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Matrix at Fluent

22.04.2015 00:00 — General Oddvar Lovaas

This week, Matrix is visiting San Francisco for Fluent, a web development conference over three days, with events ranging from 2-day training sessions to 10-min showcase presentations.

fluent

I had the opportunity to participate in the latter: Tuesday's Solutions Showcase in the Community Lounge. The presentation was recorded, here is the video and slides.

I also had a 30-min in-depth talk earlier today, where I went through a case study of adding Matrix to your existing app (slides). After evaluating options, we decided to use the flux-chat example by Facebook - it's a basic chat application that uses their internal message dispatcher and showcases how a React/Flux app works.

The code for the original example can be found here, and the complete diff of changes necessary to integrate it with Matrix - using the matrix-js-sdk - can be found here (thanks to Matthew for yet another late-night hack!). I think it's very cool to see how easily their chat example can be turned into a Matrix client, albeit a fairly basic one! Here is an online version if you want to try it out!

flux-chat-org flux-chat-matrix
The original flux-chat and the Matrix-enabled flux-chat

If you have any questions or comments, we are still at Fluent - you can catch us in the exhibition hall in booth #208 - or virtually, as always, in #matrix:matrix.org!

Back from the WebRTC and Kranky Geek conferences

17.04.2015 00:00 — General Oddvar Lovaas

This week, Matthew and myself went to the WebRTC conference and its related Kranky Geek event in sunny London.

Matrix at WebRTC conference London 2015

Matrix had a speaker slot in both events; the first talk was "Proposing an open interoperable signalling layer for WebRTC" (slides).

As I was talking to people in the tea-breaks between sessions, I was actually surprised at the amount of people who not only knew about Matrix, but who had been following eagerly since the early days, and had questions about specific features and recent developments!

Later in the day it was time for the Kranky Geek, and the talk then was a bit more technical: "Interoperable HTTP Signalling with Matrix" (slides). The talk included a "dangerous demo" where we made a WebRTC call from our Matrix iOS App to our webclient for the first time - thanks to the OpenWebRTC team for helping us make the demo!

matrix-krankygeek

What's great about these kind of events is the feedback and discussion following talks; lots of people have relevant experiences and opinions that they are happy to share, and of course questions on how exactly different features actually work.

It's always great to meet new people and have lots of various discussions. Hopefully we have got a few more people interested in Matrix - we have already seen some new joiners in the #matrix:matrix.org room!

Next up is Fluent in San Francisco next week, where I will be speaking.

Video: IoT through Matrix

08.04.2015 00:00 — General Oddvar Lovaas

Earlier this year we went to FOSDEM - as reported in an earlier blog post.

Both the recording equipment and the video team volunteers were new this year, so some problems were encountered, which means that our lightning talk video unfortunately was lost. However, our talk in the IoT-devroom is now available:

(Click here to download the video)

The slides are also available. You can check out the slides from the lightning talk as well.

As always, questions and comments are very welcome in the #matrix:matrix.org room!

Synapse 0.8.1 is here!

26.03.2015 00:00 — General David Baker

Heads up that we released Synapse 0.8.1 a little while back, but we've all been too busy writing software to announce it... you know how it goes. Anyway, here are the changes:

  • Disable registration by default. New users can be added using the included register_new_matrix_user script or by enabling registration in the config.
  • Add metrics to synapse. To enable metrics use config options enable_metrics and metrics_port.
  • Fix bug where banning only kicked the user.
Note that first one in particular: if you set up a new install, you won't be able to register new users using the API by default. This means random people on the Internet can't create accounts on your Home Server unless you actually choose to let them. Also, if you were trying to ban users and noticed that didn't work... yeah, we fixed that.

Okay, back to writing software again!

Welcoming the OpenMarket Matrix Gateway!

26.02.2015 00:00 — General Oddvar Lovaas

Last week, we mentioned that we released part of a first implementation of the long awaited Application Service (AS) API as part of the 0.7.1 release. The AS API makes it dead simple to connect your service into the Matrix ecosystem using an existing standard Matrix server.

And today we're very excited that the first implementation using this API has gone live! OpenMarket just announced the OpenMarket Matrix Gateway which lets you chat with non-Matrix users via their phone number: as you send and receive instant messages from your Matrix chat room, they'll receive and send SMSes back to you, which will appear in your Matrix room as IM, extending your reach to any non-Matrix user.

