Microsoft, Yahoo Finally Merge IM Networks

WinBreak writes "Marketwatch is reporting that, nine months after their announcement, Microsoft and Yahoo! are finally ready to roll out beta IM clients of MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger that will be able to talk to each other." The Windows Live Ideas and Yahoo! Messenger pages have more information; the companies say that the resulting user community will be the world's largest, at around 350 million accounts, and that they'll be using SSL to encrypt the traffic between the systems.

Comments

Solution?

[Anonymous Coward]

A client to communicate with them all. And it's free for almost any operating system.

Re:Solution?

[Timesprout]

Right, get back to us in a few years when gaim supports voice and video and might actually be useable

Re:Solution?

[aymanh]

The difference, however, is that you need a separate account for each protocol when using Gaim. This merge means that one Yahoo or MSN account is enough to access both networks.

Gaim user here by the way, I haven't tried to contact an MSN user through my Yahoo account yet, and I wonder if it is (or will be) possible.

Re:Solution?

[ms1234]

One client in the darkness to bind them. Lets see how fast the worms spread after this.

Re:Solution?

[babbling]

Lets see how fast the worms spread after this.

This should slow down the propagation of worms. Suppose MSN and Yahoo have the same number of users. The space being searched has now doubled, so a worm affecting only one of the major clients (the MSN client or the Yahoo client) will need to attack double the number of users just to successfully infect the same number of users as it currently would.

Re:Solution?

[ozbon]

Surely that's what Trillian did ? One log-on, and contact with yahoo or msn (or AOL, or others that I never used)

Re:Solution?

[MarkByers]

This should slow down the propagation of worms ... The space being searched has now doubled

Most worms just grab the contact list and send themselves to all contacts, one after the other. There is no 'space' to search.

Re:Solution?

[Y-Studios]

GAIM is the solution... why bother with Microsoft & Yahoo.

Re:Solution?

[andrewman327]

I strongly prefer Yahoo!, but there are a lot of MSN users out there. I am glad that I will not have to run two memory-hogging clients at once and I only need to maintain one account.

Re:Solution?

[Valthan]

Yes, I used to use it and liked it a lot, but I couldn't file transfer and that is something I have to do very regularly with people who aren't so computer literate so it is a great feature that GAIM needs in order to become mainstream.

Can someone tell me if they have since added this feature when I was not looking (specifically for the MSN part of GAIM)

Re:Solution?

[Anonymous Coward]

Video and Voice?

Come on, who actually uses those services on a regular basis?

Re:Solution?

[Da_Weasel]

That made no sense at all! In general if you double the pool of users that can be infected, then you also double the number of users that will be infected.

--
I use gaim just because I like to be able to talk to people on any network if I feel like it, but in reality everyone I know uses AIM. I have hundreds of people in my AIM buddy list, and about 10 in all others combined. MSN and Yahoo both suck!

Re:Solution?

[babbling]

if you double the pool of users that can be infected, then you also double the number of users that will be infected.

You're assuming Yahoo users can be infected by MSN worms, and vice-versa. I'm assuming that can't happen, which means that each worm can only infect 50% of the users it comes into contact with, as opposed to 100% if the networks were to stay separate.

Of course, this is an overly simplified view, since I'm assuming that worms can infect based on which client is being used.

Re:Solution?

[nFriedly]

anybody heard of meebo? it's an AJAX frontend for gaim

http://meebo.com/

Re:Solution?

[letxa2000]

Not me, but a lot of people do. My wife does. It's viral. She was on Gaim until enough of her friends and family wanted to talk to her via voice and/or video and Gaim wouldn't do it. So she eventually installed MS MSN. So while I agree that a lot of us would never use audio/voice over Messenger, unfortunately a lot of people do. I'm sure my wife isn't the only person that left Gaim due to it lacking those features.

Re:Solution?

[tolan-b]

It'll take them twice as long to hit the same number of vulnerable clients.

Re:Solution?

[nine-times]

Huh? Is it hard to sign up for a free account with Yahoo, MSN, and AOL? I mean, I know it's different, but is that difference a problem?

Look, it's just some morons trying different power-plays. They want you to use AOL, but not MSN. Or they want you to use Yahoo and not AOL. And why? Because they want you to use their client, so you look at their ads.

So everyone, use GAIM. Don't let these companies push you around, plus you'll save yourself from looking at any ads or pop-ups or anything other than your own conversations.

Now we just need voice/video working in GAIM, and we're all set.

Re:Solution?

[rainman_bc]

Surely that's what Trillian did ? One log-on, and contact with yahoo or msn (or AOL, or others that I never used)

The only thing Trillian doesn't have in the free version that leaves me annoyed is the lack of jabber support. If they opened it up to the free version it would be the cat's ass of IM clients. Currently it's just almost totally the cat's ass of email clients :)

Re:Solution?

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? Is it hard to sign up for a free account with Yahoo, MSN, and AOL? I mean, I know it's different, but is that difference a problem?

