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Newsletter: JMP is at SeaGL starting tomorrow - stop by and say hi!

denver@ozg.ca

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+).

If you happen to be in Seattle over the next couple days, check out JMP’s booth at SeaGL! SeaGL, also known as the Seattle GNU/Linux Conference, is a grassroots technical conference that is being put on by some of the best organizers we know - it takes place tomorrow (Friday) and Saturday (November 9-10) at Seattle Central College (1701 Broadway), from 9am to 5:30pm, with a reception Saturday evening. Admission is free, and SeaGL also arranged free lunch and free childcare both days!

JMP’s booth will be in the Expo Hall (which is conveniently where lunch is being served), on the first floor in rooms 1110 and 1111. As usual, we will have pamphlets and JMP stickers, and you can pay for JMP anonymously in cash if you like. Or just stop by and say hi!

SeaGL has some great talks and other events scheduled, so be sure to check them out.

We hope to see you there!

If you’d like to know what’s happening with JMP between emails like this, here are some ways you can find out:

Thanks for reading and have a great day! We’re looking forward to seeing some of you at SeaGL!

Newsletter: International SMS alpha for all JMP users, more on SeaGL!

denver@ozg.ca

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+).

JMP users can now send international SMS (i.e. SMS to countries outside Canada and the US), as part of our alpha rollout! Thanks to the agreement we alluded to in last month’s email, we’ve been able to enable international SMS sending on all JMP numbers (receiving of international SMS has always been supported). The feature is currently in alpha while we do further testing and validation work, but it’s available to you now if you want to try it out (at no additional charge while in alpha).

If you don’t have an international number to test with, or if you run into any issues with the international texting functionality (i.e. messages are not delivered at all or only some countries work), let us know by replying to this email or contacting support: https://jmp.chat/#support. We can help you from there and/or provide an international number you can use to test the functionality.

International SMS are sent in the same way as other SMS, using the full E.164 number before @cheogram.com as described in https://jmp.chat/#sending. For example, to send a message to the Australian number +61 (0)448 008 003, you would use the JID +61448008003@cheogram.com.

You may recall from last month’s email that JMP will have a booth at SeaGL in Seattle this year. We are prepping all our materials now, and are excited to be joining them! SeaGL recently announced even more free stuff, which makes the decision to attend even easier. ;) Check out the details on free childcare and free lunch.

For more on how we’ll be involved in SeaGL this year and why you should attend, here’s what we sent out last month:

JMP will have a table at SeaGL this year! SeaGL is taking place November 9-10 at Seattle Central College (1701 Broadway, Seattle, WA), and we’re really looking forward to being there. As a grassroots technical conference that is being put on by some of the best organizers we know, SeaGL offers an amazing community of people and great talks that you should definitely check out. SeaGL is also free of charge and you don’t need to identify yourself in order to attend, so if you’re in the area or don’t mind travelling, you won’t want to miss it! Be sure to watch their website for all the details, and signup for the announcement list at the bottom of the page.

At SeaGL (as at HOPE), you’ll be able to meet some of us (including the founder) at our exhibit table, pay for JMP anonymously in cash if you like, and/or just hang out or chat with us! We’ll have pamphlets and JMP stickers if you’re interested, too. We hope to see you there!

If you’d like to know what’s happening with JMP between emails like this, here are some ways you can find out:

Thanks for reading and have a great day! We’re looking forward to seeing some of you at SeaGL next month!

Newsletter: JMP at SeaGL, and international SMS/calls coming soon!

denver@ozg.ca

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 had a great time at the HOPE (Hackers On Planet Earth) conference in July - lots of people stopped by the JMP booth to chat, ask questions, and even take us up on the offer to pay in cash for their JMP subscriptions! In case you missed HOPE, we’ll be at another excellent conference coming up soon:

JMP will have a table at SeaGL this year! SeaGL is taking place November 9-10 at Seattle Central College (1701 Broadway, Seattle, WA), and we’re really looking forward to being there. As a grassroots technical conference that is being put on by some of the best organizers we know, SeaGL offers an amazing community of people and great talks that you should definitely check out. SeaGL is also free of charge and you don’t need to identify yourself in order to attend, so if you’re in the area or don’t mind travelling, you won’t want to miss it! Be sure to watch their website for all the details, and signup for the announcement list at the bottom of the page.

