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Next iChat version to include Jabber support
SeaFox writes "A couple of stories about new features in the next version of Mac OS X have revealed that the new iChat 3.0 will include support for Jabber. With businesses able to host their own messaging servers behind the firewall and use it with Apple's included IM client, will this effect Jabber's overall share of the IM market?"
Is one IM client supporting all widely used standards while NOT taking 5 minutes to start up like my ICQ :). I'd be willing to pay money for such a thing.
Is there an IM client that supports ICQ functions like server hosted friends lists? Preferrably one that is available under linux and windows.
Quite some old news.
This was very well covered in the first documentation released on MacOS X Server 10.4...
Tell Jabba I'll have his money soon. And I shoot first, no CmdrTaco.
-- Han
Seeing has how the next version of Server is going to have a built-in Jabber/iChat/XMPP server (scroll down to the "Your Very Own iChat and Blog Servers" section).
Because the jabber specs ( and clients ) still need quite a bit more work. While we have a spec for file transfer through a nat'd environment, I have yet to play with a client that can do it effectively and seemlessly. Namely, because the protocol itself could use a little work.
For example, instead of having some random, and unknown, jabber file proxy to enter in, why can't the server offer hints? Someone sets up a jabber server, they are likely to understand how to setup the file proxy needed for it, so have that in the config file as a hint of which proxy to use.
Don't get me wrong, I love jabber, it's just not ready for "prime time", as it were. Although it's more than adequate for local lans where you dont want chat data going out over the internet.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
more importantly, will it a ffect Jabber's overall share of the IM market?
Karma: T-rexcellent.
those "couple of stories" both come from a rumor site. Grain of salt, and all that... of course, if those stories suddenly go away after a Cupertino landshark sees them, they might be a bit more believable.
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
For those unaware, iChat has always used the Jabber protocols for its local (Rendezvous-initiated) messaging. This just dusts off and reveals full-fledged support for Jabber.
Why Jabber? Because Jabber is a completely open IM standard. The IETF has accepted the core Jabber protocols and has standardized them as XMPP, an open IM protocol.
.. and let me add that Jabber is, like most (not all) things OSS, nothing but a watered down, slowly progressing, copy of a commercial service. I use AIM, Yahoo Messenger, and Jabber (all via Trillian) and Jabber is by far the most featureless of the three. Where's video or audio IM, buddy icons, etc. ? I've tried some of the Jabber client (e.g. GAIM) and they are awful compared to Trillian or even AIM or Yahoo's native clients in terms of both ease of use and functionality.
i chat already uses jabber in the local im feature using rendezevous (sp?). that also removes the need for a central server since it uses rendezevous for discovery of other hosts.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Yes, but affect and effect have no senses in common.
As a verb affect is most commonly used in the sense of "to influence" (how smoking affects health). Effect means "to bring about or execute": layoffs designed to effect savings. Thus the sentence These measures may affect savings could imply that the measures may reduce savings that have already been realized, whereas These measures may effect savings implies that the measures will cause new savings to come about.
Completely different meanings. The question "... will this effect Jabber's overall share of the IM market?" makes no sense.
Either way - I hadn't heard it, and I think it's pretty cool.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
Jabber's slowly been infiltrating the office, and has proven itself to be really handy. It's nice to be able to keep your IM server on the friendly side of your firewall. iChat/OS X Server publicly and proudly supporting Jabber is a great step forward!
Except one is more affective than the other...
The question answered would be has iChat had any noticeable effect by AOL on AOL Instant Messenger membership.
I would say it might have an effect on Jabber. Eventhough Apple has a small marketshare, it has a higher percent of that marketshare that are online.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Yes, they can both be used as verbs. But not to mean the same thing. To effect something is to bring it about, or make it happen; to affect something, is to influence it somehow. They're both nouns too....
Is there a way to do videoconference (or just audio conference) between a Mac and a PC? I haven't found a way yet....
-- Leeeter than leet
Additionally:
So, yes, we've known since WWDC that iChat will be able to speak to standard Jabber servers, mostly because Apple will be shipping a Jabber server with Tiger Server.
There's a lot of cool stuff in Tiger Server, and that page is with checking out.
While an open IM application can be useful in a defined group or organization for messaging, obviously, a standalone IM application is of limited utility on its own if you're already communicating with people on other IM networks.
This is why Jabber supports "transports", server components that allow seamless connectivity with AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, SMS services, and even IRC..
