Adobe Pacifica – Voip for AIR, Flash and Flex – Confessions of an Flash Addict

Today I was doing some research on Flash based VoIP clients and came across an interesting project. ‘Bout a year ago I already heard romors about it, but now it looks like its reality. The porject is called ‘Pacifica’ and is Adobe’s take on VoIP and traditional PSTN networks. Taking voip where-ever flash goes (browser, AIR, flex etc.)

Proof that Adobe is working on a VoIP program is found in the cooljobs section @ Adobe here and search for ‘voip”.

I found this on the website of the Lead Quality Engineer, Dominic Sagolla, on the Adobe Pacifica project page:

Pacifica is built on top of the open standard SIP protocol.
The first mission is to maintain the highest quality voice experience possible, pushing the boundaries of the Flash Platform.
Right now, Pacifica enables point-to-point (P2P) transmission of the media channel once the connection is established via our servers.
We are dedicated to a complete P2P solution going forward, to eliminate the complex server back end and configuration needed with most VoIP technologies.

I did some more research and the are more sources reporting about this project, but all very minimal. If you listen to th Flex Show, episode 26, you hear them talking about the new features. Some more info i found out is below:

Most of the Library, especially client side, is written in ActionScript 3. Some of the core is written in C++.
The client side foot print will be around 1.5MB. Obviously, the render is in Flash.
The prototype is done. There are about 200 developers, inside and out working on it.
The beta version of the project will be released into Adobe Lab early this summer, between April and May time frame.
It will be released as a service, or can be licensed as well.
At server side, Adobe will handle activation, distribution, media relay and SIP service.
At client, the library will handle audio codec, NAT/Firewall, End to End connection, media stream.
Pacifica will go where ever has a microphone and Flash.
Initially, the release will be on Mac and Windows. They do have it works on Linux but it’s optimized, yet. The reason they put it on Linux is mainly because the want it on devices rather than computer.
Pacifica is viewed as a solution for synchronous communication, where email, SMS or life stream on social network in general is asynchronous communication.
The want to have voice based synchronous communication maturely available within browser.
Try to keep it simple so that there won’t voice reorganization feature build-in. But there might be accessibility features such as text-to-voice.
There are bunch of surfers in the team. That’s where gets the code name.

For the last year or so i’v also been following the developments of the Ribbit Voip service, and to day i got an email saying i am accepted to their developent beta
So’ll keep you posted to cool new applications.