Version 2.0 of Apache OpenMeetings Incubating released!

This is our first release as Apache project and there have been major changes almost everywhere in the application.

Restyled UI The UI has been refactored to have a common look and feel. Additionally most of the icons are now loaded at runtime. That means you can change colors and icons at runtime without changing the source code. More info: http://incubator.apache.org/openmeetings/themes-and-branding.html

New Calendar The calendar was completely refactored and got a new UI that was built from scratch that also adds some new functions. For example it is possible now to password protect invitations sent via the calendar. Further the timezone handling has been refactored and there is now also a SOAP/REST API to handle calendar Events ( http://incubator.apache.org/openmeetings/SoapRestAPI.html )

Integration with Asterisk The application contains now modules to directly integrate OpenMeetings with Asterisk for SIP/VoIP integration. It enables you to dial in as well as dial out of conference room to SIP or ordinary phones. More info: http://incubator.apache.org/openmeetings/voip-sip-integration.html

Install/Backup/Import via command line Additionally to the Web-Interface you can now do all basic operations via console. Just cd to your OpenMeetings installation directory and type “admin” (or ./admin.sh) and you will see all the options available (OpenMeetings service should be shut down while doing those operations)

Using SWF10 for Video Components All audio/video related components now use SWF10 for broadcasting and receiving audio and video signals. That makes it possible to use for example the echo cancellation feature build in the SWF10 Flash Player.

There are a lot more improvements for example to recording, screen sharing and new layout options. To see the full list please review our Release Notes for Version 2.0:
https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/ReleaseNote.jspa?projectId=12312720&version=12319197

There are also new Integration Plugins in the pipe!

Integration into Atlassian Jira There is a plugin in our SVN that will be released soon for integration with Atlassian Jira, you can watch a demo here: https://blogs.apache.org/openmeetings/entry/jira_integration_apache_openmeetings_demo

Integration into Atlassian Confluence Same for Atlassian Confluence Wiki, you can watch a demo here: https://blogs.apache.org/openmeetings/entry/demo_video_about_upcoming_atlassian

Important Changes OpenOffice service does not need to be running as permanent service. But you have to set the path to OpenOffice (or LibreOffice) and JODConverter tools in OpenMeetings configuration. OpenMeetings (and JODConverter) will start and stop the OpenOffice service when they need it.

Upgrading from Version 1.9 or prior To update from an old version of OpenMeetings to 2.x you should use the integrated Backup and Import tool that exists since around Version 1.3. You should follow our documentation, see: http://incubator.apache.org/openmeetings/Upgrade.html

Downloads of sources and binaries are available from the mirrors linked here:
http://incubator.apache.org/openmeetings/downloads.html

All downloads can be verified using the Apache OpenMeetings code signing KEYS .

Commercial Openmeetings Support FAQ

That's our attempt to keep support knowledge structured and save your time asking questions.

OpenMeetings Hosting Services

Currently there are two hosting offerings: non-extensive usage offering called Integrated Room Service with a standard price, and a special offering called Advanced Hosting Plan for high load or customized cases.

What you choose depends on the mode in which you are going to use OpenMeetings, i.e. how often you plan to make your conferences, how many users you are going to have, etc.

Most customers start from the Integrated Room Hosting package and transfer to a special offering if their businesses grow.

Integrated Room Service includes creating rooms and users for your organization on our server and integration with your web site.

You have possibility to create OpenMeetings rooms from your CMS, place OpenMeetings room and recording links on your site and single sign-on feature for the OpenMeetings room entering.

This service has “reasonable load usage” limitation: we make some monitoring of the hosting services, and if we see that workload of some organization users is too big, we recommend client to move to another service.

Great benefit of this is that it’s cheap and you can pay quarterly. Monthly fee for the service is 50 euro and initial service setup fee is 100 euro + the cost of your CMS plugin installing. Plugin installing service depends on your site details, you can find the prices for most supported systems in our FAQ.

Upgrade OpenMeetings and CMS plugins to the recent releases and urgent security updates are included into the price.

If it becomes not enough for your goals, or you have customized OpenMeetings version, or you need some non-standard integration features, you would need to switch to Advanced Hosting Plan.