Will this include support for video and audio chat?
Apple has created may ripples...3.5 in discs, the mouse, on board ethernet, plug and play, video editing, etc. You know the routine. Apple could very easily survive and thrive with its current market share and still have a huge impact on the industry. Just like Mercedes and BMW, market share really doesn't mean a whole lot as to the viability of a company. PS. Did you run your Windoze adware/spyware/virus programs today?
-- I fart in your general direction.
While Apple and the Mac desktop account for a rather small percentage of desktop users, I firmly believe that Apple has a way of promoting technologies LONG before they become popular. They went all USB years ahead of many of the other manufacturers (in fact, some are still catching up).
Apple has a way of moving technologies from the geek realm to the "average joe" realm in a very short period of time. I would also suggest that you applaud Apple for using yet another standard vs. creating their own in house brand or simply succumbing to the power of Redmond.
iChat AV 2.1 can videoconference with AOL Instant Messenger 5.5.
Please, please, please include GPG support (a la gabber), Apple. Business have been wanting secure instant messaging for a long time -- I'd like it too.
May we never see th
Oh, definitely! In those businesses who are 100% Apple! Like Pixar, and, uh, Apple... :(
Apple continues to incorporate open software and strike that fine balance between the usefully proprietary (hardware, GUI) and interoperable standards. The MS dweebs that run the IT where I work keep frowning and scratching their heads when I explain that this or that new Apple implementations of free (beer/speech) software (zeroconf, LDAP, Apache, SSH, etc.) makes their lives easier and more secure. This just helps my arguments.
Nice thing about Jabber is that it's decentralized and has so much room to be elaborated into some nifty applications that go way beyond text messaging. I was annoyed at Apple for nailing iChat so firmly to AIM, and now it looks like they're fulfilling some of the promise behind having a default chat client that isn't tied to an Apple network.
Damn those pesky terrorists
This will certainly help with Jabber's market share and installed base.
What I'd like to see, though, is a Google branded instant messenger service -- based on Jabber. This would really kick IM up to the next level, and maybe even pressure the other big three to make their systems interoperable, like Internet technologies are supposed to be.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
I didn't say the poster used it correctly, since they didn't.
However, his simplistic view of "one is a noun, the other a verb" effects no useful change in people's English understanding, as it prevents them from understanding the way an effective use of the verb "to effect" can affect an English sentence.
You dig?
---
Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
I've spent the last 3 days at my office attempting to install a Jabber server for internal use. What I want to do is very simple: I merely want to setup IM clients for 20-30 employees, and have their buddy lists controlled by the server itself, so when a new employee is added, all 20-30 existing employees don't have to add them.
Sounds easy right? Obviously you've never used Jabber!
The obvious place for support would appear to be http://jabber.org. But there's no support on that site. Well, maybe jabber.com! Nope, that's a corporate commercial Jabber site. Hmmm, maybe jabberstudio.org! After all, that's where the server software is hosted! Nope, not there either. They have a mailing list where 4-6 different people have asked for help on the same problem . . . and in true Open Source fashion, no one helped them, other than to say, "Well, I've setup a nifty Perl hack to fix that problem . . you just need these 4 libraries and then write your own XML commands.".
Hopefully Apple will put their spit and polish on it and make it usable. In it's current state, Jabber's a pain in the ass to try and configure with absolutely zero documentation to help.
--DrH, the Sandwich with the Ph.D.
USB? IEEE 1394? 802.11? Touchpads on laptops? Quiet computing?
It's been on Apple's website since WWDC 2004.
I noticed, a while ago, that the iChat Agent (2.x) executable contains the string 'Jabbler' on a few places, so maybe this has been planned for some time?
Nonetheless, this sounds great, and is probably going to give Jabber a significant usage boost. It's sure nice to see Apple support more open technologies.
Sig Nature
You could also use Skype, which now has a Mac OS X client.
It probably will not until all the major players allow for their clients to talk to other providers.
Average computer user's will still use whatever client is installed on their desktop (AOL/MSN).
