GSoC 2011: Videochat for Diaspora*

I’m writing about the results achieved with my Google Summer of Code project, for the Ninux community, under the umbrella of Freifunk (I thank them both for the opportunity they gave me).

Briefly it consisted in developing a video chat feature for Diaspora*, a distributed social network.

This project has received a very big feedback and appreciations from the entire Diaspora community, including the core team, who helped and supported me during the development.

Basically, it provides two new functionalities to the Diaspora engine:

  • Textual chat, based on XMPP signaling protocol
  • Video chat, using Jingle XEP
Both have been developed in Javascript, with some Rails code. It uses Strophe.js library for the textual chat, based on XMPP Over BOSH standard, and a self-made extension of it to realize Jingle protocol.
The project includes a custom ejabberd module in Erlang for the integration of ejabberd/diaspora databases, an Actionscript part for the video chat stuff and an external authentication script written in Ruby used by ejabberd to authenticate users from Diaspora.
The project has been split in two pull requests, and we’re currently fixing them before merge with master repository: [1],  [2].

Source code can be found at https://github.com/vcuculo/diaspora, under “jabber” and “video_chat” branches.

Setup instructions here. Some screen-shots: [1], [2], [3].

I hope it will be soon merged and improved by me and the community, to make it available on every Diaspora* pod!

Vittorio

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6 Responses to “GSoC 2011: Videochat for Diaspora*”

  1. JanKusanagi Says:

    Hoping to see it in the real pods very soon 😉

    I guess the jabber servers in the pods will interoperate with the rest of the jabber network.

    Thanks for your work!

  2. Shackra Says:

    Oh God! :O thanks Vittori. I really appreciate what you do for Diaspora* :). You are mega-epic awesome!! ^_^

  3. Anonymous Says:

    I love how you’ve a Facebook like button under this post 😛

  4. Diasporial Says:

    […] real-time chat service! Luckily, this is already in the works. In fact, there are rumours that even video chat might be up and running soon, effectively killing any need for […]

  5. Sven Antonissen Says:

    Perhaps we can add the voice into the Diaspora?
    It would be the first social network to add a voice into their platform…
    This in combination with xmpp and video chat, would be a great solution.

  6. gnuine freedom » Blog Archive » Un servicio para todos Says:

    […] en tiempo real! Afortunadamente, esto ya está en camino . De hecho, hay rumores de que incluso un chat de vídeo podría estar en funcionamiento pronto, matando con eficacia cualquier necesidad de […]