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Newsletter: Cheogram Android Release, Matrix Alpha

singpolyma@singpolyma.net

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:

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.

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Newsletter: JMP is 5 years old today, and now with international calls!

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 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.

Today JMP turns 5 years old!  We launched on this day in 2017 with a fairly basic set of features: bidirectional Canada/USA SMS and MMS, with incoming calls directed to a pre-existing phone number.  Since then we’ve kept pushing further and further toward feature-parity with the most popular mobile phone number providers, adding outgoing calls, international texting, and group texting.

We have been actively testing the final piece of this work, international calling, and are pleased to announce today that we made it!  With the addition of international calling, which is available to all JMP users as of right now, we are now phone-feature-complete.

What does this mean?  In short, we now support all the features that other providers of mobile phone numbers support: bidirectional MMS (including group texting), domestic and international SMS, and domestic and international calling.  So if you or your friends have been waiting to try JMP until we finished all these features, now is the time to get the word out and try it!

On top of international calling, we now support using as many minutes per month as you like (with 120 Northern America minutes worth of credit included by default) - see our new comprehensive pricing page for details.

You may be wondering: Where do we go from here?  Well, we still have much work to do, and many more newsletters like this one coming up to let you know about it!  There are two main areas of work left:

First, we want to keep our finger on the pulse of telephony, specifically making sure that we add any features that mobile carriers are adding to their phone numbers, like RCS.  If we find such a feature supported on at least Android and iOS, we’ll get it into JMP as soon as possible (for RCS, the rollout is limited, and only on Android so far - if you know of other phone number features we’re missing, reply to let us know!).  Also, we have not forgotten about the many kind requests we’ve received for JMP numbers outside of the USA and Canada.  Those are on our list!

Second, we want to make JMP as easy to use as possible.  There is still much work to do here, particularly on simplifying signups, adding and managing contacts, and group texting.  We want to make sure that group text threads are easier to follow, which requires a little bit of development work yet.  And we are actively working on improving the Cheogram app that many of you have started using on Android, to include these fixes and an easy way to signup for JMP.  In the not too distant future you’ll be able to install the Cheogram app, pick a JMP number from the app, and start using it right away.

In other news, Dino 0.3 has been released which brings with it voice calling features compatible with those used by Converations, Snikket, Movim and JMP! It’s still early days and so there may be some compatibility issues, but reports say the features are working for people.

Lastly, as part of JMP’s 5 year anniversary, we are unveiling our new logo today too!  You can check it out at the usual places, such as https://jmp.chat/ and elsewhere.  Our old logo (which is still live at its old location for the nostalgic) has served us well for the past half decade, and we appreciate all it’s done for us.  The new logo reflects how increasingly close we’re getting to JMP being easy to use for the average person, and hopefully our approachableness.

As always, we’re very open to feedback and would love to hear from you if you have any comments, questions, or otherwise.  Feel free to reply (if you got this by email), comment, or find us on any of the following:

Here’s to many more years of JMP!

Newsletter: Snikket Hosting, Billing Overage Limits

singpolyma@singpolyma.net

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.

We have made a deal with Snikket CIC to include their Jabber hosting as an option for all JMP customers.  Anyone with a paid-up JMP account may get an instance hosted by Snikket CIC at no extra charge.  Your Snikket instance will be covered by your usual JMP monthly subscription.  This will eventually be the default option for new users without a Jabber ID as part of our signup flow.

Many customers have asked us how they can use more than the included 120 voice minutes each month.  Starting soon, JMP will let you pay for as many minutes as you want, and along with this will be coming outbound calls to international destinations as well.  Note that users still paying with the old PayPal system will not be able to access more than the included 120 minutes or international calls, so now is a great time to make the switch.

We have already published what the initial calling rates will be, so go check that out to get an idea of costs.  Once the new pricing goes live, we will convert the 120-minute limit into a dollar equivalent that will give you 120 minutes to the USA and Canada, but will also allow you to use that included limit to cover international calls if you prefer (or a combination of both).

Speaking of costs, we know a concern for many people is getting billed for more overages than they can afford.  Of course, JMP being pre-pay helps with this a little, but if you want to pre-pay for many months and know you won’t accidentally burn up the credit, what can you do?  We have implemented a per-calendar-month overage limit system where you decide the limit.  The default for all customers is $0/month for now (so you would continue to pay the same amount every month, with no overages), but you can raise your limit using the plan settings command in your account settings so that you can take advantage of these upcoming features.