To use the new OpenMarket service just login to the matrix.org webclient and start a chat with your target mobile phone user by identifying him/her with a Matrix ID in the format @+<msisdn>:matrix.openmarket.com (msisdn being the internationally formatted phone number of your contact) - any messages to them will be sent via OpenMarket's SMS service. The SMSes will be sent from dynamically assigned numbers so that the recipient is able to respond to your message(s) - and the user will first receive an "opt-in" message from the OpenMarket Matrix Gateway to invite them to the conversation (just as they would if you invited them to a conversation in Matrix). Note that there are a finite set of these dynamically assigned numbers: OpenMarket reserves the right to recycle contact numbers if they have not been used to send or receive traffic for more than 2 months.

Sending SMS through the OpenMarket Matrix Gateway will be free during the introductory beta testing period, and users will be warned when that changes - although usage is subject to a per-user fair-usage policy. Despite the free service today, you'll have to associate a valid PayPal account to your account in order to send messages for security purposes. OpenMarket will not (and cannot) charge this account without your consent. You can associate your PayPal account via the settings page of any reference Matrix web client which has been configured to be aware of the OpenMarket Matrix Gateway - for example, the matrix.org webclient.

You'll also have to accept the OpenMarket Matrix API End User License Agreement to use the service.

The OpenMarket Matrix Gateway is a great example of how the Application Service API can be used to extend Matrix, we're really happy to see it live and hope it's going to give our community lots of ideas! There are a lot of services that could mutually benefit from being integrated with Matrix, and the AS API makes this much easier to accomplish!

Thus, we strongly urge you to have a look at the AS API - and as always we are happy to answer any questions at #matrix:matrix.org!

Synapse 0.7.1 released - with Application Service API

19.02.2015 00:00 — General Matthew Hodgson

Hi all,

We released Synapse 0.7.1 this morning - This release includes more critical federation stability and performance updates - please upgrade as soon as you can!. You can get the code and installation instructions from http://github.com/matrix-org/synapse as normal.

Update: You can also install and run Synapse now via Docker, thanks to a Dockerfile at https://registry.hub.docker.com/u/silviof/docker-matrix/ contributed today by Silvio Fricke. Thanks Silvio!!

Other than the federation improvements, the big new feature that lands here is the long-awaited Application Service API. This is a set of simple extensions to the Client-Server API to make it much easier to build powerful gateways and other application logic on top of Matrix. You can think of it being somewhere between IRC Services, IMS application services and XMPP components - but with the simplicity of an IRC bot. The extensions let you register application services as privileged Matrix clients, and create virtual users and virtual rooms in bulk within Matrix (e.g. bridging an entire IRC network into Matrix). The API also lets your application service receive inbound events as HTTP pushes rather than having to poll. The end result is that it's suddenly become a lot easier to bridge existing communities with Matrix!

We'll post another blog post shortly to give a lot more information; in the interim you can read more about it in the newly updated spec at http://matrix.org/docs/spec/#application-service-api.


Changes in synapse v0.7.1 (2015-02-19)
======================================
  • Initial alpha implementation of parts of the Application Services API. Including:

    • AS Registration / Unregistration
    • User Query API
    • Room Alias Query API
    • Push transport for receiving events.
    • User/Alias namespace admin control
  • Add cache when fetching events from remote servers to stop repeatedly fetching events with bad signatures.

  • Respect the per remote server retry scheme when fetching both events and server keys to reduce the number of times we send requests to dead servers.

  • Inform remote servers when the local server fails to handle a received event.

  • Turn off python bytecode generation due to problems experienced when upgrading from previous versions.

Back from FOSDEM!

04.02.2015 00:00 — General Oddvar Lovaas

FOSDEM was great fun! Two days full of conferences and demos; lots of interesting technologies and interested people - and most of all: talking to so many new faces about Matrix and potential uses and integration ideas.

Both our lightning talk and IoT-devroom talk were completely filled up with huge queues outside (sorry folks), and our demos seemed to go down fairly well. In fact several people set up their own homeserver and joined the federated network of Matrix servers during FOSDEM itself!

Here's a view from our stand, from our lightning talk and from our IoT-devroom talk.

If you missed the talks, recordings will (soon) be available from the FOSDEM site (links will be added here once available) - in the meantime you can check out the slides here: lightning talk and IoT-devroom talk.

Thanks to everyone who came to have a chat about Matrix and/or help with setting up their own homeserver (or to play with Sentinel, our mascot) - please do reach out to us via our Matrix HQ room or IRC (#matrix on freenode) if you have any problems - or want to help us fix our python packaging ;) Now is a great time to get involved as we are currently landing new APIs and soon will be offering an Application Server API to ease bridging to other services.

Looking forward to FOSDEM!

29.01.2015 00:00 — General Oddvar Lovaas

This weekend, Matrix is heading to FOSDEM (Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting) in Brussels, Belgium. We will be hosting two events: a lightning talk on Saturday at 16:30 in room H.2215 (Ferrer), and an IoT devroom talk on Sunday morning at 11:00 in room H.2213.

