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Will Instant Messaging Ever Unite?
scallion writes "An article in Technology Review titled Getting AOL To Talk To MSN points out that currently the world of instant messaging is "as factionalized as Afghanistan," then asks, what will it take to unite all these individual IM networks under one umbrella?"
what will it take to unite all these individual IM networks under one umbrella?
jabber.org
The problem is that AOL made instant messaging as we know it today. They feel they are the "inventors" and hence shouldn't have to let anyone else in on their network. If they had opened things up from the get go, they would now be the absolute standard for instant messaging instead of the de facto one for 90%+ of the people I know. Their stubbornness is what caused it.
Trillian rocks... combines 3 or 4 different IM into a single, skinnable interface, and even manages to keep up with AOL's shennanigans...
Just use a client that supports multiple protocols. Under Windows you can use Trillian. It supports MSN, AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, and IRC seamlessly. When you've got all that in one nice client where everything looks similar, why do you need a single protocol?
because I have been using ICQ for a very long time... and everyone that I care to talk to is on it... why should "I" switch...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
My choice would be Trillian
668: Neighbour of the Beast
[o]_O
Unless I'm mistaken AOL have the market pretty much sown up in terms of users. By opening up the protocol or moving to something more open, they will probably stand to lose more than they will gain.
And unless anyone can reliably convince them otherwise (and it would appear that so far they haven't) then it just isn't going to happen.
(As a side note, I use Trillian which combines a number of them including IRC)
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Don't they realize that as soon as the Micro$oft/AOL/Yahoo merger goes through, that they'll all standardize on a product that will work for everyone except linux/bsd geeks? Shouldn't be long either, not more than a few years... after all, Bush has to finance the 2004 campaign somehow...
...how about Trillian? Yeah, I know it's not open-source, and it's for Win32 only (although one of co-workers uses it with the Crossover plug-in, and it works fine). It's still an outstanding piece of software, that allows these GlobalHyperMegaCorps to play their games, and still give us the functionality we users crave.
RW
Whatever happened to ICQ? They were the biggest at one time. A think a lot of people still use it. It's been probably about 4 years since I've used an IM client so somebody chime in if ICQ has become as crappy as MS or AOL's offerings.
Personally, I'd like the Google guys to develop one. Just a bare bones here's-a-box-to-type-in-and-a-send-button without the candy land themes and context menus that fill the screen with every emoticon ever created. Just something that does the job instead of trying to be everything to everybody.
* Nobody can rival the ease of deployment MS has with Messenger. Now I don't know the competing IM offers, but they'll have to be substantially better than MS Messenger for people to install them.
* Microsoft doesn't want to share, so it has no commercial interest in interoperability with other IM services
* Microsoft is almost forcing MS Messenger on you, if you use Outlook 2000/XP. If I don't have MS Messenger running Outlook will start its own instance, but it will not be signed in. In this mode Outlook is noticably slower than if I have MS Messenger started and signed in. Something like a second or so to show a message in the preview pane.
QED
You can get all chat windows combined into one - it's called gaim.
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I made the mistake of installing Microsoft's messanger the other day. Don't ask me why. Since then: It launches on start up, even though I have repeatedly set it to not do so, and I cannot uninstall it. Basically, I'm going to have to reinstall Windows to get rid of it. It's like an Explorer nightmare all over again.
Can I bum a sig?
The answer from IETF is a workgroup called SIMPLE. This working group focuses on the application of the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP, RFC 2543) to the suite of services collectively known as instant messaging and presence (IMP). The IETF has committed to producing an interoperable standard for these services compatible with the requirements detailed in RFC 2779 and in the Common Presence and Instant Messaging (CPIM) specification, developed within the IMPP working group. As the most common services for which SIP is used share quite a bit in common with IMP, the adaptation of SIP to IMP seems a natural choice given the widespread support for (and relative maturity of) the SIP standard. http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/simple-charter.h tml
3rd party software could be an answer.
UM will never reach a point of co-operation as it is too much of importance. How can you create a loyal userbase? Not by giving them options to be able to communicate with people who use different IM software. If your friends use MSN or ICQ or other software you most likely choose the one that is the most used within your circle of friends. Especially when the software of a competitor cannot communicate with their clients.
So, 3rd party software playing translator to the different kind of clients is one of the possible solutions.