Well considering that it's "hard" enough to prevent me signing on any of them.. multiply by three.

Re:Solution?

[Pyrowolf]

I'm totally going to get flamed for this - but I would bet dollars to donuts that the "Don't let these companies push you around, plus you'll save yourself from looking at any ads or pop-ups or anything other than your own conversations" people are the same ones who cry bloody murder when suddenly their open-source client stops working. "How can they do this!" yadda yadda yadda.


You are using THEIR servers, and then complain about having to see adverts in your IM client.

It's beyond me why people spend so much time and effort complaining about existing pseudo-free services and backwards engineering them - and don't put the efforts into creating truly OPEN and FREE clients that have the functionality people want, without the worries of x feature not working, or that your client stops working when they decide to shuffle protocol's around.

Re:Solution?

[Anonymous Coward]

You still need 1 account for every service on Trillian, just like with Gaim and every other multi-IM client.

Re:Solution?

[jagilbertvt]

This will promptly drop the 350million subscribers by half, as we all have accounts on both services in order to be able to talk to all our friends.

Re:Solution?

[Kelson]

In general if you double the pool of users that can be infected, then you also double the number of users that will be infected.

Depends on the type of malware. If we're talking about a trojan that gets itself installed by social engineering ("Hey, check this out!"), then you're correct. If we're talking about an actual worm, which exploits a flaw in the chat client to spread without user interaction, chances are that the Yahoo and MSN clients are going to have different vulnerabilities. In that case, a worm would either have to contain multiple exploits, or would find its effectiveness chopped in half since only half of its targets would be vulnerable.

Re:Solution?

[nine-times]

You are using THEIR servers, and then complain about having to see adverts in your IM client.

It's beyond me why people spend so much time and effort complaining about existing pseudo-free services and backwards engineering them - and don't put the efforts into creating truly OPEN and FREE clients that have the functionality people want, without the worries of x feature not working, or that your client stops working when they decide to shuffle protocol's around.

Um... people have made open, free clients. Jabber. It's good, and it works. The real problem comes when you have to talk to someone who is using AIM, Yahoo, MSN, or whatever, and then you're only using THEIR server to make a connection to someone THEY'VE suckered into watching ads. They really aren't providing any great service, but it's only that your average Joe has heard of AIM, but hasn't heard of Jabber.

Re:Solution?

[gauauu]

yeah, are subscribers independant people? I have multiple accounts for each service, for different reasons. 1 personal account in each, at least 1 work account in each, a work account from an old job that I still turn on to stay in contact with old coworkers, etc.

I think I count for at least 7 or 8 of those 350 million. :)

Re:Solution?

[Ilgaz]

If you don't have problem with closed source you should try stuff like Tipic.com , Jabber.com messengers.

They are very nice written stuff but ignored by people saying they (clients) are "closed source". Well, they can't open the source but you know Jabber is an open standard at last.

Tipic has even open standard based video: http://www.tipic.com/tipicim

Just if they managed to ship it for OS X... iChat can't be an excuse, it has very simple jabber support. Well, thanks to Apple anyway. They didn't HAVE TO do it.

Re:Solution?

[Ilgaz]

We can't blame Average Joe. If they (and their ISPs!) didn't hear about Jabber, it is somehow Jabber's fault.

I really wonder if all ISPs know about Jabber.

I wonder why Jabber community doesn't work with Tipic corp. (http://www.tipic.com ) to implement video/audio chat to jabber? Because they are closed source? Well, their server and client are closed source but they are using open standards.

Look what it says:

Tipic Voip/audio implementation is based on the following Open Source projects:

- http://iaxclient.sf.net/ Basic VOIP stack. Tipic added video, wideband audio and support for echo cancellation.
- http://www.speex.org/ Default audio Codec. Tipic sponsored the echo cancellation improvements.
- http://www.theora.org/ Default Video Codec.
- http://www.libsdl.org/ Video visualizzation in TipicIM.

So, they managed to make a open standards based video chat. Problem is, the geek community sees videochat as "lame". Well, average people LOVE it.

I wonder how many people congratulated them for implementing such a thing on Jabber?

I bet that Average Joe would use Jabber if it performs much better on video chat. That is the "geek vs average user" thing hurting open standards as usual.

Who used Mozilla while it was a total geek thing? How many average, non techie people use Firefox because it performs better and promises more security than IE?

Remember people blamed average Joe not using Mozilla giant instead of IE. Who's fault was that than?

Look to another example. Gizmo project is completely open source, not coded by guys who coded Kazaa and completely open standards based. It has many non techie, non geek users. Do you think they are impressed by GPL, RMS and open standards? No, Gizmo sounds better than Skype, that is all :)

Re:Solution?

[nine-times]

There is truth to what you're saying. I don't think I really intended to blame the average Joe, because what he's aware of is a direct result of what someone is trying to sell him. Most of the average Joes running firefox these days, I bet it's because some geek just installed it for them.

