Thomas Schranz ⛄️

Jam - Your own open source Clubhouse for mini conferences, friends

🍞 Jam is an open source implementation of audio spaces (think: Clubhouse, Twitter Spaces, Discord Stages …).
Jam lets you create rooms for panel discussions, jam sessions, free flowing conversations, debates, theatre plays, musicals and more.

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Thomas Schranz ⛄️
Hi everyone! 🍞 Jam is a lightweight implementation of audio spaces (think: Clubhouse, Twitter Spaces, Orbit, …) that runs in any modern browser on iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, Linux or perhaps even your smart fridge. It is a bit like Zoom, just without video, screen sharing and messaging. Another way to think of Jam is group calls with a simple ui. You see who is in the room, who is speaking, who isn't speaking, who agrees (fast microphone flashing) who might want to say something (slow microphone flashing) and so on. Not less but also not more (!) @doublemalt, @mitschabaude and me did a 1 day hackathon to get basic audio calling over WebRTC working and then fixed a few bugs over the last few days. Still early but far enough to get some first impressions from all of you. Thanks for giving Jam a try!
Matt
@doublemalt @mitschabaude @__tosh Greetings Jam peeps, Do you have any documentation available to build this on top of IPFS? If not, I’ll start banging away at it. Any help I’d be greatful. Thank you!!
Thomas Schranz ⛄️
@doublemalt @mitschabaude @jeremybentham definitely interested, thanks for taking a look!
DoubleMalt
@mitschabaude @__tosh @jeremybentham Wanna hop on a jam sometime to discuss this?
Matt
@mitschabaude @__tosh @doublemalt Would seem apropos. Feel free to contact me through my profile e.mail to arrange a time.
Timar Ivo Batis
As an Android user i fully support this!
Thomas Schranz ⛄️
thank you @timar! I hope the smart fridge users share your sentiment
Ashish Kumar
This is pretty cool & very timely. I actually discovered it by searching on duckduckgo and thought it was posted "7m" - 7months ago, lol. Where can I see the code?
Martin Schurrer
@__tosh Why GitLab and not GitHub?
Thomas Schranz ⛄️
@msch we might mirror to GitHub going forward, we were just more familiar with GitLab and GitLab CI and like that it also is available as open source
Martin Schurrer
It always makes me happy when there's open source communication tools available. I'm a big advocate for being able to self-host and trust in the tools you use. Do you have plans to make self-hosting a one-click thing, so that also non-DevOps-sophisticated users can run their own private instance without having to learn server administration?
Thomas Schranz ⛄️
@msch great question & I share your enthusiasm, we do plan to make self-hosting as convenient as possible (one-click)!
Ryan Hoover
Thanks for open sourcing this. Very cool, @__tosh.
Thomas Schranz ⛄️
@rrhoover can't wait to see the first hosted versions in the wild but we'll make that (+ customization) easier going fwd as well :))
Thomas Schranz ⛄️
@rrhoover ProductJam in CatHouse
Thomas Schranz ⛄️
I'm prepared to move forward with it!
Ryan Hoover
@__tosh feature request: Cat filters
Roman Mittermayr
Have been using this for a bit and I'm just amazed at how completely frictionless it is, no app required, no plug-ins, no pre-release browser-features or running on iOS only, no invites and no phone number verifications, no tracking and no basic/premium upsells—none of that. It literally is just one click and you are live. Not even an account is needed. This has to be one of the quickest ways to jump on an ad-hoc call with someone I've seen. No meet-up calendar invite, no Zoom-client download. Why did it take the Clubhouse hype for this to suddenly appear and be used widely? Really curious to see where it goes and if it can withstand the upcoming traffic.
Thomas Schranz ⛄️
@mittermayr appreciate the comment! Can totally relate, feels a bit anachronistic that it took until today for audio spaces to arrive but I'm glad they did :))
Carmen Huidobro
No invites and works in browsers, awesome!
Vlad A. Gozman
Easily accessible cross device / platform + open source = totally my jam!
Thomas Schranz ⛄️
@vladgozman makes me think, perhaps we should do a micro confiture conference w/ open source reicpies :)) hosted on Jam of course
Neil Sardesai
Absolutely love that jam icon
Thomas Schranz ⛄️
@neilsardesai ty! drawn by the fantastic @eejitlikeme :))
Wyatt Benno