FOSDEM's schedule is looking very interesting and varied, and we hope we can learn about interesting projects - and of course show how and where Matrix can be used to lots of FOSDEM-attendees. Please come over and have a chat if you are interested; we have a stand on the second floor in the K building - just take a right after coming up the stairs and say hi!

We have also set up a Matrix <-> IRC bridge on the #fosdem channel on freenode, which means that any conversation happening there will be copied over to #fosdem:matrix.org - and vice versa. Making bridges to other services is currently being worked on as part of the Application Services API - we want to be able to connect different services together via Matrix.

Finally, we are always available in the official Matrix HQ room - please join and say hi!

Matrix on the Road #2 - A winning tour!

29.11.2014 00:00 — General Amandine Le Pape

Some updates on the conferences Matrix attended over the last 3 weeks: WebRTC Summit in Santa Clara, TAD Summit in Istanbul, WebRTC World West in San José and fOSSa in Rennes. Great shows, ending in lots of interesting discussions and new excitement in Matrix!

WebRTC Summit (Santa Clara, November 4-6)

Matrix was a sponsor at the Santa Clara WebRTC Summit at CloudExpo, and opened the WebRTC track alongside our friends at Open Peer / Hookflash. Matthew presented Matrix as the missing signalling layer for WebRTC and as a good federated complement to MQTT and COAP for IoT use cases: you can find his presentation here.

Great techie discussions and debates down there, the stand was flooded with interested people and John had a hardtime answering everyone by himself on day 2!

But he still found a few minutes to do a TV interview for SYSCon TV on Tuesday evening! :)

[embed]http://youtu.be/JVq6S9V1Jcg[/embed]

TAD Summit (Istanbul, November 12-13)

Matrix was a partner at TAD Summit in Istanbul this year, a great opportunity to meet a very good mix of developers, industry players and mobile networks! TAD mixes conferences and technical workshops where everyone gets involved to create a vibrant ecosystem for Telecom Application Developers. Again really productive discussions and meetings as we continue our search for partners to help support the uptake of Matrix.

Matthew's talk was fully recorded so just watch the video to get the real pitch!

[embed]http://youtu.be/ER3g4-4bFYk?list=PLO-gJ4-4x_IIYVTuLmVr8iUedvVdduYY4[/embed]

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As-5vVdXhu0[/embed]

WebRTC World (San Jose, November 18-20)

Matrix's attendance at WebRTC World in San Jose was more rewarding than expected! The team was ready to be part of the expo and give a talk on FOSS WebRTC options... but didn't hesitate to jump at the opportunity when a demo slot opened up! And that was a worthwhile decision as Matrix ended up winning not one but TWO awards from the demo: The Audience Choice Award as the audience's favourite demo of the 10 shown on Tuesday, and also the overall Best Social Integration Award from the Jury! So a big congrats to the dev team who were rushing to get the fine details ready in time and to Matthew for getting the audience's attention! And of course a even bigger thank you to everyone who voted for us, including in the Jury!

Matthew at WebRTC World 2014

Of course this drew lots of interest, and WebRTC Expo ended up the busiest show ever for the team who pitched solidly at the booth for 2 days in a row!

Audience_Choice_14 Best_Social_Integration_14

fOSSa (Rennes, November 20)

And eventually, while Matthew and John were celebrating in San José (or flying home, more accurately), Amandine was also evangelising at home in Rennes (France), where fOSSa was gathering experts from the opensource world for 3 days. Matrix was presented within the Serendipity section on the conférence, "Le Carrefour des Possibles": 6 minutes to pitch an open project that making dreams possible.

So if you speak French or are not afraid to only read from the slides, check out the video the team made of the pitch. The official one should be available soon!

[embed]http://youtu.be/DyL9Ue0KlBU[/embed]

Don't miss Matrix in tonight's #vuc session!

28.11.2014 00:00 — General Amandine Le Pape

Crazy session tonight at 5pm UK time (12 Noon Eastern Time; 9AM Pacific) on VUC as Matrix, Truphone and Jitsi were crazy enough to hack a federated demo in 48h!

Join us live for the demo from the inside by using Matrix to attend the conference (see steps below)! No browser supporting WebRTC at hand but still willing to play with Matrix? You can also follow the chatroom (bridged to IRC) by entering #vuc:matrix.org.

For other connection means:

Steps to join the call from Matrix:
  1. Register on Matrix from Chrome if not already done :)
  2. Start a chat with @vucbot:matrix.org by entering the ID in the appropriate textfield at the bottom of the public rooms list on http://matrix.org/beta and click on "Message User"
  3. In the chat room start a voice call by clicking on the mic icon in the top right corner. Don't forget to allow your browser to access your mic and speakerphones!
vuc