Sig it.
significance to or impact on the market is not directly related to market share. apple has had a significantly disproportionate impact on the industry relative to its market share because, unlike most PC hardware or software companies, they represent consistent innovation. their hardware drives other companies to keep up (talking total system design here, not CPUs, although that might still be true). look at the push for adoption of firewire and USB. or the slow decline of the floppy. or A/V IM.
apple applied the same history of innovation they've had in the computer world to digital music - innovation wasn't new to them. the reason they've been so much more successful there than in the computer market (using the limited definition of success == market share) is because there was a dramatically smaller installed base; the innovation was more apparent, and the cost to conversion wasn't really an issue, as it is when trying to convince someone to switch from an existing product/service.
now compare this with the situation with IM. i used to work a lot with high school and jr. high kids in the states, and nearly all of them have AIM (not just IM - AIM). it's a crucial social tool, and the fact that all the AIM stuff is interoperable is critical for them. apple's not going to have any more success in this market (using the same limited definition of success) than they have in the computer market, unless they can work out a cross-connecting deal with AOL (which isn't out of the question; note that the @mac.com addresses are the only reserved domain handed out in the AIM address space). but in business... that's a whole other story. we use AIM at work pretty heavily, especially between our US and GB offices. but when i mention this to friends and colleagues in other companies, it's nearly unheard of. many companies have explicit restrictions against using it... and often for exactly the reasons that a in-house server would resolve.
i'm not making any predictions for what impact this will have, but do keep in mind that 1) impact != market share, 2) the world != teenagers, 3) network effects are more powerful than the effect of an isolated change, and 4) just because something doesn't solve a problem you have doesn't mean it doesn't solve a problem somebody else (like businesses) has.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
Does anyone know what the current state of play is with the Real / Helix funded extensions to Jabber that were supposed to be bringing voice / video to our favourite Instant messanger. I thought it was supposed to be released by now?
With businesses able to host their own messaging servers behind the firewall and use it with Apple's included IM client, will this effect Jabber's overall share of the IM market?
You assume that ther are enough "mac" computers in business to affect market share? Some companies are hip enough to use Macs in business. Many many many are not.
If MozillaFireFoxBird had built-in support for Jabber instead of having to download a special client, Jabber might find its way into more homes and businesses. Like the US economy, Mozilla is starting to gain some traction.
Apple use has been skyrocketing in higher education. It used to be that when I went to conferences 90% of the laptops were IBM or Dell running windows. Lately it as been a little more than 50% Powerbooks and iBooks, and the remaining computers are split between Linux and Windows.
Walking around on campus you see a LOT more apple laptops than you used to. The recent public awareness of how grossly insecure Windows is has helped that a lot since I know a quite a few people who went to Apple to escape the monthly system rebuild that was required when they got infected with spyware, viruses, or Trojans. While Windows certainly CAN be secure it is much easier for a non computer geek to keep an OS X box secure. I would say that Apple is poised to possibly invade the corporate world from the ground up as more graduates have expertise in OS X.
This is just my observations though, no marketing data to back that up.
Finkployd
"Apple has created may ripples...snip...Just like Mercedes and BMW"
Agreed. They all provide the privilage of over paying for something. But then again you just don't get that same status with a VW or Honda, just the knowledge that you saved a boat load of money.
P.S reply: didn't need to, my Linux machine and BSD server are well protected, but thanks for asking.
Jabber is a protocol, you are complaining about clients that use that protocol.
How do you feel about iChat? Jabber with an iChat front end should certainly be an improvement over what you have experienced.
And try a more recent version of Gaim if you haven't lately, it has improved in terms of functionality quite a bit.
Dear Dr. Hogie,
Thank you for your complaints about Jabber. Please read the file WARRANTY. Jabber comes with no warranty, express or implied. As such, it is your responsibility to use it in an appropriate fashion.
For more details, please RTFM, STFU, and STFW.
Sincerely,
The Open Source Community
Since Jabber already has market share, this move by Apple will not Effect (verb: to create) a share for Jabber. However, including Jabber in iChat may Affect (verb: to influence) the market that already exists.
OTOH - The Effect (noun: influence) of the ignorant substitution of inappropriate words Affects (verb: to influence) your ability to write clearly. Learn to the difference between english vowels, or you'll be condemned to confuse a cat with a cot (or Al with an eel)
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
Not to mention that most of the client software is
too nasty to use in a work situation. For work we don't need kitchen sink software just simple messaging. The whole jabber protocol is cool but if tools for managing it in a sane way do not exist it just becomes a nightmare.
Got Code?
I use AIM, Yahoo Messenger, and Jabber (all via Trillian) and Jabber is by far the most featureless of the three. Where's video or audio IM, buddy icons, etc. ?