We do not have our own data center, so you can rent a server from some provider yourselves, or we can do it for you. We have successful experience of work with Amazon which would be convenient for USA clients, Scalaxy and Hetzner. Advantage of these providers is that they promise guaranteed bandwidth at any moment of time and allow manage network bandwidth dynamically. So for the clients who want to have big OpenMeetings conferences at some scheduled times we suggest increase bandwidth for the conference time and then decrease it back when the conference is finished. This helps save the money for the hosting, despite that these providers look more expensive in compare with other ones. Other providers are also possible on your behalf.

For the Advances Hosting Plan, all the cases should be discussed individually and the price depends on the exact details of your project.

Another Apache Planet Welcome

This is actually another test. For interesting openmeetings news you can read my latest post at blogs.apache.org.

Welcome, Planet Apache

We are on the Planet Apache blog list now. This is a test post and a warm welcome.

Community member Daniel Asher has created a survey to find out how people are using OpenMeetings.

You can fill it out online:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?fromEmail=true&formkey=dG1DTXQyVHg2T09RMU1tNTBleExKeWc6MQ

The results of the survey will be reported back to the community.

Please fill out :)

OpenMeeting Team Meeting Minutes 26-June-2012

Attendees

• Alexei Fedotov
• Denis Kandrov
• German Grekhov
• Irina Arkhipets
• Maxim Solodovnik
• Yulia Algaer

Issues

• Release shipping: Voting for the first release is still not finished. All agreed that OpenMeetings should be released as soon as possible. Alexei told that one of his clients successfully uses trunk version last 1,5 months.
• German has finished with the Jitsi plugin installer
• Maxim is developing a cluster for the commercial cluster. Two issues in trunk found during the cluster implementation testing have been finished (lamguage import and calendar events problem). Now main functionality works OK.
• Irina has repaired Joomla plugin and now is preparing a demo video for Joomla plugin installation and integration. Should be finished in a couple of days.
• Yulia has made Russian localization for trunk.
• Denis is preparing a script which collects e-mail statistics for the commercial support email address. Hope to have some useful results till the next week.
• Irina will invite openmeetings-dev mailing list to the next monthly update meeting.

Presentation at the Java User Group Karlsruhe/Germany

Anybody interested in a presentation about Apache OpenMeetings can join us at in Karlsruhe/Germany at July, 18th 2012. The Java User Group of Karlsruhe organizes regular presentations and they organized a presentation about Apache OpenMeetings.

More Info:

http://jug-karlsruhe.mixxt.de/networks/events/show_event.62240

You can also sign up at Xing:

https://www.xing.com/events/apache-openmeetings-1101661

OpenMeeting Team Meeting Minutes 29-May-2012

Attendees

• Sebastian Wagner
• Alexei Fedotov
• Denis Kandrov
• German Grekhov
• Irina Arkhipets
• Maxim Solodovnik
• Yulia Algaier

Issues

1. Release 2.0 shipping. There is one blocking bug which should be fixed before the release of 2.0. This is a bug in Red5 (issue #295 in Jira and #224 in red5). RTMPT does not work because of this.

2. Maxim is currently working on the manual cluster implementation:

• Each room uses a separate server.
• The server IP added to each room description, users are directed to the specific server when they enter room.
• All servers use the same database - this makes all virtually on the same server.

Maxim will write an e-mail with the brief description of the possible cluster architectures into dev list.

3. German almost finished works with teambox plugin. Currently it’s possible to have OpenMeetings room for each project. Pablo also asked to do the same on the organizations level.

4. We need to store info about each commercial support e-mail and have some statistic about the commercial client requests. Irina will arrange another meeting with Sebastian and Alexei to discuss this.

5. Yulia Algaer has joined the project recently

OpenMeeting Team Meeting Minutes 22-May-2012

Attendees

• Alexei Fedotov
• Denis Kandrov
• German Grekhov
• Irina Arkhipets
• Maxim Solodovnik

Issues

1. OpenMeetings clustering

• Investigating of the possible clustering implementations is a first priority task for Maxim
• Existing Red5 instruction does not work on the recent version
• OpenMeetings objects are not serialized well
• Maxim will write a document with the description of 3 possible architectures and sent it to OpenMeetings and Red5 dev mailing lists

2. Teambox plugin

• Denis will configure https access on demo.dataved.ru
• Alexei will write an article about the teambox on habrahabr
• Maxim will write an e-mail to Pablo about the strating integration