At SeaGL (as at HOPE), you’ll be able to meet some of us (including the founder) at our exhibit table, pay for JMP anonymously in cash if you like, and/or just hang out or chat with us! We’ll have pamphlets and JMP stickers if you’re interested, too. We hope to see you there!

Lastly, in case you’re wondering what we’ve been doing between conferences, we’re currently working on support for outgoing calls and text messages to numbers outside Canada and the US. JMP numbers have always been able to receive calls and messages from these international numbers, but our carrier partnerships have limited where we can send. However, thanks to a new agreement with one of JMP’s carriers that we’ve been hashing out over the past several months, we will soon have full support for sending and receiving text messages and calls to and from numbers outside Canada and the US! We’re still working out the details, but hope to have everything enabled within the next few months. Stay tuned for more details on pricing and availability!

If you’d like to know what’s happening with JMP between emails like this, here are some ways you can find out:

Thanks for reading and have a great day! We’re looking forward to seeing some of you at SeaGL in November!

Newsletter: JMP is at HOPE starting tomorrow - stop by and say hi!

denver@ozg.ca

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+).

If you happen to be in New York City this weekend, you can chat with some JMP people in-person at HOPE! HOPE, also known as Hackers On Planet Earth, is a bi-annual conference described as “one of the most creative and diverse hacker events in the world”. It takes place at Hotel Pennsylvania, 401 7th Avenue.

The HOPE conference starts tomorrow (July 20) and goes until Sunday evening (July 22). We will be in the vendor area, which is on the Mezzanine level, just up the escalator from the registration desk. You’ll be able to meet some of us (including the founder) at our booth/vendor table, pay for JMP anonymously in cash if you like, and/or just hang out or chat with us! We’ll have pamphlets and JMP stickers if you’re interested, too.

If you haven’t registered for HOPE yet, you can do so at the door (see https://xii.hope.net/news.html for details). There are lots of great talks and other vendors at HOPE! Check out https://xii.hope.net/vendors.html for the complete list.

If you’d like to know what’s happening with JMP between emails like this, here are some ways you can find out:

We are plugging away on the different payment options that we plan to have ready by the end of this year (hopefully much sooner), including automated Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin payments (you can already pay with these, but you need to contact support to do so) and more non-PayPal options for conventional currencies. After that we’ll be implementing missed call notifications - see https://gitlab.com/ossguy/jmp-fwdcalls/issues/14 for the disussion so far. We’ll be sure to keep you in the loop on all these new developments.

Thanks for reading and have a great day! We’re looking forward to seeing some of you at HOPE this weekend!

Newsletter: Join us at HOPE in July, see what we're working on next!

denver@ozg.ca

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+).

As we prepare for our next conference and continue the payment/plan option improvements, we just wanted to send out a quick update to let you know that our vendor table at The Circle of HOPE conference is officially confirmed! HOPE happens July 20-22 at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City and we’ll be there all three days.

HOPE, also known as Hackers On Planet Earth, is a bi-annual conference described as “one of the most creative and diverse hacker events in the world”. You can register at https://store.2600.com/products/tickets-to-the-circle-of-hope if you like, or get a ticket a the door (though supplies are limited).

For those that do make it to HOPE, you’ll be able to meet some of us (including the founder) at our booth/vendor table, pay for JMP anonymously in cash if you like, and/or just hang out or chat with us! The vendors area is on the mezzanine level; see https://xi.hope.net/attractions.html#-vendor-area- for details.

If you’d like to know what’s happening with JMP between emails like this, here are some ways you can find out:

We are plugging away on the different payment options that we plan to have ready by the end of this year (hopefully much sooner), including automated Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin payments (you can already pay with these, but you need to contact support to do so) and more non-PayPal options for conventional currencies. After that we’ll be implementing missed call notifications - see https://gitlab.com/ossguy/jmp-fwdcalls/issues/14 for the disussion so far. We’ll be sure to keep you in the loop on all these new developments.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend! We’re looking forward to seeing some of you at HOPE next month!