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

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

Newsletter: New website, new forums, new app feature

singpolyma@singpolyma.net

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 we launched a full rewrite of our website.  While this rewrite was mostly precipitated by changes at our primary carrier partner, we managed to get a few improvements in there as well.  First of all, the search box on the homepage now accepts more than just area codes: a city then comma then two-letter state or province code is accepted, as well as zip codes or vanity patterns (like ~woof or ~1234).  This search is also now powered by XMPP commands in the backend, so you can now get a JMP number entirely without ever visiting the website, just talk to cheogram.com and send register jmp.chat to get started.

Next, our community has been testing more features in the pre-release Cheogram app.  This app is available to anyone who wants to test it by coming by the chatroom and asking for access.  When the app is a bit more ready, it will be released on F-Droid, hopefully in Q1 2022.  The big new feature right now is dialer integration.  This allows anyone using the app with cheogram.com added to their contacts to head to their native Android dialer and visit Settings > Calls > Calling accounts in the menu.  From there it should be possible to enable the calling account associated with your Jabber ID and then dial out directly from your native Android dialer app over JMP!  Any questions about this feature or the Cheogram app in general should be directed to the chatroom.

As our community grows it makes sense to reach more people where they are at, and not just hang out where we are most comfortable.  This month the freedomware project we sponsor and rely on, Sopranica, is opening two more venues where you will be able to get news from JMP or discuss the project generally: Lemmy and Reddit.  Here is the new complete list of official ways to communicate with our community:

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

Newsletter: Action required for SIP accounts, new inbound call features, and more!

singpolyma@singpolyma.net

Hi everyone!

Welcome to the latest edition of your pseudo-monthly https://jmp.chat 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.

The biggest announcement this month is the launch of our new inbound voice and SIP account system! Due to changes at our major carrier partner, all inbound call handling had to be rewritten and the SIP accounts some people use are moving to a new server with a new server name. As part of this rewrite you can now use the configure calls command to set call forwarding to any XMPP, SIP, or tel URI without involving support. If you haven’t used the JMP bot before, you do so by sending a message to your cheogram.com contact with the text of the command you want to run. You can send help for a list.

If you have not tried it yet, now would be a great time to try our features allowing calling from your Jabber account. All your regular SMS contacts can be called as well with no changes on your part, from any client that supports voice calls. Inbound calls can be routed to your Jabber ID using the configure calls command.

If you still need a SIP account for some reason (such as to use with a device that does not support Jabber calls) you will need to use the reset sip account command to get a username and password on the new server, as the old server will be going away soon. Be sure to use UDP as the transport!

In other news, our founder Denver Gingerich (ossguy) has returned from his leave and is rejoining us in day-to-day operations. You will see him more often in the chatroom and sometimes answering support.

There has also been a bit of movement on the mobile app front. We have been partially sponsoring development work on the now-released Snikket iOS which is now our recommended client for all iOS users. When paired with a Snikket server this client should receive calls and messages reliably, and also supports DTMF (entering digits for phone menus) during calls.

We’ve also had a volunteer working with us to clean up some of the features in our prototype app for Android. Not many visible changes yet (except for a much better icon to open the DTMF pad) but watch this space for updates.

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:

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

Newsletter: Blog, New Registration, New Billing, New App!

singpolyma@singpolyma.net

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.

In case you haven't seen it yet, we now have an XMPP-powered blog! All newsletter updates, as well as other content like technical deep-dives will be published there. If you just want these updates, don't worry, the mailing list isn't going away. You can check out the blog at https://blog.jmp.chat and follow in your RSS reader or compatible Jabber client such as Movim or Libervia.

JMP also has a new registration flow. This flow properly integrates with our new billing system and represents a lot of behind-the-scenes work to our architecture. The most important part of the new billing system is the referral system. That's right, JMP users can now get single-use invite codes to refer users. The new user gets one free month, and if they decide to upgrade to a paid account the original user will get a free month of credit too! XMPP server operators for closed or vetted groups can also contact support to ask that their server be added to an approved list where all Jabber IDs coming from that server will be given a free month, with the resulting credit if they upgrade going to the server operator.

