Messaging and Messengers

IBA GomelIhar KalesnikIt is common knowledge today that communication is king. The word ‘communication’ refers to face-to-face, online, and telecommunications, video conferencing, and other communication methods, including texting or messaging.Mobility is another aspect of our everyday life. Mobile devices embrace a growing number of life areas, making our life easier and less tied to specific places, be it home, office or something else.Accordingly, a growing number of mobile applications have shown up, the old ones are increasingly replaced with new applications. However, mobile applications often fail to meet our expectations. It happens that the features that were accessible earlier and made the mobile applications so convenient are no longer available. Some are too hard to set up or tune. Others on the contrary are installed easily but have too many functions, most of which are useless. Finally, we begin looking for something new again.This is also true about message exchange software. Depending on personal habits and preferences, everyone has his or her own choice of favorite messengers.Taking into account our personal experience and preferences, IBA developed a mobile messaging system that functions on Android. IBM Lotus Sametime served as a starting point and a basis for the application.IBM® Sametime® products integrate real-time social communications into business environment, providing a unified user experience through instant messaging, online meetings, voice, video and data. With just one click, you are immediately connected to the person behind the information, which helps you meet the ongoing demands of everyday business.In the IBA messenger, we implemented a customary and useful set of functions, making the application easy to customize and utilize. As an option, we added connection with the address book of a mobile device and a possibility to make a mobile phone call to any contact in the address book. After the application was published on PlayMarket, many people have been using it successfully. Numerous positive references testify to its usability and popularity.At present, messaging systems have different approaches to interface, the used protocols, and methods of interaction. Producers and developers keep working to modify the existing applications and create new ones. Using these applications, it is possible to exchange text, images, audio and video files, conduct voice and video communication, and use many other functions.IBA is also planning to expand the messenger’s functionality. Currently, the IBA team is working on the next release of the application to include new functions based on the user feedbacks from PlayMarket. The release will present such useful features as file transfer, extended status support, and automatic reconnection. We intend to launch the new release on PlayMarket in September, 2014.In the near future, we are going to develop an iOS version of the application.I invite you to try the messenger in use. You are also welcome to leave comments on how we can improve it 🙂