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 a Jabber client.  Among other things, JMP has these features: Your phone number on every device; Multiple phone numbers, one app; Free as in Freedom; Share one number with multiple people.

This month marks the first release of the Cheogram Android app we have been sponsoring.  This app is a fork of the excellent Conversations, and will stay close to upstream going forward.  Some of the improvements relevant to JMP users include:

• Add contacts without typing @cheogram.com
• Integrate with the native Android Phone app (optional)
• Address book integration
• Messages with both media and text, including animated media
• Unobtrusive display of subject lines, where present (such as on voicemails)
• Links to known contacts are shown with their name (improves group text UX)
• Show timestamps for calls
• Missed call notifications

All of these features have been built in a standards-compliant way and do not rely on anything particular to Cheogram or JMP at all, so they could be reused with other gateways as well.  You can also get the app from F-Droid.

In other news, we’ve heard for some time that some users want to try using JMP from Matrix.  Since we are so big on bidirectional gateways, we have decided to add support for signing up with JMP using a Matrix ID.  This should be considered an alpha test at this time, and most notably voice does not work with the gateway yet so you will need to use SIP (or forwarding) for voice if you use a Matrix ID.  SMS, MMS, and Voicemail will all be delivered to Matrix just as they are to Jabber.  For this we are using the excellent gateway instance at aria-net.org.  To get started, just head to JMP.chat, choose a phone number, and select “I am a Matrix user” on the next page.

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

• The chatroom remains the heart of the community.  You can also join from your web browser or from Matrix.
• The blog, where you may be reading this. Can also be followed in a client like Movim.
• The Lemmy Community
• The Subreddit
• On Twitter

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

Art in screenshots is from Pepper & Carrot by David Revoy, CC-BY. Artwork has been modified to crop out sections for avatars and photos, and in some cases add transparency. Use of this artwork does not imply endorsement of this project by the artist.