MS buys AOL and Yahoo.
The truth shall set you free!
The answer is: not until they want to.
They could today if they wanted to. Jabber has tried this and got it to work, but AOL and MSN, etc. kept changing their protocol to break Jabber's integration. They even went so far as to make the protocol very dynamic, in order to ease their constant changing of protocols. Very conter-productive if you ask me.
If they wanted to, they could, but then, that would hinder AOLs big selling point: all your friends are on it. Then the Internet came, and it didn't matter. They hold onto what they can and lie about the rest.
room101 -- how much can you stand before they break you?
(they always break you eventually)
However, I'd be in favour of linking your "single unified instant messaging account", if that ever happens, to your e-mail address, because then e-mail programs could automatically display your IM status too.
Trillian has already been mentioned for win32, but there's also gaim for Linux/GTK - it supports almost every instant messaging protocol under the sun, and doesn't feature the same bloat as the likes of ICQ.
Gabber's also pretty good, but since no-one uses the Jabber protocol, it seems pointless to register...
Why would competing companies want to share their resources with "the enemy"? What reason could there be for AOL to allow MSN users access to their systems, or vice versa?
The answer...
MONEY.
AOL / MSN / etc just need to come up with a cross-IM network advertising system, and things will rapidly fall into place. It might be a bit much to assume you'd see AOL signup ads when using MS software, but most anything else could be fair game. Mark my words...
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
- AOL
- AOL is the undisputed leader in the IM market. They were the
pioneers; instant messages have been a part of AOL since the service was
called AppleLink back in the late 1980s.
- AOL does not need any more users on its IM network. It does not want
more users on the network. Everybody who is anybody has an AIM account.
- Facilitating compatibility with other IM networks would cost AOL money
unnecessarily. They would not be able to install their spyware and ads on
your system. And they would not be able to use the competing services to
try to get you to join AOL. The economics of the situation favor the
current approach.
- MSN
- Microsoft would also lose out from giving up the right to blast ads
and spyware at all of the users of its network.
- Microsoft fully intends to leverage a monopoly in the instant messaging
arena to further its desktop and server monopoly. At that point they will
begin charging for service. This would be less effective if they opened
their network.
- Keeping their network closed encourages more users to get Passport
accounts, which Microsoft uses to harvest personal information and sell
consumer dossiers and mailing lists.
- Jabber
- Jabber.org would benefit from an open IM standard. Unfortunately,
Jabber.com would lose its only competitive advantage and would quickly go
out of business.
- Decentralization would make administration simpler, but would be
unnecessarily incompatible with the centralized models of AOL, MSN, and (to
a large extent) ICQ.
b.like, duh
Newsflash: private interests dont co-operate for the greater public good, especially wrt protocals and standards. News at 11!
"Old man yells at systemd"
what will it take to unite all these individual IM networks under one umbrella?
Microsoft buying AOLTW ?
I know enough people who use IM clients because it's easier to use than IRC clients. ;)) would solve the problem for everyone.
Perhaps a cheesy, modified (read: VERY easy to use IRC client, with smilies, "send" buttons AND an option "start up when windows is booting"
Hell, if you take a good look at IM systems, they aren't that different from IRC anyway, they are just really limited and leave out most of the advanced options.
ofcourse, on the other hand, I would like to see an IRC network capable of handling the millions of IM users. (imagine trying to explain to a user that he can't message to his friend because there is a netsplit)
You know what, skip that thought, IRC is already filled with nitwit morons, we don't need another 10 million of them spamming the networks :p
"The majority is always sane, Louis." -- Nessus
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I use Trillian - it integrates AOL, MSN, Yahoo!IM, ICQ and IRC all in one app. It's got a lot of great features you don't find on the native apps, but it's missing some functionality, like file transfer and webcam integration that you can get in some apps.
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The long term loser in this game is probably AOL, which will see its IM useage decrease as the AOL service inevitably (continues to) loses customers.
.....One IM to rule them all, one IM to find them
one IM to connect to them all and in the darkness bind them
It seems to me that the ideal solution would be for everyone to agree on a single protocol. This will not happen. You see, it used to be that someone would come out with a protocol and client and server implementations, and would release them into the wild. Then, people would either use it (like IRC) or not (like UNIX's talk command). If they did, then other and better implementations would come out, as long as the protocol was solid. This is how email, FTP, HTTP and many other common Internet protocols were developed.