Newsletter: The new JMP account bot, LibrePlanet recap, and HOPE!

denver@ozg.ca

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 big news for this month is the release of our brand new JMP account bot! If you want to jump right in, you can talk to it at account@jmp.chat - now for some details:

  1. The bot lets you see your daily usage statistics for voice and text messages (via the ‘u’ command), now with the option to browse back beyond the last 30 days to see your historical usage as well.
  2. By popular demand, you can see your JMP number (via the ‘n’ command), in case you forgot. :)
  3. You can now automatically confirm your plan details (via the ‘p’ command), i.e. to see if you have a trial account (and how long you have left in your trial period) or if you’ve upgraded to a paid account, and to check how the account is being paid. NOTE: The limits shown in the plan details are currently soft caps - we don’t yet charge per-minute beyond the included voice allotment.
  4. As we at JMP add new payment and plan options over the coming months, you will be able to use other features in the JMP account bot to do things like add funds to your account, switch your payment method, or change to a different JMP plan if you like.
  5. You can find the source code at https://gitlab.com/ossguy/jmp-acct_bot if you’re interested - merge requests and issue reports/feature requests welcome!

We just launched the JMP account bot yesterday so we’re very interested to hear how people like it, and whether you have any comments or suggestions. If you do, simply reply to this email to let us know! We’re always happy to hear from you!

(Once again, you can talk to the JMP account bot at account@jmp.chat - its Jabber ID is account@jmp.chat in case your email client doesn’t show the right link.)

In other news, we had a great time at LibrePlanet, an annual free/libre software conference that took place at MIT during the last weekend of March. In addition to the talk that JMP’s founder gave (video and slides), we donated some 3-year JMP subscriptions in the raffle, and ran a booth all weekend, where we had some great discussions about phone (number) freedom, signed up a bunch of people for JMP, and handed out lots of stickers and pamphlets. It was great to see many of you there!

And we’re already looking forward to our next conference, which will be The Circle of HOPE, happening July 20-22 at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City. HOPE, also known as Hackers On Planet Earth, is a bi-annual conference described as “one of the most creative and diverse hacker events in the world”. We’ll generally be around during the conference, and we plan to have a booth there (pending confirmation), where you’ll be able to meet some of us (including the founder), pay for JMP anonymously in cash if you like, and/or just hang out or chat with us!

If you’d like to know what’s happening with JMP between emails like this, here are some ways you can find out:

We are plugging away on the different payment options that we plan to have ready by the end of this year (hopefully much sooner), including automated Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin payments (you can already pay with these, but you need to contact support to do so) and more non-PayPal options for conventional currencies. We’ll be sure to keep you in the loop on all the new developments.

Thanks for reading and have a great week! We hope to see some of you at HOPE in July!

Newsletter: Livestream, meet us at LibrePlanet, and more!

denver@ozg.ca

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 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+).

As you might have guessed from our last email, we’re very excited that JMP will have a big presence at LibrePlanet this weekend! LibrePlanet is an annual free/libre software conferences happening this year at MIT (in the Boston area) March 24-25. Here’s what’s all going on with JMP there:

  • JMP will have a booth, staffed all weekend, where you can ask us any questions you might have, pickup some free JMP stickers, pay for your JMP account anonymously with cash, or just say hi!
  • JMP’s founder will be speaking Saturday afternoon (March 24) at 15:25 Eastern - the topic is “In business: Keeping free software sustainable”; if you can’t make it to LibrePlanet, you can watch the livestream of Room 32-155 then - see https://libreplanet.org/2018/program/ on Saturday for details
  • we are donating some JMP subscriptions to LibrePlanet, which means that you can win multiple years of JMP service at the raffle happening Saturday evening!

See https://libreplanet.org/2018/ for more details on the conference - there is still time to register for LibrePlanet if you’re interested!

In between our LibrePlanet preparations, we’ve also been adding a bit to JMP itself, as well as making some instructional improvements for new users. In particular:

If you’d like to know what’s happening with JMP between emails like this, here are some ways you can find out:

We are plugging away on the different payment options that we plan to have ready by the end of this year (hopefully much sooner), including automated Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin payments (you can already pay with these, but you need to contact support to do so) and more non-PayPal options for conventional currencies. We’ll be sure to keep you in the loop on all the new developments.

Newsletter: One year of JMP, post-beta plans, and new features!

denver@ozg.ca

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 through a real phone number right from your computer, tablet, phone, or anything else that has an XMPP client. JMP’s tagline, “Freedom for SMS”, 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+).

Today marks one year since JMP launched - at 12:29 UTC (07:29 Eastern Time) on February 15, 2017, the big switch was flipped on https://jmp.chat/ and the site (and service) went live!

