Matrix will again be represented at the WebRTC Conference & Expo in Paris. Daniel and myself are catching the Eurostar tomorrow afternoon, and the conference will start early Wednesday morning with a panel about WebRTC for Mobile, where Daniel is one of the participants.

I'm sure we will have three days full of interesting talks and discussions (see the full schedule here). There will be demos as well, and Matrix is (of course!) also joining the demo competition. We hope to see many familiar faces - and hopefully meet some new ones as well!

If you are going to the conference, please come and say hello – we will have a stand at the expo (we're table #6 - see map here). And don't miss Daniel's Matrix One-year Status Report at 11.10am on Friday!

See you there!

Matrix will be represented at the 32nd Chaos Computer Club, Dec 27th-30th, 2015. We hope to be arranging an assembly, where people can come along to learn about Matrix and our recent work on end-to-end encryption, find out what they can use Matrix for - and also do some hacking at the same time!

UPDATE: We've snagged a table for the assembly at: "hackcenter room with C-base, a table along the pathway". In practice only Mjark is there from Matrix and may be moving around, so may be easiest to coordinate meetups via #32C3:matrix.org

The session is free of charge, although you do need a ticket to the Congress itself.

If you are interested, please register by sending an email to [email protected]. All you need for the session is curiosity - but do bring your own laptop if you want to hack as well!

Anyone is welcome to join - it will basically be a fairly open-ended chat about all things relating to Matrix, and a good chance to do some deep digging into Matrix itself.

Hope to see you there!

In addition to the Android release a couple of days ago, we also released a new version of Matrix Console iOS: v0.5.6!

This release includes a new version of MatrixKit (v0.2.7) that you can take advantage of in your MatrixKit powered app. There are several changes in MatrixKit since the last release, including improved performance, better handling of unrecognized certificates and fixes of reported crash issues. We have also introduced read receipts, improved the chat history display, made room invites more obvious, and fixed a whole lot of JIRA issues.

You can find the full list of changes in the MatrixKit CHANGES.rst and the Matrix Console iOS CHANGES.rst files.

The Android Matrix Console app v0.5.2 is currently in the queue to go live on the Play store!

This release includes:

• Read receipts!
• Call ring volume is now based on device ring volume
• Accessibility tweaks from Peter Vágner - thanks!
• Better SSL support for older devices
• We fixed an echo problem in Android{'<->'}Android VOIP calls
• A ringback tone for placing outbound calls was added
• Lots of small improvements, e.g. better recent message display and add account dialog
• Fixed several reported issues/crashes - for the full list look at the CHANGES files in the console and SDK projects

Get it RSN from the Google play store!

Enjoy! And please do let us know your feedback in #matrix:matrix.org!

Today, we are releasing Synapse version 0.11.0. In the last week, we have had two release candidates, and this release also includes changes in v0.10.1-rc1 from October.

New features include a new Search API and better options for logging in (CAS and login fallback support) - thanks to Steven for contributing CAS support. We also introduce room tagging and as usual, there are plenty of improvements and fixes. For the full info, see the changelog below.

To upgrade, go read https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/blob/master/UPGRADE.rst - to install for the first time, go to https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/blob/master/README.rst.

This weekend, I went to the first Redecentralize Conference. I thought it was a good mix of traditional tech talks and sessions where we discussed how to make people aware of why the net needs to be decentralised. There were a lot of interesting people and we had some really thought-provoking discussions. Sessions in the main room were filmed and can be found here.

I did a talk on Matrix in one of the tutorial rooms, and it was great to see people with lots of questions and comments in the session. If you missed the talk - or have further questions: the FAQ might have the answer, or maybe the Spec itself - and there's always #matrix:matrix.org where you can find me and the whole matrix team.

At the end of day-panel on the first day, the question "are there any projects that are ready for mass adoption" was posed, and Ira picked Matrix as her answer, which was great to hear. We have come a long way in the last year, and I think Matrix now has "enough" features to be a realistic option for your IM/VoIP and group chat needs.

I really enjoyed redecentralize and hope it will be repeated! Thanks to the redecentralize.org gang for arranging it!