3. Network checking script

• It should be checked into svn. Denis will create a bug in Jira and attach a patch

4. Release shipping

• German starts to work on the open source bugs
• Irina will take care about the localization for Russian

OpenMeeting Team Meeting Minutes 15-May-2012

Attendees

• Alexei Fedotov
• Denis Kandrov
• German Grekhov
• Irina Arkhipets
• Maria Stepanova
• Maxim Solodovnik

Issues

1. Release shipping: need to speed it up. Maxim starts to work on 8 opened OpenMeetings bugs

2. Teambox plugin works OK for German. Opened issues are:

• Check the sources into Apache svn (German)
• Contact with teambox guys about the future plans (German)
• Configure https access on demo.dataved.ru (Denis)
• Write an article on habrahabr (German, Denis, Irina)
• Beta-testing
• Opened question: authentication is implemented with php script and this probably can slow down OM server a little

3. Tunneling: it would be great to get rid of proxies in its implementation, but the details are currently unclear. Agreed to put it aside for a while.

4. Jitsy plugin is finished. Need to check the sources into open source branch.

5. Network checking script almost ready and includes the following (Denis):

• Latency and jitter checks (ping)
• Ports availability for 5080, 8088, 1935 (iPerf)
• Workload for the port 1935 (iPerf)

6. OpenMeetings screen publishing has been finished (Maxim). Need some testing (Denis).

7. Maria lefts the project.

OpenMeeting Team Meeting Minutes 24-April-2012

Attendees

• Sebastian Wagner
• Denis Kandrov
• German Grekhov
• Irina Arkhipest
• Maria Stepanova
• Maxim Solodovnik

Issues

• The first priority currently is a new OpenMeetings release. Most problems are recordings and calendar bugs. Currently there is one opened bug about the recordings in this area, all the the others have been fixed recently. But still need testing of the changes.
• German is happy with the recent news: his project is accepted into Google Summer of Code 2012. Currently simple case of the integration OpenMeetings with TeamBox is finished, so user can get to the available project room list in teambox and go to the selected room. Nearest task is to improve GUI and prepare demo-video for press-releases.
• OpenMeetings has been successfully integrated with the Jabber service for one of the client. Now Denis is writing instructions about the jitsi plugin configuring and how to work with this.
• Here is a roadmap for the nearest time from Sebastian: make more testing and fix found bugs (if any), resolving licensing issues (some used images are not under Apache license), marketing and PR messages, release.
• Sebastian supposes that release will be promoted in 2-3 weeks!

OpenMeetings Team Staff Meeting Minutes for 10-April-2012.

Attendees

Alexei Fedotov

Denis Kandrov

German Grekhov

Irina Arkhipets

Maria Stepanova

Maxim Solodovnik

Olga Golosova

Timur Tleukenov

Issues

1. TeamBox plugin discussion. It’s impossible to make direct OpenMeetings SOAP/REST API calls inside JavaScript functions because client browsers do not allow cross-domain calls by the security policy. Several decisions are possible. Several decisions are possible here: for example to use iFrames or to make such calls from the TeamBox server side. So there are two tasks for German: 1). To clarify if we can write our own server code in TeamBox and 2). To develop universal JavaScript widget for OpenMeetings and check it into svn (in Apache or googlecode).
2. Prices for the OpenMeetings hosting on Scalaxy still look too high and need to be optimized. Irina will write a post on dataved.ru and discuss this with the community.
3. Team infrastructure changes: since April, 16 Timur and Olga go to another projects; Maxim and Irina start to work full time.

 

OpenMeetings Team Staff Meeting Minutes for 03-April-2012.

Attendees

                Sebastian Wagner

Alexei Fedotov

Denis Kandrov

German Grekhov

Irina Arkhipets

Maria Stepanova

Maxim Solodovnik

Olga Golosova

Timur Tleukenov

 

Issues

1. Red5 phone is installed on the Russian demo servers (Thanks Timur!)
2. JabberService is open sourced and installed to one client (Thanks Maxim!)
3. Sebastian works on the GUI improvements, so OpenMeetings will look much better soon!
4. Denis tries to optimize disk usage by OpenMeetings. OM demo server was configured so that recordings are stored on S3 Amazon Server, now we can offer this to the clients as an additional service. Denis also found that documents are converted and stored in the same folder, and this is not optimal. But Sebastian told that this should not be so. Agreed to continue a discussion via e-mail (Denis should write a letter with a brief description of the found problems)
5. There are still some unclear points regarding the current hosting policy. Table with the hosting services description and prices would be ready on this week (Maria).
6. Team infrastructure changes: Timur goes to another project since April,9; Maxim and Irina work full time for the project since April, 16. Anton Smirnov is a developer who probably will continue SIP/VOIP integration implementing and mobile devices support investigating.

