Easier localization of BigBlueButton

Thanks to contributions from our community, BigBlueButton is now localized in over thirty (30) languages.

This is awesome, but it's also a lot of work to keep up-to-date, especially as the number of language strings increase with each release, and as the developers must review each update before commit.

To make it easier for our community (and our developers), we've adapted the localize server from the Drupal to create

http://localize.bigbluebutton.org/

Here's a screen shot of localize.bigbluebutton.org:



We created a YouTube Video to show how easy it is to contribute to localizing the language strings.

Finally, we integrated the localization server with our GitHub account to automatically push updates to the language strings into souce. See the announcement in bigbluebutton-org for more information.

Thanks to Xie, Chen, and DJP for their initial effort to localization BigBlueButton. You guys made it possible for us to reach 30 languages.

First public release of BigBlueButton client for Android by GT-Mconf team

The GT-Mconf team, working in the Laboratory of Prav (located in the Institute of Informatics, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil), have reached another milestone in creating a BigBlueButton Android client.

Felipe Cecagno posted the availability of the first public release for download. This release supports both chat and voice.

Here's a list of participants in the session and in the voice conference:



Here's a view of the client in landscape mode:



We downloaded their client a within a few minutes were using our android phones to listen and speak in a BigBlueButton conference. Very cool!

For further links, check out Felipe's post to bigbluebutton-dev.

This is great progress Felipe. Getting voice working is a BIG milestone.

Lessons from an Open Source Business

Fred Dixon, one of the BigBlueButton developers, recently published an article in the Open Source Business Resource titled Lessons from an Open Source Business.

The article reflects on the past three three years of developing and building BigBlueButton, the BigBlueButton ecosystem, and growing a business around providing commercial support for BigBlueButton.