRC the easy way

IRC is one of the best things that happened in the world of online communications ever. But, it’s a pity that most non-technical users have no idea of its existence. Getting on IRC usually required downloading and installing a client software, and then going through a list of networks, picking a server, a nickname, and finding a channel to connect to. While not exactly rocket science, it was more than enough to seriously decrease the user base.

Via this Web Worker Daily post I learned about a great tool – Mibbit. It is a web-based interface to IRC. It is straight forward, easy to use, and doesn’t require one to know much about IRC. No installation or registration is needed – you can jump straight into it.

In fact, even many technical people who use IRC will find Mibbit useful. It adds some useful pieces of functionality which many traditional IRC clients miss (unless, of course they support plugins). Two things that I was glad to see were Paste Bin support, which is a quick way to send around pieces of text, often with syntax highlight, and editing capabilities; and integrated translations. You can pick the language you want your messages to be translated to, as well as the language you want other people’s messages to be translated to. Of course, the translations are done automatically, so they aren’t of the best quality, but at least you’ll get a slight idea of what those other people are talking about. In case you don’t speak a common language, that is.

I also liked the interface of Mibbit. It is clean, simple, and fast. You can participate in multiple discussions, which will appear as tabs, which you can switch between. Updates are fast and the whole thing feels very much like a desktop application.

Thanks to Web Worker Daily for bringing attention to this service, and, of course, to Mibbit developers for making a useful tool.

P.S.: If you are trying to get a hold of me on IRC, my contact page has all the information that you need.

Simpler Google Talk translations?

Google has recently added Gtalk bots that can do translations to various languages, mostly available with Google Translate.Â While I’m all for helping people understand each other better (even though there are certain complains regarding the quality of translation), I think this functionality could have implemented simpler.

Disclaimer: I haven’t tried it out myself, I’ve only read about it and saw the screenshots.

The problem that I see with the implementation is it being one way.Â The bots are named fr2en and fr2en.Â Which means that in order to keep up with conversation in the language foreign to you, you’ll need to have two bots nearby, not one.Â Why?Â Because if you will ask a person in his language a question, he will likely reply in the same language.Â So you will need to translate both to and from the language.Â I think this should have been done with one bot, not two.