 

Demo video about upcoming Atlassian Confluence Plugin for Apache OpenMeetings

Eugen from the Apache OpenMeetings team shows his first version of the Confluence Plugin. It enables integration of Apache OpenMeetings Web-Conferencing rooms into any Confluence wiki and managing the conference rooms from inside Confluence. 

The demo video is available at: https://vimeo.com/38767730

OpenMeetings Nightly Builds are back

OpenMeetings Nightly Builds are back online, now at the Apache infrastructure:

https://builds.apache.org/job/openmeetings/

For feedback on the Nightly Builds please use:
http://incubator.apache.org/openmeetings/mail-lists.html

OpenMeetings at MoodleMoot Germany (Münster) at Friday 16.03.2012

There will be a presentation about OpenMeetings at the MoodleMoot 2012, 16th March in Münster, Germany.


Room 129, first floot, 11:05 am


I am going to share the presentation afterwards online.


See: http://moodlemoot.moodle.de/mod/page/view.php?id=1706

Work at an OpenMeetings Related Project(s) at the Google Summer of Code 2012

This is an opportunity for students that would like to "enhance" their budget by working on a project sponsored by "Google Summer of Code".
See: http://code.google.com/soc

Each Students for an accepted project is sponsored by Google with 5000 USD. When I was a Student I also did the program at SoC 2006, it was a great opportunity to catch up with some interesting people and topics.

ATutor has some project proposals at their wiki, one of them is also Openmeetings related:
http://wiki.atutor.ca/display/atutorwiki/Google+Summer+of+Code+2012#GoogleSummerofCode2012-13.EnhanceIntegrationofATutorwithApacheOpenMeetingsWebConferencing

If you are student or if you know somebody you might send him the link.

Will JavaFX support Camera (and Microphone) with a developer friendly API?

With all the props that go to the upcoming release of JavaFX 2.x I tried to find out the status of the media components in JavaFX.
Looking at other platforms first:
- Flash: Camera / Microphone: See http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/flash/media/package-detail.html really extended support, at least Adobe claims they support it on all devices (although of course there might be always slight glitches if you use some exotic webcam on Linux). They pretty much can support any DESKTOP device. And that is what makes you wonder: What about mobile platform? They just cancelled further development of Flash Mobile ( see: http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2011/11/flash-focus.html ).
- Silverlight: Camera / Microphone access was introduced in Silverlight 4, however I honestly can't say how widespreaded the support on devices accross platforms is, as I hardly know any application that use Silverlight on Mac or even Linux to capture Cam/Mic. However there are noticeable offerings of VOD providers (Maxdome in Germany for example) that use the Silverlight platform as it seems to have a good integration of DRM tools ( see: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc838192%28v=vs.95%29.aspx ). However the programming model is still shaped for .NET and Microsoft simply can't expect that every Web-Programmer now becomes a .NET programmer.
- HTML5: There is the Video component in HTML5, and its the only cross-platform video-playback that works on mobile devices as well as on desktop (although the playback lacks on many features) . However the access to camera and microphone is in very early stages and it is not clear at all if one day browser vendors will agree on a codec for the transmission of the captured data from the device.

Now looking at JavaFX:
They build some playback components to playback video. Additionally the JavaFX API ( http://docs.oracle.com/javafx/2.0/api/index.html ) has a Camera object, however it seems to have nothing to do with a "webcam", it is an internal object used to render the UI. There is also no Microphone access. The plan seems to be like leaving this as opportunity to the users to program their own drivers to access the cam/mic. By looking at the way JMF was not developed since almost 10 years and all the negative feedback (or even "ANTI" (or counter-revolutionary) projects like FMJ ( http://fmj-sf.net/ ) I doubt that this is an opportunity lot of people will consider.

Btw: You can also participate in the discussion in the Jira issue at the JavaFX bugtracker: http://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-3458 Vote for it! :)