I met with Digium's founder, Mark Spencer yesterday to discuss what was happening with Asterisk. Mark told me that they are working very hard on Jingle support, an open set of extensions to the IETF's Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) for use in VoIP, video, and other peer-to-peer multimedia
sessions. This will enable federation with Google Talk and other Jingle supporters. Mark said that Jingle support will be coming very soon. If Jingle is successful, this is yet another reason to be skeptical over Tello, which I discussed yesterday.

Mark also told me they are participating in more SIP interoperability bakeoffs and tests. He also reiterated the cool Bluetooth integration thast Asterisk has and offered to give me a technology demo at some point.

Mark noticed the Nokia N90 that I have as part of the blogger's review program and asked how I liked it. I told him it was pretty feature-rich but I still hadn't figured out how to increase the handset volume or how to switch to vibrate mode. (assuming it supports vibrate). I hate reading manuals, but looks like I may have to for the N90. Anyway, Mark noticed the built-in camera and he decided to take a photo. Actually, I found out later that Mark took a video of himself, not a photo. I was going to share the video, but I can't figure out how to email the damn thing from the Nokia phone. The N90 keeps telling me the file format isn't supported when I try to email it.

We also talked about a cool new videophone from Grandstream Networks called the GXV3000 which is launching at Internet Telephony Conference & Expo and which Mark said works with Asterisk. I'll post a new entry when I find a photo of the GXV3000. from I have a printed photo of it, but no scanner handy.

I know there was some other interesting stuff Mark told me, but I must have forgotten. Getting up at 5am to fly down to Florida will do that to your memory recall.