Now, though, companies create the protocols and allow them only to the chosen few who use their software (think AOL for IM and Real for streaming content). The protocol is not generally available, meaning better clients can't be made, and there is often a dependence upon resources wholly owned by a single company. Sometimes (again AOL and Real come to mind) these are genuinely useful. In that case, someone (another company, generally) will produce a competing product, that does the same thing in a different way.
Some people will choose one method and some will choose another. Users cannot force standardization. The corporate developers are being paid to enforce balkanization, rather than to work towards standardization. Independent developers cannot get enough of a critical mass to make it feasible for users to migrate to their systems, or for corporations to adopt the independent methods as a matter of convenience.
The net result, no pun intended, is that there is no way to move to a standard. This leaves us with the options of using a client which speaks all of the different protocols, choosing to pocket ourselves into a small part of the possible Internet community (with corresponding obeisance to the local corporate power), or choosing to cover our screen with all of the various blessed programs. Only a unified client holds any real appeal to me, and that is fraught with problems. For example, try talking to AIM when AOL keeps changing the way the servers work on the back end! It's a nontrivial problem.
So I guess the point I'm trying to make is that expecting a unified IM system to appear, just because it makes sense from a user perspective, is not very likely to be worth anyone's while.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
I look to Jabber as the foundation of sensible IM-ing; users are screenname@jabber.server.address, and messaging users on multiple "services" is just a matter of adding them to your buddy list. No funky add-ons or protocol descriptors needed. Only problem is, Jabber isn't useful as a revenue generator. But what if IM-ing simply became a standard ISP feature? If each ISP ran a Jabber-type server, you'd just need someone's email address to reach him.
Since IM-ing is obviously becoming as widely used as email, why isn't it a part of the standard service package? If distributed, like Jabber, I can't see it placing a huge burden on even very small ISPs.
It wouldn't be *as* bad if AIM didn't suck so bad. The client is absolutely horrific! Everything but the kitchen sink is in it (and I think the sink is going to be in the next release). Rate your buddy, buddy icons, e-mail checker, stock ticker...
And then they don't add useful features like aliases for your buddies (so you can see FrogDog24 as "John Smith"), secure IM, etc.
Perhaps its better this way, though. If AIM were improving, there would be less of a base for revolt.
Is there anything really useful that any instant messanger does that could NOT be done via a tray-application communication over IRC? You can still have messages pop up or be displayed in various styles. You can still have some sort of encryption over IRC if you wanted to Im sure. Transfer files? sure, thats what DCC is for. ICQ supports sending messages when the user if offline, but it hardly works since they might not gett the message for days. Most other IMs require the user to be online. I look at something like Trillian, with IRC support built in, and wonder what is great and new about the ICQ/Y!/MSM/AIM protocols? Do they really let you do anything different?
Morphing Software
I guess you didn't bother to check and see what protocols Gaim actually supports, preferring instead to make an inference based on the name of the program. For the record, it supports MSN, Yahoo, IRC, Gadu-Gadu, Napster, Zephyr, Jabber, and ICQ.
Everybuddy (www.everybuddy.org) is another multi-protocol chat client available for Linux. It can actually receive files from AIM users, which Gaim can't, though I don't really worry about that too much. And I never worry about being able to send files using my IM client; that's what Web server software does.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Email is pretty much standardized on one app, and look how great that's been!
Seriously, we recognize the dangers of monoculture in other areas of computing -- OS, email client, etc. -- what makes people think that IM is going to be any better? I'd think the last thing we'd want in computing is another monoculture.
I know the question is not when will IM be ruled by a single client but rather when will IM clients be interoperable, but is there really any chance of it happening another way? These are big corporations! These are the same people who keep us perpetually 3-5 years behind the rest of the world on cellphone technology!
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CenterICQ is a text based console app which uses ncurses, and color themes.
It supports AIM, Yahoo! ICQ, MSN Messenger, and IRC.
cICQ has the best interface of any console app I have ever used, and the developer Konst, reponds to almost anything posting to the mailing list... I myself have had almost a dozen of the features I requested added to the program.
