This is where the Google Voice integration appears if you have configured a Google Talk account, it appears as a calling option for phone numbers alongside any SIP accounts. Number, a call-initiation box appears listing all of the services with More impressively, when you have typed a phone When you have typed theĮntire name or number (or picked one of the auto-completions), Jitsiĭisplays buttons to initiate each supported call and chat option (text,Īudio, and video). Into the connection field, and a live-updating list of matches from yourĬombined buddy lists and contacts pops up below. You start typing a phone number, username, or real name It a step further by offering a unified connection launcher. This is standard multi-protocol instant messaging client fare so far, but Jitsi takes Even if you have configured multiple accounts, the UI offers you one simple "global" presence chooser with which you can indicate your availability - and submenus to set different availabilities for specific accounts. Contact lists are merged, although group names (if you have assigned them) are preserved. Start talkingįar more important than the technical bullet points is the convenience of an application, and the Jitsi developers have done an impressive job of integrating the various services and account types into a single, coherent user interface. Nightly builds were in fact older, so examining both directories is advisable. Releases and one for nightly builds, although every time I checked the Two build channels are advertised, one for stable
RPM, and Arch packages are provided on the download page, inĪddition to source code. Stories about PulseAudio, particularly where VoIP is concerned, but I had Trawling the discussion lists and webįorums of any distribution will turn up a wealth of anecdotal horror On Linux, any USB video camera supported by the kernel should suffice,Īnd audio is handled by PulseAudio. Jitsi is developed in Java, although the UI code, hardware support, and media-handling libraries are unique to each OS platform. Video codecs supported include H.263 and H.264. Build 3651 introduces support for the royalty-free SILK codec developed by Skype, in addition to more common options like iLBC, G.722, and Speex. The list of supported audio and video codecs is similarly long. In short, as lead developer Emil Ivov recently said, Jitsi supports " anything but Skype."
Zeroconf network, which is a boon to Mac OS X users as it has Zeroconf built in. It also supports chatting and calling other LAN users on a Yahoo, Facebook, and several other proprietary services use XMPP forĬhat and presence information, and Jitsi supports about a dozen of them out SIP, in large part thanks to the commercial services that build on top of (SIP) services offered by Internet phone companies and built into a variety Jitsi also supports the more VoIP-centric Session Initiation Protocol Consequently, applications like Jitsi can take advantage and advertise a wider range of services, all of which are ultimately piggy-backing on Google's XMPP / Jingle servers.
Recently, however, Google has begun to merge all of its services,Īnd sharing contacts between them, allowing a user to initiate a Google Talk chat from within GMail, or to initiate Google Voice calls to landline phones from Google Talk. While Google Voice is a virtual phone number / voicemail / call-forwarding
Google Talk is the search behemoth's instant messaging (IM), voice- and video-chat application, The latest build (3651) was made on September 4, boasting video call support for Google Talk accounts and call integration with Google Voice.ĭespite the similarity in names, those two services are quite different. The project unveiled the first beta of its 1.0 release in early 2011, and has continued to push out updates for several months since then, bumping only the build (and not version) number. On Linux, at least, it offers more than any other person-to-person communication tool, although it is still rough around the edges. The list of technical features is indeed impressive, as is the application's integration of them into a seamless user experience. Recent builds have added strong support for XMPP-based communication (including Jingle call set-up) and server-less calls with Zeroconf (i.e., multicast DNS and service discovery), which prompted the name change.
Jitsi is a cross-platform, open source Voice-over-IP (VoIP) client that used to go by the name SIP Communicator. This article was contributed by Nathan Willis