What's being touted here is that Jabber can function as groupware for intranet messaging, and that it is a viable option for IM in the enterprise. But even for Internet messaging, it has a very attractive feature: encryption.
Trillian Pro offers 128-bit Blowfish encryption for ICQ, but that requires both parties to use Trillian Pro (a non-free Windows client).
On the other hand, Jabber is more readily extensible, and already offers both SSL and the somewhat SSH-like JEP-0116 encryption scheme.
I know some international business people that have already adopted Jabber for its privacy features. Jabber may never take hold among teens and "tweens", but it has a chance among other groups, such as Internet professionals who (believe it or not) conduct business via instant messaging.
No, just a ripple... but a very nice one to ride on... :-)
Programs should do one thing and do it well. There are MUCH better video and audio conferencing solutions available in OSS than could ever be built into an IM client.
Have you tried http://www.jabberdoc.org/?
Times up. Don't recall reading anything like this on slashdot but look at the picture of Safari that loads up on the link I gave... feed://slashdot.org/index.rss :)
Perhaps you meant to say, "configure" rather than "installation"?
and in true Open Source fashion, no one helped them, other than to say, "Well, I've setup a nifty Perl hack to fix that problem . . you just need these 4 libraries and then write your own XML commands.".
So you're saying they've already done your job and fixed it? So whats the problem? Having trouble installing perl? Not intending to troll, but it seems like your support was exceptionally good...
Okay, it's a minor snark: it should be "affect," not "effect," in the story writeup.
Minor niggle. Keep up the otherwise good work.
For Windows Miranda is nice. On Linux I use GAIM -- it works well and is easy to use.
I hope you and your colleagues don't mind having their conversations logged in Redmond! You aren't discussion anything that might remotely compete with Microsoft some day. ie any software, hardware (eg keyboard, mouse) or media product or service (eg Expedia). ie any business.
James Tait, Programmer and Free Software Advocate
JID: jayteeuk@wyrddreams.org
You have obviously never used ichat.
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
I know what you're saying, but there's plenty of room for an all-in-one client.
Second day in a row I've seen effect/affect misused in a summary. I didn't even read the summary or the article. My eyes zoomed right to the offending gramatical error, and I began contemplating suicide for being such an annally-retentive, grammatically-obsessed freak. Ah well.
What a hypocrite you are. One space after periods. "My eyes zoomed right", misspelled anal-retentive.
Good day butt-pirate.
Overpaying? The eMacs here at school only cost $650...17", 256meg, etc, etc. I could have had an eMachine for about $100 less? That's not overpaying, that's smart. PS I'm glad you are running Linux and BSD servers...thanks for helping curb the spread of MS!
-- I fart in your general direction.
Apple has created a Kerberized Jabber Client/Server... The Linux/Windows clients will quickly add support because they can and its cool... They are having a secure IM environment, which is very cool
will this effect Jabber's overall share of the IM market?
Dunno... Might affect it though.
At the moment we can't be certain what impact on Jabber's market share this will have. Hopefully help increase it and get people talking about it. If you have a friend who does not have a Jabber server then they can still use the central jabber.org server.
If Apple's move has any impact, I wonder how long it would be before ISPs start providing Jabber servers.
The only thing I have to wonder is if the jabber account being the same address as your e-mail address would increase e-mail spam?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Mac OS X 10.4 Server will include a Jabber server with what I assume will be a usable configuration tool. And those Xserves are, as Borat would say, niiiiice.
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
CenterICQ
;) I have connections to all the major services, a slashdot RSS, and any other RSS feeds I find interesting on our shell server at our data center, and it never skips a beat.
;)
- Cross Platform
- It supports server hosted friends list
- Starts up quickly
- Supports AIM, MSN, ICQ, YIM, Jabber, RSS, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, and LiveJournal
- It's free as in speech (GNU)
AND
It can be put into a screen on a server, you can detach, then simply ssh into the server from a different location and reconnect to your screen as though you never left. I do this all the time.
FYI, if this interests you, contact me for a shell account.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
'nuf said
Yea, like that USB thing, Firewire, ditching the floppy, colorful computers, photo management software, digital music players, WiFi, bluetooth, video editing, dvd burning. Apple made the first jump on all of those and look where it got them! Nothing! Ha! Nobody will ever try to follow Apple's lead! Bunch of losers!
