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.

SMS Censorship, New Routes

We have written before about the increasing levels of censorship across the SMS network. When we published that article, we had no idea just how bad things were about to get. Our main SMS route decided at the beginning of April to begin censoring all messages both ways containing many common profanities. There was quite some back and forth about this, but in the end this carrier has declared that the SMS network is not meant for person-to-person communication and they don’t believe in allowing any profanity to cross their network.

This obviously caused us to dramatically step up the priority of integration with other SMS routes, work which is now nearing completion. We expect very soon to be offering long-term customers with new options which will not only dramatically reduce the censorship issue, but also in some cases remove the max-10 group text limit, dramatically improve acceptance by online services, and more.

RCS

We often receive requests asking when JMP will add support for RCS, to complement our existing SMS and MMS offerings. We are happy to announce that we have RCS access in internal testing now. The currently-possible access is better suited to business use than personal use, though a mix of both is certainly possible. We are assured that better access is coming later in the year, and will keep you all posted on how that progresses. For now if you are interested in testing this, especially if you are a business user, please do let us know and we’ll let you know when we are ready to start some testing.

One thing to note is that “RCS” means different things to different people. The main RCS features we currently have access to are typing notifications, displayed/read notifications, and higher-quality media transmission.

Cheogram Android

Cheogram Android 2.15.3-1 was released this month, with bug fixes and new features including:

• Major visual refresh, including optional Material You
• Better audio routing for calls
• More customizable custom colour theme
• Conversation read-status sync with other supporting apps
• Don’t compress animated images
• Do not default to the network country when there is no SIM (for phone number format)
• Delayed-send messages
• Message loading performance improvements

New GeoApp Experiment

We love OpenStreetMap, but some of us have found existing geocoder/search options lacking when it comes to searching by business name, street address, etc. As an experimental way to temporarily bridge that gap, we have produced a prototype Android app (source code) that searches Google Maps and allows you to open search results in any mapping app you have installed. If people like this, we may also extend it with a server-side component that hides all PII, including IP addresses, from Google, for a small monthly fee. For now, the prototype is free to test and will install as “Maps+” in your launcher until we come up with a better name (suggestions welcome!).

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 ATprotocol
• On Twitter

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