The program is completely stable, supports chat mode for all protocols, full history, ignore lists, contact groups, non IM contacts, collapsable groups, hide offline users, etc.... honestly -- this program has almost every worth while feature I've ever seen in any IM client -- not to mention that it supports every single protocol seamlessly, so the user (unless he/she organized contacts into groups based on protocol, wouldn't even know what protocol their contacts were using...Mbr>
whatever, enough rambling... download this program, and support Konst's development!
download link
dmarien
Before more people post "Just use Jabber!" or "Trillian already does this!" keep this in mind:
:)
With these clients, you still need an account (and a software interface) for multiple IM services.
That is, you may have a single client, but you've still got multiple AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo! accounts. Maybe even a jabber account (and that one isn't even universal -- it's based on wherever your account's server).
What is needed is, essentially, SMTP for IM. A way to embed a service name/address into the message traffic. So that, for example, a user "harry.truman" on MSN could send, using MSN, an IM to "aim:dcooper", and have it go through. A little quiet reflection should convince you that this is a server-side problem, and one the current services haven't addressed. (I'll leave the question of why, be it technical, political, or economic reasons, to others).
Anyway, I've already seen a couple "just use trillian" sort of responses and wanted to head 'em off.
Just building a better protocol, client, etc. will not guarantee a monopoly shift. I consider myself a die hard IM user, and I've tried switching several times away from my mainstay IM provider, AIM. Until a critical mass switches, you're fighting a losing battle.
However, each time, it was derailed by AOL blocking the interoperability that allowed this new procotol or client to reach my existing buddies still on AIM. For Jabber, AOL first blocked the connections form Jabber's AIM-t, then just started blocking the Class C of Jabber servers. For Trillian, they started blocking users found using Trillian clients.
Fortunately, Trillian is working now, and has been for a few months. But if it gets blocked again, I'll have to switch back to AOL's (crappy) client.
What I need is for my buddies to switch to something (say, Jabber). But they won't switch until their buddies switch. And so-on.
Maybe someone should introduce a Burn-AIM day or Burn-ICQ day, much like the Burn GIF day. It would require a lot of pushing for it, and plenty of readily available and EASy materials for users to switch. Maybe even a latter cut-off day when people stop dual-IM'ing.
BUt I'm not even sure if I'd participate!
> At work we use IM as our primary means of communication
We have a much better technique, although it seems a little outmoded these days. What we do is "talk to each other". Give it a try sometime
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
well said. it is the protocols we need. unfortuately, it's nearly impossible to get the IM big 3 (aim, y!, msn) to sit down and draft a proposal. jabber attempted to put something together, but i fear their "renegade" movement will not add up to much. the best thing about jabber is its availability for internal networks. most corps are implementing a no messenger policy for their own protection. jabber lets work groups communicate securely and within corp security policies.
If AOL can't even make ICQ and AIM interchangeable, this will never happen. ICQ is superior in all ways to AIM (it can handle offline messaging, it uses numbers for accounts instead of screen names so you don't have people called Some_Guy__456574, etc). AOL bought ICQ many years ago and has not yet been able to make them interoperate.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
If someone didn't say this I was going to.
Let's see the logic of this whole article and debate:
Let's try to get mega-corps with proprietary software and protocols to play nice with each other EVEN THOUGH there is already an existing protocol and network that is a standard, open, and mature.
Logically it will be much easier to make IRC easier to use and beef up the network as opposed to making direct competitors who individually seek world domination to hug each other.
C'mon man, supporting and trying to influence proprietary software and protocols that are entrnched in "megacorp strategy" is hedging back to the days when you either had Prodigy or Compuserve and that's it -- neither would talk to each other and neither shared content. The Internet fixed that and now we're pushing back to it again with the MSN/AOL battles. Yet the average stupid American support one or the other because it is 'easy to use' or 'I can IM'.
What was that recent article about 'user friendly' is sometimes a consumer laziness issue?
Purly and simply, the IM services will become interoperable when AOL includews webcasting in their service. When the AOL-Time/Warner merger went through, there was a lot of push for the FTC to require AOL to open up their IM service. The compromise that was reached is that they are required to open it up, once their IM service incorporates video, be it webcastiing, integrated movie trailers or what have you.
It's likely that AOL will take this step and make this compormise around the end of the year. Both MSN and Yahoo's support of webcams is too much of an ongoing advantage for AOL to stay out of the market due to stubbornness.