It seems that with Apple's public comments about the enhanced iChat to ship with Tiger they are pushing greater adoption of iChat as a communication tool. With text chatting, file exchange, audio {with up to 10 participants} & video {with up to 4 participants} conferencing it seem logical.
If Apple would develop the Windows counterpart of iChat and include it with the iSight, they would be able to further entrench QuickTime into the Windows market (I'm assuming that QuickTime is needed to pull off the multiparty audio & video conferencing) and offer their digital lifestyle solutions to the widest possible market.
The cluelessness is strong in this one. Take a look at what Jabber really is and then come back and tell me it's nothing but a copy of the other instant messenger systems.
Technically speaking, there wouldn't have been such dipshits until he was bored.
Incidentally, the quality of flames here is going down. You cats have to try harder.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
does jabber allow for offline messaging in the ICQ sense... when they sign on the messages sent to them get shown...
also can you open up this in tiger server to roll your own ichat network... or would it be LAN only. just wondering. but everyone can run their own networks and not be bothered by other services... at the cost of reiability of course
Kenny Sabarese
www.kennysabarese.com
Somebody at Apple is a Slashdot and Firefly fan!
"Touchpads on laptops?"
Don't for an instant think that everyone considers touchpads a good thing. I'd own multiple Powerbooks if they licensed IBM's Trackpoint technology. As it is, I own no Powerbooks and seven Thinkpads (eight, if you count the tablet, but that doesn't have a trackpad *or* a Trackpoint).
A.
(who hates touchpads with a passion that cannot be described in mere words)
...bringing you cynical quips since 1998
My experience of setting up a Jabber server wasn't all too good either. I managed to get one up and running in the end though. To make life easier I made sure that any person could create a new account on the server, since it was the easiest solution. If you are interested I could find out the configuration I had.
Things that you should note is that the server needs to be able to resolve the address of the server it is running on and the other servers is may need to connect to. This was an issue when I tried it as home, since my DNS does not have the name of my computer in it.
Also, check all passwords in the config files are set correctly.
As to clients, there aren't really too many good ones. On the Windows side Trillian Pro and Miranda seem fair enough. On the Mac side I have experience with Fire and on Linux Gaim.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I wish they had posted Perl scripts -- all the comments that I read merely said "I used This::Library and got it working. It's really easy."
That being said, I did unmerge jabberd1.4 and got jabberd2.0s3 up and running this morning after posting that comment, and the experience is much better. Changes I make to the MySQL database are picked up by the clients, whereas changes I made to the xdb files in 1.4 were overwritten by the clients.
I just hate using non-final software in a production environment.
--DrH, the Sandwich with the Ph.D.
"Well, I've setup a nifty Perl hack to fix that problem . . you just need these 4 libraries and then write your own XML commands."
.exe file, scan it three times for viruses and trojans, strip out the malware with adaware (voiding the eula) and somehow locate copies of msvcrt40.dll, olepro32.dll, and vbrun200.dll.
Well, I found a windows program to do the same thing, you just have to download this
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Jabberdoc is helpful, but it won't do anything for this guy: he's not looking for documentation of a feature, he's looking for a feature that doesn't exist in any of the current server implementations.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Why should people running Microsoft's service have some right to connect to a service owned by another company?
There's no reason except that tech people are a bunch of hippies.
Well, actually, there are a number of other pretty solid business reasons as it turns out.
The main one is the network effect - if you combine two huge pools of IM customers, then the total becomes more useful than the sum of its parts. If you have five different companies all with different IM's, then you'll get fewer users than if you just have one big pool that everyone can use. Fewer users, means less revenue (assuming an IM provider is able to eek revenue out of users somehow!)
Did hippies steal your cat or something? Not quite sure where that would enter into things.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Even geekier is bitlbee, an irc gateway to aim/msn/icq/jabber, based on gaim IM code.
I think using the protocol for sensors such as that is a bit overkill. There has to be a simpler way.
I tried gaim, but I didn't like the interface.
Back when I used Windows at work, I was using Miranda, which is the best FOSS for Windows I've seen (Firefox doesn't count).
Now I'm using SIM, (based on Qt, but can be compiled without KDE), and works for Linux and Windows. Not as perfect as Miranda, but I'm pretty satisfied, and it's light and modular.
"Touchpads on laptops"
That pretty much says it all right there. I prefer trackpoint style pointing devices on my portables, as I find them to be more accurate, much faster to navigate the screen with, and less likely to get bumped while I'm typing and suddenly move my cursor up 12 lines.
