Bite-sized XMPP News

January 24, 2010

Here’s a collection of interesting XMPP-related updates from the microblogging world this week:

thatfleminggent: Migrated my #xmpp server to #prosody from ejabberd. Just need to get my ICQ transport showing up in service discovery again #

goldstein: Prosody is ridiculously fast for single server environment. Migrating over from #openfire http://gist.github.com/180477 #xmpp #prosody #

Prosody is getting a lot of well deserved attention these days. Matthew and team have done an amazing job, and they don’t seem to take breaks to eat or sleep. I run Prosody for the metajack.im XMPP server, and it’s been a breeze.

daveoflynn: @ebarroca XMPP is far more difficult to implement than Twitter API access. Streaming XML + async presence notifications etc is non-trivial. #

Is that really true when you factor in the cost of the libraries? SASL ANONYMOUS is roughly equivalent to default HTTP access model, and if you probably already use an HTTP library, which is why the Twitter API is so easy. If you’re talking about something analogous to the Twitter API, why is presence involved at all?

At the end of the day, I imagine the code is roughly equivalent complexity wise, but the XMPP code will be extremely efficient in comparison, since it is push instead of pull based.

jmissig: huh. apparently there was an XMPP Summit in San Jose last year. I should’ve gone just to see what people are up to. #

Sorry that you missed it, but we’ll be back again sometime in July I suspect. We hold one XMPP Summit alongside FOSDEM and one alongside OSCON every year.

ralphm: With all the people coming and stuff I’d like to discuss, I already know XMPP Summit #8 will be way too short. #

quimgil: If you are a developer knowing what XMPP and FOSDEM mean then http://blog.xmpp.org/index.php/2010/01/developers-challenge-with-prizes/ #

willsheward: Schedule for the XMPP Devroom at FOSDEM this year has been published (http://bit.ly/7FvL4N). Some interesting stuff there. #

The 8th XMPP Summit is just under two weeks away, and it’s shaping up to be the best one yet. I’ll be there; will you?

tmray: @evan Any word yet on if messages in #identica opening as multiple users in #xmpp will be fixed? #

Identica has been having a hell of a month for XMPP uptime. I’m sure they’ll fix it, but for those of us who live and breathe via the XMPP interface, it has been painful.

novaspivack: everal people have said Twitter is going to be a protocol eventually. I agree. But why not just use XMPP? #

stuartmalin: IMHO: XMPP can’t be used as a foundation to replace Twitter. It can be used for something a-kin to Twitter, but it would be different. #

I beg to differ with stuartmalin. I’m with novaspivack; I think XMPP is a perfect base for federated social media of almost any sort, especially something as interactive as microblogging. I’d really like to know what you see as the primary reason that XMPP is unsuitable for this task.

boterkoekjes: Any other scalable apps that use xmpp besides googlewave googlechat and facebook? fb chat is not working very well latelly? dont know why. #

Sure. Meebo uses it to provide their chat service, for example. Lots of ISPs offer IM services at their own domains, and several of these installations are in the millions of users. Really, though, isn’t Google-esque scalability enough for a protocol?

mickael: @gwapz Use an XMPP account + gateways. Benefit: Only one connection open for all your IM accounts. Check Talkr.IM for example. #

I haven’t used Talkr.IM yet, but it sounds like Mickael and his team are continuing to make cool things on top of ejabberd. Gateways are one of the oldest use cases of XMPP but remain some of the more popular.

communicating: Because of discussions w/ others about a data sharing layer I may b moving to xmpp soonr than later. Also really liking BOSH pubsub protocal #

There’s a lot to like about BOSH. It’s one of the oldest long polling protocols, and by far my favorite.

ronrat: Installed OpenFire xmpp server this week for our company. Painless. Trillian and Spark clients. Recommend other clients? #openfire #trillian #

I don’t generally think of Openfire as one of the big XMPP servers, but a lot of people use it. Pedro Melo told me that it is one of the easiest servers to set up and has a great web interface.

conikeec: #followfriday Introducing @pradeep24 - Xtreme XMPP and Uber-Rails Meta Hacker #

Pradeep continues to do great things with XMPP. His startup, Presently, is built on top of XMPP. I’ve had the good fortune to meet him in person several times, and you could do worse than to keep an eye on what he’s up to.

nyconyco: days left to apply to XSF membership http://wiki.xmpp.org/web/Membership_Applications_January_2010 #

The XMPP Standards Foundation is always looking for new members. If you are interested in XMPP, please think about applying.

paulscott56: #XMPP rocks. #justsaying Trying to formulate some additions to the microblogging over XMPP XEP quickly before some other work… #

I wrote about the microblogging XEP recently. I’m glad more people are thinking about this.

imoracle: Finally, #Jaxl #BOSH support working with all enterprise level jabber servers :) #

JAXL is a new PHP library for writing XMPP applications. I highly recommend Abhi’s blog and XMPP tutorials.

thisismedium: The Medium XMPP server is coming together nicely thanks to @bwvr http://bit.ly/7IX7Vk http://bit.ly/6EAtqR #

This looks to be a new XMPP server in Python built on top of Tornado. Perhaps some competition for Ralph’s Twisted-based efforts.

LuigiMontanez: Conceptualizing what an online, real-time disclosure system would look like. http://bit.ly/citunited XMPP? WebHooks? PubsubHubbub? #

XMPP improving politics? Pubsub could certainly be used to disseminate this kind of information. The National Weather Service is already experimenting with XMPP for weather information, so I don’t see why it couldn’t be put use tracking the flow of money in politics.