This is just pure webRTC? Is there a media server or it is just browser to browser?? I like the concept and that it's open source. You might consider adding a media server, so you can merge audio into one and only publish one listen stream. It is much more efficient that way. Many more people can listen in, where with pure webRTC it gets browser heavy very quickly. Also there are a lot of countries and times, where webRTC will fail. Good work!
Thomas Schranz ⛄️
@wyatt_benno thanks a lot! atm we don't have a media server yet, we might have to add one for rooms with large audiences, any thoughts on this very welcome, thanks for taking a look
Wyatt Benno
@__tosh Mediasoup is a pure nodeJS implementation of a media server. I have heard good things about it, but never had it in production. Media servers hate some clouds :) It would be ideal to have it for 10+ people rooms. 10 people could be talking merged into one audio file that is served to 500+ people. It might be hard to keep it open source at that point, you would need to find a cloud agnostic dockerization. But it could also work as a developer focused api.
Thomas Schranz ⛄️
@wyatt_benno thanks for the pointer!
Anastasija Gromova
Wow. I like
Katen AI
Can you talk about the infrastructure? Where is it hosted so we can understand the #privacy and security issues? Clubhouse is hosted on Chinese infrastructure that the government has access to from what Ben Thompson at Stratechery says in his latest post.
DoubleMalt
@katen_ai We are currently hosting the backend in the Frankfurt (Germany) datacenter on DigitalOcean. All discussions so far are end to end encrypted between the people knowing the room url. Definitely no Chinese infrastructure involved. Additionally it is really easy to host an instance yourself. Working on documenting that better.
Katen AI
@doublemalt - Thanks! Good to hear. I haven't tried it yet. Would like to understand on how you use iPhone contacts to build out the invites :-) No native iOS (not a biggie). Scheduling and invites and profile for trust are key though Still, I'm glad to see this as an alternative.
DoubleMalt
@katen_ai Scheduling is on our radar and we are thinking a lot how to to create an easy enough distributed profile verification so you can connect your twitter profile. Will keep you posted.
solzard
It's a really cool product! I'm just curious about the log policy. Does the Jam server store our conversations? If so, 1) how long will it keep? 2) what's the purpose? To sell the audio data and advertise? To provide to the police or court if requested?
DoubleMalt
@solzard_ Thanks for trying it out and great that you like it! Regarding your questions: The server just mediates a connection between the clients, it does not have access to the decrypted audio streams. We might want to change that to support larger audiences, but even then we will take pains to not store anything persistently on the server. We really just wanted to demonstrate how easy it is to create something with most of the benefits of Clubhouse but without preying on users' data and privacy. Also it is easy to host a jam instance yourself and we're currently working on the documentation for that.
Joseph Benguira
Super cool, Thanks for open sourcing it! Love it
Csaba Kissi
Great one! Thanks to make it open source.
Thomas Schranz ⛄️
@csaba_kissi thanks for giving Jam a try, appreciate it
Dražen Lučanin
Really sweet app! @DoubleMalt got me to try it a few days ago and it was so easy to jump in. No installation necessary – it just works!
Thomas Schranz ⛄️
@doublemalt @metakermit to for helping w/ testing :))
Filip Stanev
Awesome idea and really impressive you launched Jam in less than 2 weeks. Interested to see how events / conferences will use something like this to connect to the audience.
Thomas Schranz ⛄️
@fstanev thanks a lot! same here, super excited about that, especially as participant, I want to see more micro conferences and barcamps in audio spaces, can't wait :))
Peter Buchroithner
Love the concept of creating an open source version of a product that is about to be copied by everyone. Also, impressed how well it works on my browsers, great stuff
Thomas Schranz ⛄️
@peterbuch thanks for giving Jam a try! I'm also excited about the cambrian explosion of audio spaces https://twitter.com/__tosh/statu... Zoom fatigue is real
makio
Increadible idea, you're so fast, the product works great!
Thomas Schranz ⛄️
@heymakio thanks a lot for taking a look, appreciate it!
Eray Basar
Great idea & love the name:) It's awesome that you directly open-sourced it, I can also see this running as a successful one-click service in the future.
Thomas Schranz ⛄️
@toshiyori thanks a lot, great to see you here! we'll definitely work on making hosting/deploying super smooth even if you just briefly want to spin a Jam up for a special occasion