Which is not to say trackpoint is perfect, but it's imeasurably better than a touchpad, and the only other stationary pointing device which I might replace it with is a good trackball.
Meanwhile, additions to Tiger's [...] "Security" preference panes have unveiled [...] an option to encrypt memory when its being swapped to disk.
:) I guess Apple is taking pointers from Linux users. I found this script to encrypt swap -- what other options are there under Linux? Windows?
Wow, that's paranoia!
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
It's just crazy how different people are. I hate the trackpoint things and adore trackpads on laptops. Well not all trackpads, the one on a Dell I had a few years ago was horrible beyond words. All of the Apple trackpads I've used were silky smooth and perfect for laptop mousing.
To each their own though.
-matt
http://thewonderllama.com
I think the mere fact that there exists an entire Web site dedicated to providing documentation for the product testifies to what a lousy product it is.
I write in my journal
I don't agree with your assumption. Even with iChat there is still heavy development of Adium, Fire and Proteus. As for Jabber, thank goodness Apple is adding it to iChat. Current Mac Jabber clients are dreadful. With iChat server and iChat supporting Jabber it will increase the Mac markets Jabber awarness and cause an increase in demand for Jabber clients. I'm sure Fire/Adium/Proteus will all improve their Jabber capabilities do to the increased demand.
If you like Jabber this is very good news.
http://thewonderllama.com
IIRC, Apple also introduced the palmrests into the Powerbook line, making it the first laptop with a mouse, and the first with the standard "laptop" form factor.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Even with iChat there is still heavy development of Adium, Fire and Proteus
And Justin (the original creator of Proteus) recently graduated college, handed over the reigns of Proteus to other developers, and went to work for Apple on their iChat team. so, who knows what could be in store (though I believe he is working in a QA aspect at the moment)
Yeah, 'cause everybody uses Dylan and Hypercard now.
Jabber's model is excellent. It's very similar to the email distribution model where there is a network of servers and then each server has a bunch of clients hanging off it. Although email has a few security issues, the general model is sound: it's decentralised, and yet it still makes efficient use of the network unlike the current "peer-to-peer" apps which generate an extra network over the network usually with little regard to the underlying topology and proceed to shove redundant data everywhere.
The difference between Jabber and the email system, though, is that the email system happened during the early days of the Internet. Consequently, when it got enough momentum for commercial ISPs to appear providing access to homes it was a given that every ISP "had to" provide customers with an email account and run email servers to handle the customer's mail.
If Jabber had come along at the same time, it too would be one of those things ISPs just provide with every account. Some ISPs would even let customers have multiple Jabber IDs per account like they used to do with email addresses to differentiate themselves from the competition.
The problem is that, with a few notable exceptions, the only companies that actually get paid for Internet services are ISPs. There is no viable business model to provide free Jabber services just as there is no money in free email with POP3 and IMAP access. The availability of Jabber is limited to geeks who set up servers of varying scales and people who know said geeks. The only way a commercial Jabber service could be provided is to use a proprietary protocol for client-to-server communication and then bridge that onto the Jabber network at the server side. This is comparable to web-based email which uses proprietary HTML to encode the data, meaning you get the service on their terms and not on yours. (usually one of these terms is the presence of advertising)
On the other hand, if every viable comsumer ISP provided customers with a Jabber server and at least one Jabber ID it would have flourished. These days, though, there is no way to add new "required services" to ISPs and they are frantically trying to shed the few they have now. (Notice the decline in ISPs providing USENET servers and customer webspace)
It sucks, but there is no way at this point in the game to introduce a new distributed and open protocol. There's just no money in distributed and open protocols.
I vaguely remember when Tiger was anounced that they were also kerberizing it. so iChat and their server will be kerberized. It's pretty cool they have kerberized a lot of the stock services on OS X Server. I use OS X Server to host my personal mail and use Mail.app as the client. I really liked the no fuss procedure to get up and running with kerberized mail service. I've come to REALLY like and respect Kerberos. I never really took the time to set Kerberos up using a Linux or Solaris or BSD before but it motivated me to really learn how it works. I'ved added in some non mac hosts to the kerberos keytab(via the CLI. there's no GUI that I know of) now so I can ssh with no passwords entry to, at least so far, a linux, an OpenBSD, and a FreeBSD host. OpenBSD's lack of nss support is a bit of a bummera and damn Solaris is a bugger. I was thinking it might be cool to have OpenLDAP export a NIS map for the OpenBSD host but I haven't looked into it very closely yet.
ok now that getting I'm off on a tangent I'll stop.
jerky
--
What is pirate software? Software for inventory of stolen treasure?
