Hi everyone!

Welcome to the latest edition of your pseudo-monthly JMP update!

In case it’s been a while since you checked out JMP, here’s a refresher: JMP lets you send and receive text and picture messages (and calls) through a real phone number right from your computer, tablet, phone, or anything else that has an XMPP client. JMP’s tagline, “Freedom For Your Phone Number”, captures the freedom that JMP gives you from traditional cell phone carriers, as well as the fully-free nature of all the software that powers JMP (licensed entirely under AGPLv3+).

The past few months have been busy and exciting for us! We’ve been implementing several new features, doing a ton of work on our payment system to make future additions like adding balance and checking expiry much easier, and also adding new payment methods, all with the help of two new employees! More on that below, but first, let’s talk about those new features:

First of all, thanks to our new full-time employee, Christopher, we now have fully bi-directional calling over XMPP! Previously we supported incoming calls over XMPP (per the XMPP/Jingle calling options in Q17 at https://jmp.chat/#bot), but outgoing calls is new! Using XMPP clients that support calling, such as Conversations, Movim, and Gajim, you can initiate a call by adding the contact you want to call just as you’d add a texting contact, then tapping the call icon to initiate the call. This feature is still in alpha, but many users have reported it works well, so we encourage you to give it a try! Note that most XMPP clients do not support punching in numbers mid-call (“DTMF”) - we’re actively exploring the best ways to get that added to popular clients. Now that we have both incoming and outgoing calls available through XMPP, many users will find they only need one app for JMP: the XMPP client they already have!

Secondly, also thanks to Christopher, we have a new command bot, which will eventually replace the JMP account bot. This bot lets us keep the ad-hoc commands that we continue to support for various account settings, while also letting people use the commands in XMPP clients that don’t support ad-hoc commands (such as Conversations). To get started with the new command bot send a message to xmpp:cheogram.com (that’s the Jabber ID “cheogram.com”) - “help” will list the commands, and you can type any unique command name or name prefix to run that command. Let us know what you think!

Another new feature we’ve added in the past few months is automated Bitcoin payments, so you can now add funds to your account using Bitcoin right from our website, without needing to ask support. If you prefer other cryptocurrencies, for now we recommend SimpleSwap, MorphToken, ChangeNOW, or Godex to do the conversion - we plan to add native support for Monero as our next cryptocurrency.

As mentioned earlier we have two new employees: Christopher (aka psycotica0), who has been working on the calling and bot features, and Stephen (aka singpolyma), who is making most of the new core payment system and other infrastructure updates. Christopher started at the beginning of January full-time, and Stephen started last month working part-time for JMP (after volunteering with us for several years). It’s awesome to have new people on board and we’re very excited for how quickly we’ll be able to make JMP even better! With our new employees fully onboarded now, Denver (ossguy) will be on sabbatical starting in the next few weeks, until approximately November this year. So if you are accustomed to asking your JMP questions directly to Denver, now is the time to switch to our usual support channels, per https://jmp.chat/#support - the others on the team will be happy to help! Also, note that our support reply window is now “within 8 business hours” - we may reply on the weekend, but it is not guaranteed.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to reply to this email or find us in the group chat per below. We’re happy to chat whenever we’re available!

To learn what’s happening with JMP between emails like this, here are some ways you can find out:

• find us in xmpp:discuss@conference.soprani.ca?join - a group chat accessible from most XMPP clients, and on the web
• signup for the 30-day free trial at https://jmp.chat/#signup and try it out!

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful rest of your week!

Hi everyone!

Welcome to the latest edition of your pseudo-monthly JMP update!

In case it’s been a while since you checked out JMP, here’s a refresher: JMP lets you send and receive text and picture messages (and calls) through a real phone number right from your computer, tablet, phone, or anything else that has an XMPP client. JMP’s tagline, “Freedom For Your Phone Number”, captures the freedom that JMP gives you from traditional cell phone carriers, as well as the fully-free nature of all the software that powers JMP (licensed entirely under AGPLv3+).

We have a couple big items to announce this month, so we’ll dive right in!

First of all, you can now receive phone calls directly in your XMPP client! We have tested this extensively with Conversations and Movim, and we believe other clients to work well too, including Gajim and Siskin. Any client that supports Jingle calling should work. To switch from using the JMP SIP account (the default) to using Jingle voice (XMPP calling) for incoming calls, use the ‘j’ command of the JMP account bot:

1. send ‘j’ to account@jmp.chat (if the link doesn’t open, add account@jmp.chat to your XMPP contact list)
2. if it shows you’re using the JMP SIP account, then send the text ‘j enable’ to turn on Jingle calls
3. all calls to your JMP number will now ring your XMPP client!

We are working on outgoing Jingle call support as well, but it’s not quite ready yet. Stay tuned here (or in the group chat below) to learn when you can try it out! For more on how Jingle calling works and the other Jingle/SIP bridging features, check out https://sip.cheogram.com/

Secondly, there is now a way to use Cheogram (to do SMS over XMPP) with phone numbers from 46 more countries! This is provided by a new Soprani.ca project called the Vonage SGX, which we sponsor. You can find out more at https://wiki.soprani.ca/VonageSetup

While not part of JMP, we wanted to mention it here since many have asked about support for more countries. With the Vonage SGX you maintain your own account with Vonage, and Vonage answers any phone network questions you have. The Soprani.ca community can help with any questions related to the Vonage SGX itself, in the Soprani.ca group chat mentioned below.

There have been a bunch of new features added to JMP as well since our last email (mostly in the JMP account bot at xmpp:account@jmp.chat), including several related to group texting. If you’d like to try out our group texting support so far, please reply to this email or contact support via https://jmp.chat/#support

Stay tuned for our next update email to learn about even more new features and our plans to officially remove the “beta” flag!

To learn what’s happening with JMP between emails like this, here are some ways you can find out:

• find us in xmpp:discuss@conference.soprani.ca?join - a group chat accessible from most XMPP clients, and on the web
• signup for the 30-day free trial at https://jmp.chat/#signup and try it out!

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful week!