Text messaging on the OpenMoko platform

[Rodney Arne Karlsen]

On Tuesday 06 February 2007 12:16:12 Gabriel Ambuehl wrote:
> On Tuesday 06 February 2007 10:56:37 Sergio Bessa wrote:
> > What if we could have Jabber support in OpenMoko and use some sort of
> > transport/relay to connect to legacy protocols? Don't you think this
> > would work? This way wwe only needed one protocol implementation.
>
> Sure. Many of the public Jabber servers come with ICQ, MSN, AIM etc
> transports. It's not entirely as straight forward to use as direct
> connections to those networks in most Jabber clients, but I'm sure it could
> be done that way.
>
> Then again, while XMPP is quite nice for normal usage on the net, maybe we
> need a different protocol, namely one that is VERY bandwidth efficient (XML
> is not really famous for that, a binary protocol could potentially do much
> better) to keep GPRS costs low?
>

There is a crowd called MXIT(http://www.mxit.co.za) that provide a mobile 
messaging app and service that is based on Jabber(Ejabberd if I remember 
correctly). What they have done though is modified the client to server 
protocol to make it more "efficient". Unfortunately it makes their server 
incompatible with other jabber clients. On the other hand they implement the 
normal server to server protocols so you can still chat with people on Google 
talk and other jabber servers.

Personally I prefer the idea of trying the compression option in TLS that was 
suggested as we then are not changing the protocol and are therefore not 
limiting the number of servers we can connect to.

I currently use Kopete on my desktop for my IM needs. I have it hooked up to 
my Google talk account, a South African Jabber server, 2 MSN accounts(1 for 
personal and 1 for work) and occasionally hook it to other jabber servers I 
test in the office. While not being efficient cost wise if we are on GPRS/3G 
etc, it does make life easy for me and I would like to see this sort of 
flexibility in Open Moko. Right now I have 3 IM apps on my Nokia N80 so that 
I can connect to MSN, MXIT and Google Talk.


-- 
Rodney Arne Karlsen
AKA SmilyBorg
LPIC-2, Linux+
Cellphone: 083 445 0720
Website: http://smilyborg.za.net/
MSN Messenger: rodney at strangeminds.org
Google Talk: rodney.karlsen at gmail.com

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute,
and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty
girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.
That's relativity. - Albert Einstein