I think the editors just put mistakes in to annoy people.
I think you mean "where's the bloat?" I use Jabber simply for the handy-dandy feature of offline messaging. I don't know if Yahoo! can do this, but last I checked (about 35 seconds ago), AOL and MSN can't. As far as GAIM being hard to use...it seems to be to be simple double-click, type, press enter. Not too much different than Trillian (which I've also used). Logging is much better too...I can search logs in GAIM instead of having to grep text files.
-moitz-
Screw 'em...who cares what anyone thinks.
I looked into doing the same thing, it's true. Most of the people suggested overwriting all contact lists on the server with a list of all users. Of course, if your users add anyone on another transport or anything, it will be neatly overwritten. This is a KILLER feature, and I hope it gets added soon.
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
One big problem I have with Fire is its lack of good Jabber support. Basics are there, but I can't reliably use it for group chatting. (It might not even support it, IIRC)
For Jabber, I've had to use Nitro to get the group support I needed. And on Linux (since I have an ancient RH 8 box) I end up using Gabber instead of GAIM
those "couple of stories" both come from a rumor site
The stories are about features found in a developer release from Apple. How is it a rumor to be skeptical of when Apple itself is the source?
This is exactly what iChat needs to get me to use it.
Now they just need to make iChat AV compatable with Messenger & NetMeeting so the iSight can be more than a useless appendage unless everyone you want to chat with has a mac.
We've been developing something along the lines of what a geek would dream Google IM to be like - ubergroups.com, a secure team-oriented IM/Blog web service. (Please check the service out, we're in beta, launching in October, and welcome your feedback!)
We've chosen XMPP as the protocol of choice for our service because of the wide range of client software, and because it was easy for us to implement our own client and server software.
Naturally this is great news for us since iChat is perhaps the nicest consumer IM interface out there. It gives us instant access to the entire deployed base of OS X users. Apple users are very interested in staying ahead of the curve and are early adopters of new technologies. It's very exciting to know that every Mac user will have a great experience with our service.
First of all, you no longer "over pay" when you buy a Mac: my 12" iBook was cheaper than a comparable (i.e. not 10lb) PC laptop.
Second, Hondas are overpriced! You can get the same quality, features, and performace from Hyundai much cheaper (e.g. 104hp Accent loaded: $13k; 108hp Civic loaded: $15k)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
One of the most insightful posts I've ever seen on Slashdot.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
http://www.businessim.com It's what I do. I wrote the script for the commericial implementation of our jabber server to manipulate rosters. If you wanted to do it the fun way, install the port on a BSD box (we use freeBSD for ours) with a mysql backend. Make php-based web pages to manipulte the DB, or install cli php module and do it that way maybe
How to Speak Leet
Perhaps "affect" was meant instead of "effect"?
Pick One: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~stremler/sigs/sigs.html (Note - disable Javascript first!)
that's correct, it does and has. i'm not sure i see your point.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
The one feature that I'd love to see in any jabber client is the ability to have multiple, simultaneous jabber connections open at the same time. I have yet to find a jabber client that does this well, and I floated the idea to more than one. The reason that I'd like this feature is that I have one jabber id for communicating with my wife (on a public server) and another one for communicating with my coworkers (on a private jabber server inside the firewall.) Currently, I have to run two instances of Gabber and hope that they don't have an argument about config files and logs. No project seems to be willing to complicate the user interface by adding this feature, sadly.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
"...that USB thing, Firewire, ditching the floppy, colorful computers, photo management software, digital music players, WiFi, bluetooth, video editing, dvd burning..."
Hey, whippersnapper, you forgot something... or you're just too young to remember what a huge jolt true cheap WYSIWYG publishing was. THAT was apple's killer app... took MS years... no, decades to catch up on that one.
Damn those pesky terrorists
jabberstudio.org has a developer community and list that you might find useful as well.
If you're sending data over a wire that pretty much necessitates a protocol.
heres the link
Yep, we are improving Jabber support in Fire as we speak...
And by the way, I have personally spent over 1000 hours on Fire development after iChat was available for Free... It's all about multi service support (And it's also fun to add cool features like automatic translation, profanity filtering, or whatever else I feel like doing that day....)
