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!