Both the recording equipment and the video team volunteers were new this year, so some problems were encountered, which means that our lightning talk video unfortunately was lost. However, our talk in the IoT-devroom is now available:
It’s competition time! Matrix is sponsoring TADHack-mini London, which is a two-day hackathon with focus on WebRTC technology, happening on April 11 and 12 at IDEA London. We will award a Parrot Bebop Drone (which itself can be hacked via the ARDroneSDK3) to the two best hacks using Matrix, and we can’t wait to see what kind of ideas people will come up with!
We strongly encourage anyone to get involved – have a look at our Development Resources (scroll down a bit) and have a think of what you can create within the 16-hour timeframe. The reference Matrix web client already supports WebRTC – you can play with this by registering a user via the matrix.org web client (or you can check out the reference web client and run it on your own box), inviting a user to a 1-1 chat (click on their avatar and “start chat”) and then clicking the microphone or video camera icon in the top right to start a voice/video call.
We brainstormed some ideas for further WebRTC/Matrix work in our GSoC (Google Summer of Code) project proposals, for example “Implementing WebRTC support in Mobile apps” and “Multi-way voice and video conferencing”. These are very probably too extensive for the 16-hour hackathon, but might provide some ideas for smaller hacks.
We will be at the event to offer mentoring and help, but you can already start thinking about potential hacks – come talk to us in the #matrix:matrix.org room!
Last week, we mentioned that we released part of a first implementation of the long awaitedApplication Service (AS) API as part of the0.7.1 release. The AS API makes it dead simple to connect your service into the Matrix ecosystem using an existing standard Matrix server.
And today we’re very excited that the first implementation using this API has gone live! OpenMarket just announced the OpenMarket Matrix Gateway which lets you chat with non-Matrix users via their phone number: as you send and receive instant messages from your Matrix chat room, they’ll receive and send SMSes back to you, which will appear in your Matrix room as IM, extending your reach to any non-Matrix user.
To use the new OpenMarket service just login to the matrix.org webclient and start a chat with your target mobile phone user by identifying him/her with a Matrix ID in the format @+<msisdn>:matrix.openmarket.com (msisdn being the internationally formatted phone number of your contact) – any messages to them will be sent via OpenMarket’s SMS service. The SMSes will be sent from dynamically assigned numbers so that the recipient is able to respond to your message(s) – and the user will first receive an “opt-in” message from the OpenMarket Matrix Gateway to invite them to the conversation (just as they would if you invited them to a conversation in Matrix). Note that there are a finite set of these dynamically assigned numbers: OpenMarket reserves the right to recycle contact numbers if they have not been used to send or receive traffic for more than 2 months.
Sending SMS through the OpenMarket Matrix Gateway will be free during the introductory beta testing period, and users will be warned when that changes – although usage is subject to a per-user fair-usage policy. Despite the free service today, you’ll have to associate a valid PayPal account to your account in order to send messages for security purposes. OpenMarket will not (and cannot) charge this account without your consent. You can associate your PayPal account via the settings page of any reference Matrix web client which has been configured to be aware of the OpenMarket Matrix Gateway – for example, the matrix.org webclient.
You’ll also have to accept the OpenMarket Matrix API End User License Agreement to use the service.
The OpenMarket Matrix Gateway is a great example of how the Application Service API can be used to extend Matrix, we’re really happy to see it live and hope it’s going to give our community lots of ideas! There are a lot of services that could mutually benefit from being integrated with Matrix, and the AS API makes this much easier to accomplish!
Thus, we strongly urge you to have a look at the AS API – and as always we are happy to answer any questions at #matrix:matrix.org!
FOSDEM was great fun! Two days full of conferences and demos; lots of interesting technologies and interested people – and most of all: talking to so many new faces about Matrix and potential uses and integration ideas.
Both our lightning talk and IoT-devroom talk were completely filled up with huge queues outside (sorry folks), and our demos seemed to go down fairly well. In fact several people set up their own homeserver and joined the federated network of Matrix servers during FOSDEM itself!
If you missed the talks, recordings will (soon) be available from the FOSDEM site (links will be added here once available) – in the meantime you can check out the slides here: lightning talk and IoT-devroom talk.
Thanks to everyone who came to have a chat about Matrix and/or help with setting up their own homeserver (or to play with Sentinel, our mascot) – please do reach out to us via our Matrix HQ room or IRC (#matrix on freenode) if you have any problems – or want to help us fix our python packaging ;) Now is a great time to get involved as we are currently landing new APIs and soon will be offering an Application Server API to ease bridging to other services.
This weekend, Matrix is heading to FOSDEM (Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting) in Brussels, Belgium. We will be hosting two events: a lightning talk on Saturday at 16:30 in room H.2215 (Ferrer), and an IoT devroom talk on Sunday morning at 11:00 in room H.2213.
FOSDEM’s schedule is looking very interesting and varied, and we hope we can learn about interesting projects – and of course show how and where Matrix can be used to lots of FOSDEM-attendees. Please come over and have a chat if you are interested; we have a stand on the second floor in the K building – just take a right after coming up the stairs and say hi!
We have also set up a Matrix <-> IRC bridge on the #fosdem channel on freenode, which means that any conversation happening there will be copied over to #fosdem:matrix.org – and vice versa. Making bridges to other services is currently being worked on as part of the Application Services API – we want to be able to connect different services together via Matrix.
Finally, we are always available in the official Matrix HQ room – please join and say hi!
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