[From a discussion on pgp-fone@rivertown.net]
Is there any kind of server method people on this list use to meet up on PGP fone??? IMHO... Because PGPfone's main goal is to provide security and maybe some anonymity, would it make [no?] sense to have a feature like this.
I can think of a few useful variants on this kind of service 1) Incoming-Call-Notifier daemon - faster than email, smaller than pgpfone. (PGPfone may not have a problem with this, but Netscape CoolTalk has a watchdog daemon that hangs out waiting for calls. Don't know if it barks, but it's got to be smaller than NS+CT. Firewalls generally kill these, though... 2) Chat-line with switch to voice - an IRC channel would do fine, and be easy to set one up, for people who want to meet to play with the technology; for people who want to cut out to PGPfone from other IRC groups, you don't even need that, though distributing an IRC client with a "PGPfone" button might be a good marketing technique. Name the IRC channel "pgpfone"... CU-SeeMe uses this approach - reflectors are often busy or way slow, and the available public-access reflectors change pretty often, and it's much easier to find people or find interesting reflectors using the IRC channel than polling for busy-signals. CU-SeeMe supports conversations through reflectors as well as direct-connection, and doing a PGPfone-like DC mode might be fun as well. 3) Finding specific people who don't have predictable IP addresses - IRC can also do this, or email, but it wouldn't be hard to build a web form widget that lets you plug in your name/handle and scarfs up your current IP address or lets you enter it. A "specific person" could be an alias, of course. 4) A secure n-person conference bridge could be good also, though it's much more difficult to make something like that work, especially if you use a crypto mode that dislikes dropped packets. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk # (If this is posted to cypherpunks, I'm currently lurking from fcpunx, # so please Cc: me on replies. Thanks.)