Whenever I bump into erlang (which seems to be becoming increasingly frequent) I seem to follow the same mental journey. First I look at the advantages, then admire the quality of the applications, then I get mired in trying to get my head around the syntax. Eventually I back off and decide to just run whatever app has caught my fancy, but then I spend several hours stumbling around the installation and configuration process. The end result is often that I just shelve the project and move on to something else.
The only real use I currently make of erlang is a Windows installation of ejabberd which forms the reliable heart of my XMPP experimentation.
Anyway, it’s nice to see more take-up of erlang. Here are some examples from InfoQ:
InfoQ: Erlang and Ruby Roundup: Vertebra, Scaling with Fuzed, Github
A typical InfoQ summary of an interesting discussion, this time about the merits and problems of polling REST resources, and how some other approaches might help solve these problems.
InfoQ: Beyond Polling? Consider PubSub, Push and MOM
Skype seems to be gently emphasising its messaging abilities at the moment as it squares up against the might of Google’s inter-operable XMPP/Jabber-based system. A recent addition to Skype’s portfolio is persistent public “chat rooms”. Apart from the same stuff that chat rooms have long been used for, the wide adoption of Skype in corporate settings may offer some more interesting uses.
Here’s an article about using Skype chat rooms for a kind of Virtual shared office space to improve communication in distributed teams.
Skype: The ultimate collaboration tool? | The Open Road - The Business and Politics of Open Source by Matt Asay - CNET News.com
I have recently taken it upon myself to evaluate using XMPP (Jabber) as a messaging transport and collaboration protocol for distributed computing. This has been in the back of my mind for a while, but it was the realisation that my account at Dreamhost includes a publicly-visible Jabber server which prompted me into action.
As related a week or so ago, I started by setting up a multi-protocol client to test connectivity with, and configuration of, my server. That phase is now effectively complete. I have actually chosen to install two clients:
- Pidgin - a multi-protocol client which allows me to log on and receive messages for multiple identities.
- Spark - a client which is much more closely tied to the XMPP protocol and allows advanced operations such as the creation of “rooms” and “conferences” and broadcast messages.
As well as using the Dreamhost server, I have also been trying to set up a local server for faster turn-around during testing. I started by choosing some servers (ejabberd and jabberd2) from the Ubuntu package system and trying to get them working. So far I have had no luck with either. I also tried the Windows port of jabberd2 but that gave some strange installation error.
Finally, I found an ejabberd Windows download which worked straight away. I hope tomorrow to try installing the Linux version of the same server.
I still haven’t worked out how to bridge the two servers so that a client attached to one can send and receive messages to clients on the other, but I am sure this is possible. More fun (including writing some “bots” in Java and Python) to follow!
I have just spent an hour or so evaluating a selection of XMPP (Jabber) clients, including Pidgin, Miranda, Trillian and Pandion. After some playing I have settled on Pidgin for the moment. It is a multi-protocol client which supports a whole range of services. I currently have it set up for AIM, Yahoo, Google Talk, and my own Jabber server. What I would really like is one which also supports Skype IM - I use that a lot for work.
For now I have fully installed Pidgin, but I am very interested in the possibility of creating a portable version which runs from a USB drive.
Using Running Windows Pidgin From a USB Drive (Portable Mode)