When that happens, expect a lot more ongoing innovation for each service to make themselves unique. Things like Yahoo's IMVironments are there in part to keep customers loyal to a single IM client even after the platforms all become interoperable.
In short, it'll all be about the innovation.
Kevin Fox
Quote:
=== Cut ===
That is, you may have a single client, but you've still got multiple AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo! accounts. Maybe even a jabber account (and that one isn't even universal -- it's based on wherever your account's server).
What is needed is, essentially, SMTP for IM. A way to embed a service name/address into the message traffic. So that, for example, a user "harry.truman" on MSN could send, using MSN, an IM to "aim:dcooper", and have it go through. A little quiet reflection should convince you that this is a server-side problem, and one the current services haven't addressed. (I'll leave the question of why, be it technical, political, or economic reasons, to others).
=== Cut ===
Huh? Isn't that exactly what jabber do? There are several jabber servers on the net and you can run your own if you like. It works very much like email and your address looks like an emailaddress. You don't have to be on the same jabber server to talk to each other.
AOL's proposed solution, which was submitted to the IETF. Nobody, including AOL, really takes it seriously. I'm not entirely sure why.
Basically, the concept is this: anyone - AOL or Microsoft or Yahoo or Joe Blow down the street - can run their own IM service. Every IM user has a username/screen name, and every IM service has a domain name (aol.com, hotmail.com, yahoo.com, joeblow.net). All you need to send an IM from one service to another is the username and domain, which would look like an e-mail address and might actually be an e-mail address.
When you send e-mail from one address to another, you send the message to your (ISP's) SMTP server, which looks up the domain name you're sending the message to, gets the SMTP server defined in the MX (mail exchange) record for the domain, and sends the message there. Under this proposal, a new record type would be added to DNS, an IMX record that specifies which server can handle IM connections.
So, say you're on Yahoo Messenger. You want to send an IM to another Yahoo user, Yahoo takes care of that and it's nobody else's business. You want to send an IM to an AOL user, you send it to Yahoo's servers, Yahoo lookup aol.com and contacts the server defined in the IMX record. For security AOL looks up the IMX record for yahoo.com too, and they do a three-way handshake. The message is sent, and it appears to the AOL user like an IM that came from joebob@yahoo.com.
Of course for redundancy and load balancing there can be multiple IMX records, just like there can be multiple MX records for e-mail. It's been awhile since I read the proposal; there's more to it than that. It may not be perfect, but it would have been an open standard that anyone could use, not limited to just the big companies.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
On the other hand, SIMPLE is every bit as interoperable as Jabber, with the added weight of the fact that AOL has agreed to interoperate with other vendors using SIMPLE once it is complete.
I see a lot of talking about Trillian for Win32... but there is a sweet little app for MacOS X that does the same thing, called Fire.
Has all the major IM apps and IRC, all in one client.
Maybe someone could port it to BSD... uh-oh, I think I'm entering TrollLand, better shut up now!
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Intelligent Life on Earth
There are many millions of AIM users that are not AOL users.
Whoever said it was bad having different networks? It's competition, you know, the same thing we all want to happen with Operating Systems. If all the networks united into one big monolithic network, chances are eventually someone would use that to their advantage and we'd be back here, again, bitching that there are no instant messaging alternatives. I say keep it the way it is.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
I stand corrected then!
Standardising on a standard would be a Good thing, and I don't think it would result in less choice. What it would mean is that you could choose your service provider and client by the quality of their services and features, rather than by the amount of your friends that are on that service - just like email. It's a royal pain in the ass having to have three different clients on my machine at once, or go to a multi-system program that invariably breaks whenever the protocol on one of them is changed....
Imagine a world where you could only talk on email to other people on that email system!
Huh? Isn't that exactly what jabber do? There are several jabber servers on the net and you can run your own if you like. It works very much like email and your address looks like an emailaddress.
:) ), but it only works for people using *jabber*. The "big four" IM systems don't support this, and until they do, we'll never see the united IM system that I thought we were talking about.
