Robert Quattlebaum Application 2005

My name is Robert Quattlebaum, and I'm applying for my initial JSF membership.

History
One project that has consumed my life over the past three years is Synfig, a 2D feature-film vector animation package. Due to some recent developments, it looks like I will be open-sourcing it. Hmm. The about page on the Synfig site actually has a pretty decent write-up on myself. I also have a BLOG.

I have recently become quite absorbed with Jabber/XMPP development. I want to see it become the standard protocol for all instant messaging and related applications. It has a long way to go, and I want to help it there.

Thoughts
I believe that for Jabber to become widely adopted, two things need to happen:


 * Focus on the user-experience. I believe that this is one of the most neglected aspects of Jabber. There are very few places where a joe-blow user can go to learn more about Jabber and why it matters to them, but I'm talking about more than just a website. The Mozilla project is an excellent model to follow.
 * Feature-complete transports. I'm talking about file transfer, XHTML-IM, typing notification, group chat, etc.

It is my hope and goal to help the jabber community achieve both of these.

Code
I have done a significant amount of work on the python transports that I have installed on my own server, fixing various bugs and adding features. I hope to clean up these mods and release some patches soon.

Other than hacking on transports, I have written a few jabber bots in perl.


 * CallerID Bot - Whenever someone calls my landline, I get an IM headline telling me who called. I can also ask it for the call history.
 * DVR Bot - Tells me if it is currently recording, and what will be recorded next. Also tells me how much free space is left. I can also do fun useless stuff like eject/close the DVD rom. heh.
 * SMS Client - A simple perl script which uses my cell phone provider's SMTP-SMS gateway to send myself an SMS whenever I get a message when I'm offline. Kinda neato.

Why?
There are very few technologies that have excited me as much as Jabber. I believe that it brings us one step closer to total information awareness. I see the technology being used for much more than just instant messaging (Address book and bookmark synchronization, for example), but before it can get there people need to start using it.

Everyone.

Right now.

Let's figure out what is necessary to achieve this goal and make it happen.