When we started, JMP was a bit less featureful - it didn’t use Cheogram (some may recall the uglier catapult.sgx.soprani.ca JIDs), there was no voicemail at all (let alone transcription), and JMP didn’t support outgoing calls or have its own SIP accounts (you needed to provide an existing phone number or SIP address for receiving calls). Since then, we’ve added all these features, and much more. The porting process for bringing your existing number to JMP is streamlined now, we have a much better sense of (and recommendation list for) which XMPP servers and clients work best with JMP, and we support a range of payment options beyond PayPal now, including Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash (with more to come!).

You may have noticed that after a year, JMP is still technically in beta. We want to make a few more updates to JMP before we leave beta, particularly in the area of payment options. As an example, a lot of people have asked about the limit on calling minutes that one can use in a month - we’ll be adding ways to get as many minutes as you need, along with many more (and easier) options for keeping your JMP account paid up. We hope to have all of that ready by the end of this year.

Now that you know about JMP’s distant past and future, here are some more recent updates:

  • as mentioned last month, several people from JMP will be at LibrePlanet this year, including JMP’s founder (also giving a talk, “Sustainable free software: it needs your business”) - we’ll have a booth and would love to chat if you happen to be around; LibrePlanet is March 24-25 at MIT (in the Boston area): signup at https://libreplanet.org/2018/ today!
  • some new commands have been added to JMP/Cheogram (you can access them as you would the Configure Calls command, per https://jmp.chat/#voicemail )
    • Reset SIP Account - if you didn’t write them down or need a refresher, you can get your SIP credentials here (for placing and receiving calls using your JMP number)
    • Display JMP Number - an easier way to see what your JMP number is, in case you forgot
    • Show Monthly Usage (not new, but worth mentioning) - see how many minutes and messages you’ve used in the past 30 days; daily and historical stats coming soon!
  • as usual, a variety of bug fixes and minor improvements were added as well; for a complete list, see:

If you’d like to know what’s happening with JMP between emails like this, here are some ways you can find out:

More updates on where we’re at with payment plans and future feature work will be headed your way next month. As always, we’ll be sure to keep you in the loop on all the new developments.

Thanks for reading and have a great week!

Newsletter: JMP this month: on Motherboard, what's up at LibrePlanet!

denver@ozg.ca

Hi everyone!

Welcome to the latest edition of your pseudo-monthly JMP update, this month giving a special welcome to all the new subscribers that found us via Motherboard (more on that below)!

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 through a real phone number right from your computer, tablet, phone, or anything else that has an XMPP client. JMP’s tagline, “Freedom for SMS”, 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+).

Here’s what’s been going on with JMP and Soprani.ca over the past month and a bit:

And here’s what’s coming up in the near future:

Last month we completed some of the final organizational steps needed in order to accept recurring payments without using PayPal (paperwork is fun!). We’ll be implementing the technical side of this next, so we hope to have new recurring payment options (that don’t require you to use PayPal) and plan options within the next couple months. In the meantime, you can still pay for your JMP account using Bitcoin Cash or Bitcoin (just reply to this email or contact us per https://jmp.chat/#payment for details), as well as the usual/default PayPal methods, along with a few other options you can ask us about.

If you’d like to know what’s happening with JMP between emails like this, here are some ways you can find out:

Our current top priorities for next features (roughly in order) are: behind-the-scenes work to make JMP more scalable, additional plan and payment options, and automated Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin payment support. We’ll be sure to keep you in the loop on all the new developments.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

Newsletter: Radical Networks recap, easy porting, and the new WOM!

denver@ozg.ca

Hi everyone!

Welcome to the latest edition of your pseudo-monthly JMP update, coming to you from our “fancy” new Mailman setup!

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 through a real phone number right from your computer, tablet, phone, or anything else that has an XMPP client. JMP’s tagline, “Freedom for SMS”, 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+).

Here’s what’s been going on with JMP and Soprani.ca over the past month and a bit:

And here’s what’s coming up in the somewhat distant future:

A number of people that work on JMP, including JMP’s founder and lead developer, will be at LibrePlanet, which is happening March 24-25 in the Boston area. If you’re interested in free/libre software (like JMP), this is really the conference to be at. Registration, and further info, are here: https://libreplanet.org/2018/ We hope to see you there!

If you’d like to know what’s happening with JMP between emails like this, here are some ways you can find out:

Our current top priorities for next features (roughly in order) are: behind-the-scenes work to make JMP more scalable, additional plan and payment options, and official Bitcoin payment support (we already accept it unofficially - reply for details). We’ll be sure to keep you in the loop on all the new developments.

Thanks for reading and have a great week!

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