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Jabber Makes It Good
el bastardo writes "According to this ZDNet article, IBM is building a new IM network for the Washington, DC area government agencies using Jabber as the base protocol."
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Its good to see an open standard promoted by the government. I'm half suprised MS didn't push for an MSN contract to help push their .NET intiative.
I'm also glad IBM is smart enough to roll out their own servers rather than use that godawful jabberd that jabber.org provides. I hope they release their jabber server as free software, as the lack of a fs/os production quality jabber server has hurt deployment.
Gnuyen
The ability to log messages is really keen. Accountability is important in a business setting; I witness Jabber developers' use of conference logs almost daily. The adoption of jabber in a messaging infrastructure by government makes sense.
tired as i write this.
SIGERR: laziness exceeds quota
The government is probably sick of having to use AIM (or MSN, or Yahoo) like everyone else.
But seriously, the DOD is fond of using SGML to process documents, and there's even a govt. website pressing for the adoption of XML standards as a way to facilitate communication between agencies. This would be a good thing.
Jabber clients, as an XML transport mechanism, would definitely facilitate this... For instance, right now the US EPA provides a database program called CAMEO which provides emergency response data for over 6080 different hazardous chemicals. Imagine, not a beowulf cluster, but a US EPA On-scene coordinator who wants data on "Methyl-ethyl-meatloaf", a chemical not included in the program. "Beep beep beep", she sends a query (containing the CAS Number for the chemical) via the Jabber IM client. Then about ten seconds later, she receives a response data information sheet on the chemical from the National Response Center. Her specially-designed US EPA Jabber Client takes the data and (a) loads it into her CAMEO program and/or (b) processes it with XSLT and dumps it into her browser for printing.
I do chemical emergency planning for a living and I'm always seeking to improve the ability to deliver appropriate information on request. One method is "give 'em everything we have and let 'em find it". That leads to (a) a file cabinet full of files on each fire truck or (b) a cd wallet and a computer guru on each shift.
An other alternative is fax them what they need on request (ugh!). A Jabber IM solution would be a powerful way to deliver structured content to the responder on request.
My father is a blogger.
Personally, i think this sets a bit of a bad precedent for the future of the world. I'm worried that one day the only thing we'll use for communication is IM/Txt msgs. This is bad because Text has a number of disadvantages over speech:
1) It's near impossible to convey emotions in txt. The popularity of the internet has meant people use emoticons more and more, but even these cannot compare to a single facial expression.
2)Not many people can type as fast as they can talk. This doesnt really matter to us now, but speed is important for the Fire Service or any other Life Saving Service.
I think thats pretty much the way i feel, tell me if i'm wrong!
Everything sucks except musicandstuff
IM allows a human at both ends to communicate. For instance:
Fire Chief: I need a MSDS for "Methyl-ethyl-meatloaf", I have a partial CAS Number: It starts with 456.
NRC Dispatcher: Chief, is it a drum or a cylinder?
Fire Chief: It's a cylinder.
NRC Dispatcher: The MSDS is being sent now...
Granted, this can be done over the phone as well as a IM client, but HTTP requires the user to navigate to the record. In some cases, the user doesn't know where to find the information (too much information available, not enough expertise in chemicals or searching). The NRC, Chemtrek, or state agencies staff call centers with experts that can handle requests from responders. Responders regularly communicate with them to verify their data and obtain additional information.
The benefit of using IM would be to communicate with an off-site expert (like a phone) and let an off-site expert to push the requested data to the user (like a fax). But unlike a fax, the data can be further processed: transformed to a standard format familiar to the emergency responders, or used in a chemical release modeling program to calculate a threat zone.
Frankly, the ideal situation would be if you could send data along side a regular telephone call. That's one niche I haven't seen explored.
My father is a blogger.