VoIP Blog and Podcast TMC

The Future of IM - Interview with Sean Egan

November 10, 2005

As part of my new Blog Series on The Future of IM I recently had an interview with Sean Egan of GAIM. He had some very interesting things to say about Voice Interop with Google Talk. Here's a small piece of the conversation...

Me: Hey Sean, what's new in the land of GAIM
Sean: So we've got Gaim 2.0.0 coming up soon.
Sean: It fixes every problem anyone's ever had with Gaim, ever!
Me: whoa, those are some big words
Me: what else does it do?
Me: new GUI by chance?
Sean: Well, not entirely changed, of course. But some hugely major improvements.
Me: ok, an example of hugely major would be?
Sean: So, maybe the two biggest complaints about the Gaim UI are the stupid "I'm Away" window and the Disconnected/Connecting windows. Those are all gone.
Me: ah yes, much better
Sean: We slashed a ton of preferences.
Me: k, more user friendly... good good
Sean: So that dialog is no longer an navigable mess and Gaim just does the Right Thing all the time.
Me: sounds good, and what about Voice calling interop?
Me: Heard you were working on that
Sean: It'll do Google Talk.
Me: nice
Me: so have you incorporated GIPS into GAIM ?
Me: or is the Voice processing in GAIM the same as it was before
Sean: There was no voice processing in Gaim before.
Me: ahh, ok
Me: right
Sean: But, we obviously can't use GIPS.
Sean: I'm using a free alternative

Sean also touched on SIMPLE vs. XMPP and told me that he thought one standard was enough and really did not see the reason for two. I know that some of the SIMPLE advocates out there might disagree but for the near term I think Sean may be on to something.

I will be taking some video of the P2P-SIP ADHOC BOF on Friday and I am hoping to corner some of the SIP gurus to talk about SIMPLE and XMPP strategies and how they may differ. Stay tuned for that one!




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» GAIM 2.0 coming from VoIP Blog - VoIP News, Gadgets
Erik had an interview with Sean Egan of GAIM about the impending launch of GAIM 2.0, its new features, and Sean's thoughts on IM & VoIP interoperability. Erik writes, "He had some very interesting things to say about Voice Interop... [More]

Tracked on November 16, 2005 6:25 PM

» Intervista a Sean Egan from ossblog
Su VoIp, IM and Video c’è una breve intervista a Sean Egan, il main developer di Gaim. Sean, che adesso lavora per Google seguendo il progetto GTalk, spiega come sarà la versione 2.0 del client IM multiprotocollo del progetto Gnome. Questa n... [More]

Tracked on November 27, 2005 8:59 AM

Comments to The Future of IM - Interview with Sean Egan

  1. RE: The Future of IM - Interview with Sean Egan
    Kokanee :
    November 27, 2005 5:57 AM

    Well that was an incredibly useless interview!

  1. RE: The Future of IM - Interview with Sean Egan
    Apreche :
    November 27, 2005 6:30 AM

    Great, but will it actually support all of Jabber's features? I need to be able to register for aim transports and set priorities. Nothing is worse than going to work and not getting messages because they are all being routed to home. Then I have to use a crap client like exodus to change the priority. Gaim is perfect except for the fact that it supports aim (closed) better than Jabber (open). Glad to see google talk, though. Now I wont need skype.

  1. RE: The Future of IM - Interview with Sean Egan
    miscblogger :
    November 27, 2005 10:09 PM

    I can't wait for the new gaim!!!!