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GnomeMeeting 1.0 Videoconferencing/VoIP Released
Howard Vanbel writes "Apparently the developers of GnomeMeeting have released the final v1.0 version of the videoconferencing/VoIP software. GnomeMeeting started as a final studies work at the Department of Computing Science and Engineering of the Universite Catholique de Louvain and after 3 years of development, GnomeMeeting 1.00 is ready!
GnomeMeeting is the most advanced Open Source VoIP and videoconferencing software available - there's more info in the project FAQ."
More interesting to me than GnomeMeeting is OpenH323, which uses the MPL. That will presumably allow other developers and existing chat programs to be compatible with it.
There's a plethora of standards for video chat. It's nice to see this product it based on an existing standard, and some code is available for that standard under a license suitable for commercial applications.
Linphone and Kphone both manage to handle SIP, such that they interoperate well with Asterisk and FWD. I should hope that Gnomemeeting has support for at least SIP in their next release.
o ne.org/?lang=us&rubrique=1
http://www.wirlab.net/kphone/
http://www.linph
Konference is afaik based on gnomemeeting.t s/konference/
http://developer.berlios.de/projec
SIP support was intentionally left for post-1.0. It will be supported soon enough.
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
Damien Sandras, the main developer of GnomeMeeting, stated today that SIP-support is one of the main targets for GnomeMeeting 2.0, as well as better integration with the rest of the desktop (e-d-s, bonobo and dbus).
Just put an URL and call... As intuitive as a browser. For more advanced things, there is a manual, and well, run it before telling things that you have not verified (for example, about the codecs)
H.323 is platform independant, that's the purpose of a protocol. There are several different solutions for Windows available already (openphone, sjphone, cuseeme to name a few)
It uses H323 so it's compatible with a lot of stuff. I use GnomeMeeting to chat to Windows users and OS X users. OpenPhone and NetMeeting for Windows, OhPhoneX for OS X.
Also I believe GnomeMeeting is now (just about) usable on OS X with Fink.
there is not one unique toolkit that will please everyone
Which is why many programs give you the option of choosing from different toolkits at compile time. Vim for instance can be compiled with Qt, Motif, GTK, Athena, or Nextaw.
I like appications that are built this way. In general the fact that the program is separated from the gui. That enforces better modularty and makes for a more robust program altogether.
The ability to choose graphics toolkits is important. It is not unlike the abiltiy to choose between slang and ncurses. I sometimes have problems running ncurses programs with my terminal emulater. Slang works fine.
I don't like GTK because it causes a perfomance hit on my systems and because it is difficult to administrate to muliple users because of the way which it is configured. Other toolkits are smaller and more flexible in this situation.
I happened to have a quick play with GnomeMeeting yesterday, and I disagree with your comments.
Sure, the low-level configuration screens give you full control and look scary because of it -- but it's not the primary means for users to set up GnomeMeeting. Most users won't even go in here.
Instead, the first time you run the application it leads you through a very simple and well explained wizard which sets up your sound, your webcam, directory details and all the rest. Very straightforward.
Once through, you get the nice simple front-end where you can either tap in the URL for the person you want to call, use the main directory or (if you've got a GM -> landline bridge account) tap in a phone number.
It was astonishingly easy. And I'm not even using the 1.0 release.
This is one package where the user really can be ignorant of a lot of the underlying details and still use the technology.
Here is an article by Steve Boyd about the importance of integration of IM and office apps: Real Time Revolution
It includes an interesting interview with an MS manager about what MS is doing with Live Connection Server and office apps.
Anyway, after RTFFAQ 7.12, it does appear to port hop but there are various suggestions to make this work through a firewall or router.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
NAT circumvention using UDP is extremely easy - just get each peer to fire a few UDP packets at the other peer's NAT on the ports you want to use, their respective NATs will each think that their peer initiated the UDP communication and will start to forward the UDP packets. I have done this myself - it works on every firewall I have tested, I can't believe that the technique isn't more widely used.
You don't mention what Windows version you use, but it still IS in XP, just hidden: Click start->run and run conf.exe, and there it is.
I shall go and tell the indestructible man that someone plans to murder him.
You can use the GNU Gatekeeper to tunnel Gnomemeeting or any other H.323 endpoint through a firewall or NATed network.
Problem is quite different - those companies who produces webcams are trying to make them cheaper and smaller - therefore there is need for special driver in OS side. As for Linux producting such software, while it is closed source, it's difficult and expensive. Just buy such camera which is claimed to be work with Linux in internet databases - and problem will go away.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
I forgot the URL: www.gnugk.org
Just use the GNU Gatekeeper as a proxy for your firewall or NATed network.
It's freely available on *iX, Windows and Mac.
That's Jonita Prifti, girlfriend of Damien Sandras (main developer of gnomemeeting).
Ah yes, but the UCL is located in Louvain-la-Neuve, not in Leuven.
There used to be one university in Louvain/Leuven, which was completely francophone even though Leuven is a Flemish city. In 1968 or thereabout, much protest arose against this situation. In 1971 the university split; the dutch-speaking 'Katholieke Universiteit Leuven' stayed in Leuven, the francophone 'Universite Catholique Louvain' moved to the newly built Louvain-la-Neuve (hence the name, meaning 'Leuven the new').
This sig under construction. Please check back later.
Most nat/fw/proxy's can be configured to work with h.323 without opening a bajillion ports to the world. The down side is that most methods only work for a single user at a time. Regardless, I would recommend the use of a gatekeeper on the edge somewhere to handle a multi-user h.323 environment. There are free ones (from openh323) and non-free ones (whitepine). There are even hardware based solutions, with features like multiple presence, conference management, and radius integration available.
Thank you for your time,
BBH
One of the best features of Gnomemeeting is that you can hook up your IEEE 1394 DV camcorder up as a camera. It works quite well.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
BTW. Microsoft have always said they were pro-SIP, and GnomeMeeting 2.0 is going to support SIP, so we should be compatible far sooner if a true replacement for NetMeeting ever comes about.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!