Glider Blackberry Beta is out

2010-09-14 23:51:45 by Fabio Forno

After a long silence (and hard work) we are really excited for the release of the first beta of Glider for Blackberry. If you are impatient you can go directly here and download it.

This beta version is free and it will expire when new releases will be available. After the beta period you will have two options: a free ads supported version and a full pro version at an affordable price.

Glider is the multiplatform XMPP Client by Ooros, based on the open code of Lampiro. Glider exclusive features are:

  • touchscreen support
  • blackberry device integration
  • simplified setup
  • notifications of new messages when in background
  • automatic reconnect
  • network configuration
  • integrated news reader based on the efficient pubsub protocol
  • moneiro: the Ooros platform for mobile payments
Stay tuned, since very soon we will have news for Android and iPhone too!

The importance of being open

2007-09-11 23:02:54 by Fabio Forno

Not a good period of Skpye: few days ago its network shut down (allegedly due to a massive update and reboot of Windows), now a worm is spreading trough its network.  These are two more hints about the importance of openess when adopting solutions that must deployed throughout the internet. 

I'm not saying that Skype is insecure and that, for example, Google Talk (which adopts XMPP, an open protocol for IM and Voip) is secure. Behind software and services there are people, and people may do errors and even stupids things. Many "closed" vendors have systems for assuring software quality which are far superior than any open source project. However in the closed world the risk of some bug remaining silent for a long time and being exploited by some attacker when it's too late is far higher. When you are buying a closed solution, based on closed protocols, you can't have any assurance but the reputation of the vendor.  In open solutions instead there often dozens if not hundreds of independent engineers reviewing code, specs, protocols. This is not bullet proof, for example SMTP is an open protocol and there are still many email clients spreading viruses and worms. However this is mainly due to poor client implementations or proprietary extensions (I bet everybody is thinking of Outlook...), not to SMTP itself (indeedm the design of SMTP can be blamed oly for spam).

Being SMTP open, you can chose among different client and server implementations, switch if you are not satisfied or experiment new solutions, and be sure that you will be always able to receive the email coming from any domain. 

XMPP gives the same value: though a rather novel protocol, you already have tens of clients, servers and libraries available, different implementations that must work together, accordingly to public specifications. This usually means fewer problems due to malformed or unpredicted input as it happens in closed solutions, and, therefore less risks of attacks exploiting these bugs. And, finally, it means that at any moment you can chose the option better fitting your security needs, and still be operating. 

Opening social networks?

2007-08-10 00:43:35 by Fabio Forno

Wired calls for freeing social networks: Slap in the Facebook: It's Time for Social Networks to Open Up,  PSA calls the Jabber community for offering an answer. We agree with Peter, but before starting we need to make coexist these two contrasting perceptions of Web 2.0 (and of social networks) I gave yesterday:

  • users' point of view: anything enabling realtime sharing of data and collaboration
  • businesses' point of view: anything making users spending more time on a website

Unless the second point is satisfied no site like Facebook will completely open, since  they run the risk of losing the main source of their revenues: advertisement. 

Pay per visit advertising

2007-08-09 22:50:06 by Fabio Forno

Today Slashdot has an interesting piece about a new patent in the field of geo-advertising. The basic idea is to sell advertisements and make the buyers pay only when customers visit particular locations. Here you can find the details about the invention: a plurality of means is used in order to determine mobile locations and billing the advertisers, such as GPS, wireless network addresses or some agents on the mobiles answering to location queries.

With this idea Pelago has raised 7.4M$ from Bezos and seems to be one the most promising startups.

Here at Bluendo we think that this piece of news has two good points for us:

  • Geoadvertising matters, there is real interest about innovative ways for better targeting customers
  • If this idea worths 7.4M$, there are great margins for improvements. We can't reveal the details yet, because we are patenting a possibly competing technology, but we think we have the answer to one fundamental question Pelago doesn't seem to answer: why would a user install a client or consent to be tracked just for being spammed? No, the answer is not: "because they are payed, or they receive special discounts"

IM Most Valuable (Web 2.0?) Tool for Enterprise

2007-08-08 00:04:35 by Fabio Forno
The taste of this report is as sweet as honey for businesses based on Instant Messaging: IM seems to be the most valuable (Web 2.0) tool for enterprise.
 
There is only the doubt about the perception of Web 2.0 among people and also among so called experts.  Take a look at the report summarized by the picture below. Is IM web 2.0? IM was out when the web could be labeled 1.0, and IM is not web service, at least in its origins. And also some of the other services (RSS, Wikis) were out before all the buzz about Web 2.0... 
 
business value derived from web 2.0 technologies
 
We think there are mainly three approaches for defining Web 2.0 applications:
  • technological point of view: anything based on Ajax or its evolution named Comet (server push)
  • users' point of view: anything enabling realtime sharing of data and collaboration
  • businesses' point of view: anything making users spending more time on a website
Here at Bluendo we are happy to read that IM is already perceived as service bringing value to enterprise, but we think that there is still lack of comprehension of the real opportunities that it may offer. In the traditional business IM is just a tool for improving the effectiveness of communication, with an interaction paradigm that is less intrusive and interrupting than phone and more immediate then email. Some others related services such as file transfers (but how many really works?) and whiteboarding may be taken in account, but that's not enough.
IM is just not a tool such as RSS or wikis, IM and Presence may become the real backbone for Web 2.0. If you take a look at the three points of view above, you may discover that in common they have Presence: in order to effectively deliver data you need an infrastructure which resembles more to an IM server than to a web application server; for sharing data with others in real time you need instant messaging and enhanced presence (don't waste time checking, let others publish and the events come to you); and, finally, with the integration of presence based services, you transform your site into a console that users keep open for communicating, sharing and working.
The window of GMail is a great example of this concept: within a single web page you manage all your mail and you can communicate with others using Google Talk. The challenge we have taken at Bluendo is to free presence based services, and allow Web 2.0 developers adding them to their sites with simple  and customizable widgets.