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AOL-Yahoo-MSN Messaging Unified... in the Workplace Only
bakreule writes "Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo! are teaming up to link their separate instant messaging services for use in the workplace, 'the first major step by the industry leaders to enable computer users to communicate with one another no matter which of the three systems they use.' Sound to good to be true? It is. 'What this does not do,' Root said (yes, that's his name), 'is the holy grail of instant messaging, which is to allow anybody on any network to send a message to anybody on any other network.' It seems that the system, which is aimed for corporations, involves some MS software which acts as an intermediary between the different systems. Sounds like a fancy version of all the open source IM clients out there."
Sounds like a fancy version of all the open source IM clients out there."
No, it doesn't sound like gaim or any other client. It sounds like a centralized control center for tighter watching over employee's IM conversations. gaim doesn't automatically forward my AIM messages to someone on MSN or Yahoo without me having an account on each. This seems like it would do that. gaim doesn't log all my conversations from all networks and store that information in one spot so that my boss can watch what I am sending across the networks.
Why does MSFT need to be the one doing this? How about an Open initiative that wouldn't require the three IM giants? It would likely be less money, better for the employers, and operate with more features and less bugs.
Too bad the employers only trust those that shouldn't be trusted.
I was a trillian user for two years and have now been a Gaim user for a year. The only thing that would change for me is the number of sockets that my computer would maintain.
I wonder if this movement would also spark a movement toward disabling 3rd-party clients. That would NOT be good.
Trillian
Gaim
More than enough BS
AOL-Yahoo-MSN Unified
Man I'd hate to see the baby.
My pics.
My $0.02 ... Nate
Right on - Jabber and Jabber4R (or JabberPy). Word.
The Army reading list
I get the need for dominance, which is why interoperability is rarely persued by corporations, but IM itself would be best served as a 'generic' message medium. If it is impossible/difficult to IM 'Bill' 'cuz he uses Yahoo and I use MS, email/phone will normally get the nod.
To use the over-hyped XML paradigm, standard tags would allow every IM vendor to talk with each other. Then more would use IM, allowing the vendors to add features and lower pricing (economy of scale).
"This lays the groundwork for instant messaging to become as widespread and useful as e-mail is today," said Taylor Collyer
If it becomes as "widespread and useful as e-mail" then that means I'm going to have spam popping up on my screen every three seconds. Goodbye, Instant Messaging.
In any case, this is all nonsense. AOL, Yahoo, and The Beast should all just implement the server-to-server protocol used by Jabber. It's on the IETF standards track and will eventually be used by everyone who isn't one of those three.
Actually, if one of the big three (probably the smallest of the big three, whichever that is) implemented the protocol, the other two would pretty much have to.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Hello to all,
S ID =2517926c4f71caed9f6bff1af6843dbd
:)).
This is welcomed news, but the people at Jabber (http://www.jabber.com) did something like this first. Using a Jabber client you can talk to the three other networks by using an special plugin installed on the server (http://www.jabber.org/user/userguide/).
Also Jabber is a very extensible platform that can be used almost for anything (like System monitoring, for example):
http://www.jabber.org/about/overview.php?PHPSES
Also as the original poster mentions, Gaim already does this without problems (even when Yahoo decides to change their protocol, which is almost every 6 months
Regards,
Jose Vicente Nunez Zuleta RHCE, SJCD, SJCP
net send is a source of great fun in an office full of morons.
Name your computer something ominous like "SYSTEM_KERNEL_DAEMON", then do some creative net sends, like:
net send * This machine has performed an illegal instruction and will self destruct in 45 seconds.
etc, etc, and so on.
Hours of fun for the whole family.
Or, when one new employee was fired around here, the next day I named my machine to his login id and sent some:
net send * You cant fire me! You are all fucked now! You'll be sorry!
And watched the panic stricken manager types run up and down the hall screaming "he's in the computer! he's in the computer!".
Aah.. Good times.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
When I worked for a larger company we all used Lotus SameTime (often called sometime, as in it should work sometime), it worked quite well, and the integration between the client and corporate lists was really usefull.
