from the one-can-always-hope department, the
wireless village spec was released today. maybe now that the spec is here we can all live in the interoperability promised land. ahem.

speaking of IM interoperability,
dj

has a new
article

up from
programming jabber

detailing how to build a currency conversion bot, which i may have to build into my personal rosterbot, pixie [ nevermind that i can’t actually remember the last time i needed to do a currency conversion – but maybe i just don’t get out enough and i don’t really think pixie cares anyway]:

“Through the power of Perl, we’ve now given ChatBot the facility to perform currency conversions for us. Wonderful. And what’s more, we’ve not at all been slack in our pursuit of the three key values: we were impatient enough to want a currency-conversion function without having to write one from scratch, we were lazy enough to do as little as possible with the exchange.pl script once we found it, as well as being lazy enough to want a bot to perform the conversions for us in the first place, and we had enough hubris to combine code from infobot and ChatBot (after all, “hubris” has the same etymological root as “hybrid,” and implies an “insult” to both parties being combined) to get the job done.”

i wonder if the newly resurrected
jabber

sms transport

will support 2-way messaging. it doesn’t look like
simplewire

supports supports it either, which is a drag because combine things like the currency exchange bot and 2-way sms and instant messaging integration and you’re getting into
killer app land:

“Myriad challenges face developers who want to undertake wireless projects today. While the rosy glow of a wireless future beckons, working with widespread technologies like the Short Messaging System (SMS) requires a different mindset. In this article, Wes Biggs outlines the difficulties facing developers tackling wireless today, and explains how SMS-based solutions could have greater killer app potential than many realize.”

well, o.k. maybe not killer app land land, but maybe compelling app territory. FWIW, i think 2-way sms support is important, because i just don’t think that many people are going to want to close the loop by using the phone like the ibm folks suggest.

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