The Alternative clients are still alive and kicking :)
Webcam and Voice support in Gaim and ayttm is poor; especially for yahoo users. unfortunately things arent improving much. -- why doesnt slashdot post some news on rsi related stuff? im suffering and would appreciate a broader support from the community ; cheers ram
So quit yer bitchin and either upgrade to 10.4.x when this comes out, or get one of any number of free Jabber clients out there that work just fine on 10.2. That's the beauty of open standards...
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
This is assuming your organization is 100% Mac, of course. But Apple has released a Rendezvous SDK so hopefully some Windows/Linux clients will add support for this if they haven't already.
drop iChat, download the Developer Tools and the X11 enviroment, download the gaim sourcecode and compile yourself your own jabber + AIM + whatever client !
remember to check those lib dependencies !
Now, if only I knew more people with iChat AV. My problems with video conferencing come from AIM users on Windows, and normally because of firewall/router NAT issues.
Yahoo! Messenger for Mac only supports video chat, but not audio chat. So you can see your friend, but not hear them.
I guess you could use Yahoo! and Skype at once if you really wanted to avoid using AIM, but iChat's video quality is much better...
OpenBSD has had encrypted swap for a few years now.
Are you adequate?
/me looks at desktop
Oh look, here I am sat in front of Lotus Sametime at work, and I can see my father on AIM and my wife on iChat at home. All 3 of us can see each other and talk to each other, instigate 3 way chats etc.
From iChat, I can do video and audio with AIM perfectly smoothly (once AIM was configured to recognise the webcam - none of the simple "plug in iSight[1] and It Just Works(tm)")
This is running from a public AIM server, but would probably work as well from a private one.
[1] Other webcams *should* work just as well, but my experience is with the iSight, which *does*
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
Well, duh, but is Jabber really the best for that? How about, for example, BEEP?
The more openness, the more applause, of course.
But Apple is very much looking out for themselves first and foremost, and they still have a very long way to go before I give them a full-on standing ovation.
It's still vendor lock-in. It's still proprietary programs (Safari is closed, WebCore isn't).
Why should I have to write a better iCal? Had it been free, I could've "stood on it's shoulders". Apple Mail is also a program I'd want a better free version of.
Unless you're using some weird system I've never heard of, to move where you're typing, you'd need to bump the mouse *button*, which has nothing to do with whether there's a trackpad or trackpoint.
actually, this somehw happens to me frequently when I'm using a machine with a touchpad. and given the fact that tapping a touchpad can act like clicking the mouse, it's far more annoying than accidently bumping the trackpoint device.
Hypothesis: Macs tend to have a longer service life than PCs. Maybe it's worth it to have a trackpoint on PCs, since you're planning to replace it relatively soon, anyway, but on Macs you need something that works well for several years. (Or maybe it's *because* they last longer that they're in service longer.)
Of my two Toshiba laptops, the old one (which I used for 5 years and replaced only very recently) had a trackpoint style pointer which never gave me any problems except for an acceptably short interval of random drifting which occured very infrequently. The new one has a touchpad which is constantly driving me nuts even afteralmost 2 months of practice to gain proficiency with the pointing device.
other than a 5 year run with my trackpoint laptop, I don't have any good information on durability, but I would like to note that only my ancient serial-interface trackball has lasted longer than it as a functional pointing device (going on 8 years now and it's just starting to develop problems.)
You didn't answer parent post - how was Twirlip's post off-topic? It wasn't. It was the poster, not what he posted, and the reply as much as admitted this.
The Democratic Party: We've been pussies since 1968!
Oh, sure, if you turn on the "randomly click the button when I touch the touchpad" option.
Every touchpad-equiped machine I've ever used with the exception of one new HP notebook, had this option enabled by default and would randomly re-enable it if you tried to turn it off.
However, perhaps the Apple implementation of the touchpad is far superior to the other ones, which I've tried.
That would be lovely to have. While there are some open source alternatives (OhPhoneX and Gnomemeeting-via-Fink), it would be damn handy to have iChat talk to H323 clients, especially since modern H.323 Endpoints use the same codecs (H263, H264) as iChat.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
The Democratic Party: We've been pussies since 1968!
The Democratic Party: We've been pussies since 1968!
It's off by default on Apple laptops.
The person who thought of this option should be shot, and there is a special place in hell set aside for any marketing moron or PHB who decrees that it be enabled by default for all a company's laptops.