IM clients are a happy comprimise between the phone and email. A phone nesesarily distracts the contactee from whatever they were doing, while many people only check for email every X minutes. An IM message doesn't have to pull them away from whatevery they are doing, and they can respond at an apropriate moment.
IM clients also provide more granular controll over your status, and display that status to others. With a phone you can answer, check call display and let voice mail handle it, or send all to voice mail. With IM you can be available, busy, do not disturb, away, etc. The fact that this is displayed to others can also allow them to make decisions on wether or not to bother you.
All in all I am glad to see greater acceptance of IM in the workplace
paul reinheimer
You see, one company charges another to carry their call, and the first company, in turn, charges you.
With all this money floating around, coming out of your pocket, these companies are more than glad to route each other's calls. It all happens for a price.
If you don't want to have to worry about 4 different clients, there is always email, with its highly standardized protocols that anyone can route anywhere.
What we really need is a ubiquitous standard like SMTP, for IM. That way, any person can start up their own service, and everyone else could still get the messages. And then a whole new spam threat would emerge, the main downside.
The fact that we need centralized servers to be logged into is part of the core problem. If anyone could set up a server, it wouldn't matter what messages Yahoo would forward to where, someone else won't be such a prick.
There are lots of really valid reasons that don't involve big brother for companies to keep an eye on IM communications. First off, I know people in my company who commit financial transactions for the company over IM. It's completely stupid that they do this, but they do it none the less. An audit trail for the company's money is required.
The second thing I can think of is corperate espionage. Companies spend lots of money on products that audit email leaving the company, looking for sensitive documents, key phrases, etc. We really need the same thing for IM, if it's going to be used in a business context for business data.
I'd also love to see a promise that the chanel between me and the person I'm talking to is encrypted. I can do that with email: force TLS encryption from my email gateway directly to theirs.
These are all good things, and don't get to the 'big brother' complaints. Those will be there, and I believe that there will always be a free IM without these auditing requirements for people who don't need them.
Zapman
*shrug* I only know of two cases here where people were disciplined for inappropriate emails here. In the firt case (admittedly before I got here), someone was sending out a mildly pornographic dominatrix video of a guy repeatedly getting kicked in the crotch by a lady in high-heeled boots with a subject title of "At least it's less painful than working here." It probably would have passed under the radar if the guy hadn't used the ML-ALL mailing list that included the general.
The other incident, the higher-ups found out due to word of mouth. With everyone talking, it was inevitable that eventually someone would notice. And so his email logs were requested and he was sent off for sensitivity training. *grumble* And then they went on a hyper-politically-correct workplace bent, making everyone remove pictures of wives and girlfriends from cubicle walls for fear that someone might find them offensive. Oh, the joys of federal government work...
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Although the article had just about zero details. My guess would be that Microsoft has simply convinced Yahoo and AOL (read: give big piles of cash to) to connect to the already existing Microsoft Live Communications Server.
I *think* that Live Communications Server uses "Session Initiation Protocol" which I *think* is a public standard. I would guess that, theoretically any IM client could implement it and connect to Live Communications Server. Although that is purely speculation, there might be licensing fees associated with SIP or Microsoft might have "adjusted" the standard in their own special way.
So why does Microsoft *want* Yahoo and AOL to integrate with Live Communications Server you ask? Probably because Microsoft's IM market share is so small that nobody really wants to use Live Communications Server. And really, there is not much money in basic instant messaging. However, at $700 for the server, and then an additional $25 per user on the server, there is a lot of money in Live Communications Server.
We recently installed the trial version and it's crap. The only real thing it gives over basic instant messaging is the ability to archive all messages on the server, which is a necessity for some business. Although they don't give you any way to search through archived messages, it's just a SQL database full of records. Not exactly worth $25 per person.
Google,
Many of my fellow slashdotters and I are patiently awaiting your unannounced release of your new Google Instant Messenger. Please release it as soon as possible.
Thanks,
Anonymous Coward