The Islamic Cathedral is a derivative of SavoirfaireLinux, an open source software service company headquartered in Montreal with a history of 20 years. We provide open source software development services, mainly involving embedded systems and Industry 4.0. For a long time, we have been carrying out research and development activities. About 10 years ago, we started to develop a SIP soft phone called SFLphoneForLinux.
20 13, after the Snowden incident, there have been some trends on the Internet, mainly the open source world, which requires tools for everyone to communicate through the Internet, while ensuring that no one can eavesdrop and their privacy is protected.
As we are the main contributors to the open source movement, we think it is a good opportunity to make use of our expertise and start new projects.
Creating a universal peer-to-peer communication platform that can work on any device is a huge technical challenge to ensure users' privacy. In order to help us, we cooperated with a university in Montreal.
The project was originally called Ring, but we have some IP problems, because Ring is also the name of a startup company related to smart doorbell acquired by Amazon. Since we didn't want to compete with Amazon, we decided to rename the project and call it the Islamic Cathedral, which means Swahili community.
On October 20 19 1 month, we officially launched the Islamic Cathedral at CES in Las Vegas. At first, we were concerned by hackers and many people around the world who were interested in complete privacy.
We started to gather a global community to translate the software and give us feedback.
When the epidemic struck, it was followed by a new Zoombombing problem, and we began to get great interest and downloads all over the world. Of course, we face many technical challenges, but this is very good for us because we have received a lot of feedback on connection stability and user experience. In the past six months, we have been making unremitting efforts to meet the growing demand. Thanks to the support of the National Innovation Institute of Canada, we can also develop some special functions that are conducive to commercialization in Islamic cathedrals.
/kloc-in the middle of 0/0, we officially launched a new version called Together, which is a great progress for us, because it brings new functions and excellent audio and video quality.
What's the difference between Jamie and Zoom and other competitors? First of all, Jamie is a complete peer-to-peer application. This means that communication does not require infrastructure and servers. When you use Zoom, your connection will go through their server, where they will save some parts of the video. Even if they say it is partially or completely encrypted, the video will be stored somewhere on their server, and you never know what they will do with it. Point-to-point connections are completely encrypted from end to end. It is based on torrent architecture, which means that only devices are connected, and no third-party intermediary can interfere with the connection. This will provide you with a better connection, because you don't have to go through overseas servers and experience server delays like on Zoom, GoogleMeet, Microsoft, Skype and even FaceTime.
As for privacy, we don't collect any user data. When you create an account, we don't even need your email or phone number. Instead, we create a unique user name linked to the blockchain to ensure that the user is unique. We use the encrypted exchange of private key and public key to verify the account.
After you create an account, you can find other accounts on the network and connect with them. All data, including chats, videos and file attachments, will only be stored on your device and will not be stored anywhere else, giving you complete control over your privacy.
One of JAMI's characteristics is low latency and low bandwidth, but when you have a normal connection, whether 3G, 4G or Wi-Fi, we can provide very good video and sound quality and reduce latency. Video streaming is actually our core specialty, and we have been providing this service to our customers for many years. Now, we have applied our technology to the Islamic Cathedral, and the main feedback we get is that it is very easy to use and the quality is very good.
Can you introduce your new products together? Although we intend to make Jamie a free open source software under the license of GPL, and there are no advertisements, we hope to add a business model so that organizations can use Jamie internally.
We launched a beta version of the Jams-Jamie account management server, which allows Jamie to be deployed inside the organization, so that users can connect with their company ID instead of the public blockchain. Select this option to link the user name to a private directory, such as LDAPActivedirectory or any directory database. The official release of traffic jam should be before the end of this year.
This is a good solution for large or small enterprises, such as law firms, medical clinics and any other enterprises that give priority to customer privacy. JAMS allows them to have a local database where they can create new user accounts and send them to customers with a simple URL.
Since we are not based on the network at all, you need to download the client to your device, similar to the operation of Zoom or Team. However, instead of sending a URL that allows people to join the call, you can select a user from the account directory.
We got some feedback from several psychologists who used Islamic cathedrals for online consultation. Usually today, they ask patients to create an account on Jamie, but now, with JAMS, you can create an account for them so that they can connect.
In this new version, we have developed a function that allows you to invite more than one person to participate in a video conference. We do very well for calls with up to 20 people. We have mosaic screen management, and people can do this more easily than before.
Since there is no server, you need to collect all the streams in one place. This means that if you use a laptop to organize a video conference with 10 people, that laptop is the server of the conference, so you need to have enough compatible hardware. We have done a lot of work in optimizing data flow to ensure that the call is smooth and there are no problems. We call it Rendezvous, which is a special account where people can connect to the video conference.
You hope to see more trends and technologies in the next few years. We are at the beginning of the adventure of the Islamic cathedral, and we certainly hope to become a trend. We started to use some POC in hospitals, and people all over the world are interested in finding built-in video conferencing tools at home. At present, it is only available on tablets, smart phones and PCs, and there is no tool for TV.
Now that everyone is far away from their families, they need these tools to communicate with each other. For some people, especially the elderly, this may be a considerable challenge, but video conferencing in the TV room will make it very easy to access.
At present, smart TV has no built-in camera, so it has just begun. There are also some sound and hardware problems, which have not yet been listed or are quite expensive. But what we see is that the conditions that make it possible, especially the renaming of Google TV and Apple TV, are constantly improving. Of course, there are costs. We believe that the Islamic Cathedral can provide the core technology at a reasonable price.
The quality of GoogleMeet is not as good as Zoom, because it needs a lot of processing in the data center and there is a cost for each communication. Google has nothing to make money because it is not part of their business model. They make it easy to use, because this is the development direction of today's world, but it is purely cost for them. Nevertheless, we believe that distributed communication will be the future of communication.
Every business model that relies on video conferencing must be scalable. If you are server-centric, once you have more users, your infrastructure costs will rise sharply. However, through a peer-to-peer network or a distributed network, you can increase the user base without any cost, because you don't need to maintain the server. We see that some ISPs and telecom operators all over the world are interested in the Islamic Cathedral, hoping to provide their users with communication solutions that do not depend on GAFAM solutions.
Finally, we hope that more and more people will pay attention to privacy-related tools. In national, personal or business contacts, you can't rely on the network you don't trust. In countries with serious privacy issues and low internet trust, we have gained a lot of interest from users. I think this will become a bigger problem, and more and more providers will need to ensure that the privacy of their users is respected.