True, the approach is very like what I described (and is probably where I channeled my post from
Plus, one downside to Jabber is that, if your server happens to go down, it doesn't "route around" it in any way. Granted, neither does AOL (except in terms of local-to-AOL round-robin or hot-spare servers), but when you've got a bunch of lesser-funded servers with less reliable performance, having some way to temporarily "move" your profile to another server (and have people be able to find you transparently) becomes critical. This may have changed, I haven't used Jabber in a while, 'cause everyone I talked to uses AIM and AOL hates Jabber servers, it seems...
why don't we just let them decide everything for us. then everyone will be happy happy happy.
seriously, unless the big 3 or 4 or whatever have incentive do unite their IM's, there will be none
but, if you unite, there is a security issue. of all people, the readers of /. should know this. it's one reason why M$ gets targeted by virii... they're the baby seals with big eyes just looking for a beating. this is what would happen with such a unified system. but, if it were open-source... (*gasp* says the big companies! heresy!)
besides security, the issue of servers comes into play. who will host this crap for cheap? will people pay 2 bucks a month for IM? i doubt it, knowing those who only have something like 5 - 10 people on their list. will there be advertisements like there is now? will there be run-arounds like ther is now? it'd be nice if everyone just got along, but what's the chances of that happening, huh?
Run your own chat service built on accepted and open protocalls, hopefully with free software. Use, IP6, Xchat, or similar, kick the stupid propriatory habit and invite your friends to play. There's no concievable way to deny service to everyone everywhere. Of course the sensible thing won't happen if comercial interests continue to turn the web into another form of TV with 80% of all traffic heading to 4 websites. Everyone assert yourself, please.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
but it only works for people using *jabber*
This is fine, and should be expected. When the email standard became widely adopted, it's not like there were any sections in the RFC about being compatible with AOL mail. It should not be a requirement of a standard IM protocol to interface with AOL OSCAR. Rather, the requirement should be for AOL to support the standard protocol. This doesn't mean they have to ditch what they use now, it just means that they need to "talk Jabber" to the outside world (they already do this with email: SMTP on the outside, proprietary on the inside).
IMO, Jabber does what it does, and does it good. All the problems people have with it are all related to interfacing with proprietary networks, to which I just yawn.
So that's what that is....
So does that mean that using MSN I can talk to AIM users? I didn't manage to find any information on how to get that set up...
c'mon GUIDs aren't that hard to remember! just call me 3A8321F126BB4FC98858943945EE279E
would an e-mail address be sufficient enough? people usually don't share an account, and they are sometimes anonymous.
THERE IS NO DATA. THERE IS O
Gaim supports AIM, ICQ, Y!, MSN, Jabber, IRC, Gadu-Gadu, Zepher, and Napster (though why you would want to use napster via an opennap server just to talk is beyond me). As such, supporting 7 protocols, it suprasses Trillian as an all-in-one messanger (besides the fact it vastly pre-dates trillian), and is open source to boot. Its amazing that gaim's only mentioned a handfull of times while trillian is in almost every other post it seems.
AIM and MSN agreeing on a protocol? Isn't that one of the signs of the apocalypse?
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
Come on people.. do you really want to talk to some moron on AOL or MSN?? Think about it, if they are using either of these as their provider they are pretty much a waste of space! ICQ is really the only logical choice as an IM, after all i have my ICQ number on my cell phone, so when i'm not at my computer i'm still on ICQ.
As for yahoo.. who uses yahoo anymore??
There exists a simple instant messaging system that works well regardless of what client you use. It has been in existence for decades. And...it is often ten times faster than AIM et. al.
To wit: the telephone
If you want to talk to someone immediately, pick up the GD phone. Unless you're deaf, (in which case you're typing on TTY) you can communicate way faster and clearer than over a stupid "chat" program anyhow.
Stupid geeks.
Flame me, mod me down if you will, but I think that people here might be more interested in everybuddy, which not only works under Linux, MacOS X and BSD, but is open-source as well.
I might also mention that everybuddy has been around longer, and they are working on a Java version as well.
Of course, I'm probably talking to deaf ears, seeing as how a large majority of slashdot readers are using Windows (*sigh*).
Nathan's blog
Thats like saying you prefer Microsoft have a monopoly instead of seperate companies.
Competition between the IMS bring innovation.
We need them to be seperate entities to ensure innovation. SO, the best thing you can do is make a client which connects to all of them so people who want, can connect to all of them, however expect AOL and all of them to block you because you wont be supporting their business (no ads)
Thats why trillian is always being blocked and really I want trillian to be blocked because it keeps AOL from profiting on IM, and if AOL doesnt profit on IM AOL wont keep innovating and offering new features. AOLIM wont improve.