Following from the addition of voice and video calling in the previous release, we have added some new features and fixed more bugs - and released v0.5.1 of the Android version of the Matrix Console app.

Please note that installing this update will log you out of the app and require you to sign in again!

This release includes:

• Support for self-signed certificates
• Support for recording and sending video messages
• We have improved the performance when you resume the app
• We fixed a bug where a picture/video would disappear after rotation
• Fixed several reported issues/crashes - for the full list look at the CHANGES files in the console and SDK projects

Get it now from the Google play store!

Enjoy! And please do let us know your feedback in #matrix:matrix.org!

A weekend of intense prototyping and hacking at TADHack-mini Chicago is over, and we were very happy to again see some really interesting projects using Matrix!

Team 'Vivo' - Nestor Bermudez and Arin Sime - used Matrix, Tropo, and Telestax to create an Apple Watch app that notifies your loved ones when you are having a heart attack. Find more information here - and a recording of their presentation here. This project won the Telestax prize.

Charles Solar and Jiang Shuyang used Matrix and Flowroute resources for a platform independent app called 'Samaritan' which allows users to post help requests like "I got a flat tire!" or "My computer crashed!". Others can then call / text / video chat with them to solve their problem. A video of their presentation can be seen here. This hack won the Flowroute prize.

Vladimir Beloborodov demoed his award-winning Matrix-hack from WebRTC Paris: using Matrix just to set up a WebRTC connection between his iPad and robot, thus proving that you can have a robot with telepresence functions without having to depend on a remote server - see his demo here.

Adnan Baleh, Caterina Lazaro, Javier Garcia, Ernesto G. Grabwosky, Sergio Gil and Marion Le Callonnec - Team 'ProbatioNerds' - created a mobile Matrix app to control the provided Trossen Robotics HR-OS1 Humanoid Endoskeleton robot over the Internet - even making it dance the Macarena! Presentation video can be seen here. We awarded team 'ProbatioNerds' the TADHack Matrix prize - an HR-OS1 - and we hope the team and the robot will keep learning new tricks and moves!

[caption id="attachment_1307" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Daniel presenting the HR-OS1 to team 'ProbatioNerds' (Photo courtesy of Alan Quayle)[/caption]

We keep being impressed by the quality of projects developed at TADHacks - remember, in practice you only have around 12 hours to work on your hack. Congrats to all who participated - and thanks to Alan for arranging it!

Matrix is sponsoring another TADHack, this time TADHack mini in Chicago on October 3-4. Come hack something cool together using Matrix, either in Chicago or remotely! At past TADHacks we've seen a robot controlled with Matrix, collaborative web page viewing with Matrix as the underlying protocol, and more.

As well as being lots of fun, we've teamed up with Trossen Robotics to offer a HR-OS1 Humanoid Endoskeleton for the best hack using the Matrix standard. The HR-OS1 is a hackable, modular, humanoid robot development platform designed from the ground up with customization and modification in mind. With a Raspberry Pi 2, webcam, wifi, bluetooth, and all of the limbs you expect for a human, there's a lot of scope for exciting projects to be had with it!

I for one would love to ask an open source robot to bring me snacks over chat. (Wow that's a sentence I never thought I would be able to say) I'll be on site, (and also hanging out in on Matrix in #matrix:matrix.org) to help out with whatever creative things y'all come up with - I hope to see you there!

Also in Chicago the following week I'll be giving a tutorial on Federated Identity as well as attending and speaking about the problem of fragmented communication at the IIT Real-Time Communications Conference & Expo.

If you're going to be around, please do say hi - I only recently joined the Matrix team, and there's a lot of people I've yet to meet - I look forward to seeing you at one (or all) of these events!

Heads up that we've just pushed the big red release button on Matrix Console iOS 0.5.3. This includes a bunch of updates to MatrixKit that you can take advantage of in your MatrixKit powered app. These include:

• Animated Gif support! 
• Support for pasting images, videos and documents into the input field
• Inclusions of matrix IDs when searching
• Options to customise the thumbnail thumbnail display box

Happy GIFing!