Speaking of our new billing system, many users have been fully migrated to the new architecture which says goodbye to PayPal and hello to automated credit card and Bitcoin deposits, as well as official support for payment by mail or (in Canada) Interac e-Transfer. Payments can also be made in Bitcoin Cash by contacting support. Users on the new system now have a prepaid balance they can top up any time they like, with the option to automatically top-up a low balance with any amount $15 or more from credit card. Deposits over $30 get a 3% bonus added, and deposits over $140 get a 5% bonus. This paves the way for calling minutes over 120 / month (which will soon be available at the rate of $0.0087 / minute) and also international calling at per-minute rates to be announced later this year. Those who prefer to pay the same amount every month or year, as is done with our legacy PayPal system, will need to wait a bit until we integrate that option into the new system.

We've also had a volunteer working with us to prepare some new features for Android users, most notably DTMF (punching in numbers during a call) so that all phone calls can be done from inside Conversations. The code isn't quite ready for upstream yet, but drop by the chatroom if you want to try out a prototype.

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:

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

Newsletter: One app for calls/SMS, automated Bitcoin support, 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 (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:

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

Newsletter: Calls to your XMPP client! And 46 more countries with new SGX!

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 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:

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful week!

Newsletter: Celebrating 3 years of JMP! And some LibrePlanet Canada news!

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+).

Today is JMP’s 3 year anniversary! That’s right, we launched JMP exactly 3 years ago, and have been chipping away at Big Telecom ever since. 😉 We’ve got a fair bit planned for the next 3 years, and are excited to bring it all to you as it’s ready.

Before we go into those details, we wanted to let you know about a couple of excellent events coming up next month that JMP is involved in. Here they are:

  • LibrePlanet Canada Satellite Edition! This is a new conference in 2020, which will be happening concurrently with the US LibrePlanet conference in Boston, May 14-15. From the website: “For the first time ever, all the great presentations of LibrePlanet are coming to Canada! Bringing in the main talks via live stream, with space for local hallway track and more, LibrePlanet Canada Satellite Edition is your chance to meet with like-minded participants and take in the event from Canada.” It’s happening at the Delta Hotel in Waterloo, Ontario. JMP is an official sponsor of LibrePlanet Canada Satellite Edition - more on that in a bit. Also, you’ll be able to chat with some JMP people in person, including core contributor Stephen Paul Weber!
  • LibrePlanet in Boston! The original LibrePlanet continues for its 12th year, this time at the Back Bay Events Center. Check out some wonderful speakers and booths at this excellent conference devoted to software freedom. JMP is very likely to be included in LibrePlanet’s raffle and/or door prizes so be sure to keep an eye out for those!

As for development work, we’ve got a number of projects on the go. Behind the scenes we’ve been updating our code to use a completely new API from our carrier, which will be mostly invisible to users, but does have some cool new features we hope to be alpha testing with some of you soon. In particular, we’re excited to be rolling out group texting (both sending and receiving) in the coming months! If you’d like to alpha test, please just reply to this email and let us know - we’ll set you up in the next month or so.

And along the lines of new features, we’ve also been improving our payment system at the same time. As part of our sponsorship agreement with them, we’re currently running payments for LibrePlanet Canada Satellite Edition through our new payment provider, which will let us do credit card subscriptions directly without needing PayPal (still some development work to do there, but let us know if you’d like to alpha test the new provider for your next payment). And we’re also automating the currently-manual process we have for accepting Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Stay tuned!

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 weekend! We’re looking forward to many more years of JMP and hope that you are too!

Newsletter: JMP at LinuxFest Northwest this weekend - 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+).

As mentioned last month, we’ll have a booth at LinuxFest Northwest, which is happening this weekend! If you’re in or near northwest Washington state (specifically Bellingham Technical College), it’s a great chance to meet people in free and open source software and learn about a variety of amazing topics - the talks and exhibit hall are free of charge. At the JMP booth we’ll have pamphlets and JMP stickers, and you can pay for JMP anonymously in cash at the booth if you like. Also, feel free to just stop by and say hi!

There are some opening events on Friday (April 26) with the main conference and booths open Saturday and Sunday (April 27-28). There will be a raffle happening on both main conference days after the talks - we’ve submitted our usual prizes (JMP subscriptions) so you may be able to win one of those! For a complete event and talk list, see https://www.linuxfestnorthwest.org/conferences/2019/schedule/events

In other news, we had a wonderful time at LibrePlanet last month and we’re looking forward to future LibrePlanet events. Our raffle prizes were a big hit and it was great to meet so many JMP users and enthusiasts 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 LinuxFest Northwest!

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