Same with ICQ I hope most people do use the real ICQ and support AOL.
This way with AOL generating revenue eventually they'll port their IMs to Linux just to generate more money. They will also improve and innovate, believing they'll make more money with more users.
So please lets not try to make jabber and others STANDARD but keep them as a working alternative for techies and other professionals.
Let the average joe keep using the seperate clients.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Be precise: It took ten years for everyone to dump their proprietary e-mail systems and adhere to the RFC standards. So, SIMPLE will be simple in 2012.
You see, it used to be that someone would come out with a protocol and client and server implementations, and would release them into the wild. Then, people would either use it (like IRC) or not (like UNIX's talk command).
:(
No one uses talk? Oh great-- no I feel like a real UNIX geek
Though I agree with you to a large extent, I think that there is a good chance that AOL will have to interoperate with others to keep pace (i.e. they cannot add advanced features to their IM until they do, according to the FCC). Also, MSN IM, is facing some anti-trust scrutiny, so it is likely that they will do so in order to preserve their competitiveness free from gov't scrutiny.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Whoever wrote this article is way behind the curve. Fancy little free and advert free program called Trillian works great for me - tying Yahoo, MSN, AOL, ICQ and even IRC into one neat little app. http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/
You have to ask yourself, "What exactly is the problem I am trying to solve?"
I'm really not seeing what the big deal is here. You want a proprietary, members-only protocol, you run AIM or whatever the hell Microsoft is pushing this week. You want an open protocol, designed by geeks for simplicity and interoperability, use IRC. Done deal.
... 3 bullets ;)
One for Mr. Case, one for Mr. Yang and a silver bullet embossed with a cross for Mr. Gates.
That's what's needed to get the protocols to unite!
Unfortunately, with all the different networks and network splits, IRC is even more factionalized that IM clients are.
I miss the golden days of IRC, I really do, but I think it's about time for a standardized real-time messaging protocol...something like SMTP where it has user@domain but the message is delivered to a live client rather than stored on a server, that way whichever service and client you're using (MSN, Yahoo, whatever) is irrelevant, you can still communicate with people on other networks.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
there's nothing stopping you from creating a server that uses the AIM protocol and hosting that on your server sucking up your bandwidth.
So, once I get my TOC or SIMPLE protocol instant messaging server network running, how do I peer with AOL Time Warner's network so that users on my network can communicate with those users still on AOL Instant Messenger? Jabber.org tried to peer with AOL, but AOL seems to have blocked Jabber.com's and Jabber.org's netblocks.
Will I retire or break 10K?
System Resource Usage (for a quick test): 16,308k ICQ
That's RAM. The term "System Resources" under Microsoft Windows operating systems does not refer to RAM. Under Microsoft Windows 95, Microsoft Windows 98, and Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition, there is only 64 KB of user.exe memory available, and there is only 64 KB of gdi.exe memory available, even if you do have 1 GB of RAM sticks seated in DIMM slots on your motherboard. All running applications must fit all icons, cursors, window control structures, event handlers, etc. into those tiny heaps.
NT-based Windows operating systems, on the other hand, pull user.exe and gdi.exe memory from the main heap (which is at least as big as your total physical RAM).
Will I retire or break 10K?
A P2P client for this might be able to change the landscape if it worked as well as Trillian. Personally I use Trillian but since other people were on MSN I knuckled under and tried to get a hotmail/passport account What a mess! After juping through various hoops, passport is down etc. I can't even sign up. Decided IM wasn't as important as I thought it was. Maybe next month.
As far as I know, SMTP was around before Compuserve, AOL etc. ever existed. It's not like they agreed on building it as a standard, it was already there. With so many people using it that they couldn't force their own proprietary protocols down everyone's throat.
There's not such a standard that predates all existing IM's, so I think it will be a bigger struggle to get to a standard this time.
--GekkePrutser
I don't think that the government should get involved - I simply think that it's a shame that there isn't a standard for IM in the same way as there is with email, as it's the users who suffer most. Surely you can't believe that the current system, where you may have to have 3 or 4 clients open to contact everybody you know is preferable to a system where all the systems can interoperate?