Ultimately, I think it's an issue of the chat client. People don't know that when they sign up for their AIM account that they're confining themselves to a proprietary standard. What's probably happened is either:

• Someone they know and wanted to talk to uses AIM
• That's just the software they've heard about, or the first one that was available.

It might not always be as simple as that, but it's probably pretty close. GAIM also has the unfortunate disadvantage of being ugly, and I think that's why most Mac users I know use Adium, but most Windows users seem to avoid GAIM. Same basic functionality, but Adium is pretty and GAIM isn't. But the client is a serious issue, because lots of the experience of chat is bound to the client, and not the protocol.

So I'm actually a bit hopeful that Jabber will become a more widely used protocol-- by virtue of GoogleTalk. Their client is decent, and they have voice chat.

Anyway, it isn't really because I'm some huge open-source fanatic, or have any huge amount of love for RMS. I just know that, for myself, when some company tries to push me around, treat me badly, or inhibit my ability to do things, I don't usually continue to partonize that company.

Re:Solution?

[Ilgaz]

Hi,

Thanks for not misunderstanding. Like you say, it is kind of "pyramid scheme". There must be a very unique feature in Jabber to convince them to switch.

The problem is, you can't find that feature.

What I say is, GAIM having multiple protocols gives people a false sense of comfort and kinda takes the potential geek support from Jabber protocol. I am using a stable but not so pretty as Adium client now and I live that false sense too.

The only thing Google did right was implementing Jabber protocol for their users. Perhaps one day Google with millions of users will convince people at ISP/Corparate Server level to try Jabber at least.

Remember FreeBSD'es greatest proof of stability was Yahoo.com running it. Still is. If someone asks "how seriously managed this OS?" , you reply "Apple OS X runs on it and Yahoo uses it".

What if Jabber, an open standard can't make to end users and companies? Look what is coming:
http://news.search.yahoo.com/search/news?p=microso ft%20corporate%20messaging

That is the issue...

Re:Solution?

[nine-times]

Thanks for not misunderstanding. Like you say, it is kind of "pyramid scheme". There must be a very unique feature in Jabber to convince them to switch.

I don't think that's necessarily the case. It's something that gets brandished about in lots of OSS discussions, this need for a "killer feature", but I don't think it's really what you need to get people to use F/OSS. Users will choose the software that meets their needs, that's pretty, that's appealing, that's easy to use, has fewer bugs, etc. Killer features help, but it's really about having a solid app with good usability.

Consider the case of Firefox. I don't think that there is any feature in Firefox that was a "killer feature". Pop-up blocking? It existed before Firefox. Extensions? Most users don't use them anyway. So why was Firefox reallly successful?

The first piece of the puzzle was that it did things that people wanted a web browser to do. It did them well, it did them securely, and it did them without any big hassles. Nothing innovative here. Other web browsers did the same things, or some of them did more, but Firefox had fewer headaches.

I have another theory why Firefox was successful, though, which is that it was because it looked like a regular application. Mozilla had this weird/funky skin that really didn't fit in with most linux distros, MacOS, or Windows. It seemed out of place, and people didn't like it because it was jarring. I think Opera still has this problem, in spite of being an excellent free browser.

Also, I think people didn't like having e-mail built into their browser. Whatever the technical reality was, it had the feeling of being excessive. And that was why Firefox was popular. It felt like a small, simple, attractive application that did exactly what you wanted for a specific task, and nothing else. I think that if GAIM was prettier, seemed to fit better with the OS, and didn't expect people to know what GTK was, it might enjoy the same sort of success that Firefox has.

So it looks like

[Anonymous Coward]

ms wasn't shitting us when they said they were going after google.

Oh well, I'll still use Gtalk :D

Re:So it looks like

[chrismcdirty]

Can I use Yahoo or MSN messengers through a webpage? That's how I use Gtalk at work. I can hide my conversations in a browser tab, and all the information is just being seen as normal web browsing traffic.

Re:So it looks like

[Zapd]

Can I use Yahoo or MSN messengers through a webpage?

Yes:
http://webmessenger.msn.com/

Re:So it looks like

[bheer]

> Can I use Yahoo or MSN messengers through a webpage?

http://webmessenger.msn.com/. Or Google [Yahoo Web Messenger].

Re:So it looks like

[evil_core]

"all the information is just being seen as normal web browsing traffic." You can use alternately normal jabber client with jabber server that allow to connect on port 80th.

Re:So it looks like

[nurmr]

http://www.meebo.com/

Re:So it looks like

[witherstaff]

Head on over to http://meebo.com/ for web based I/M that hits the major networks. Great to get around company firewalls too.

Re:So it looks like

[z0idberg]

Entering my username and password into a third party "untrusted" site like that makes me very uncomfortable.

I tried it once and it worked but after logging out changed my passwords and never used it again. Sure the passwords are probably "Passwords encrypted with 1024-bit RSA keys. Copyright 2005-2006 Meebo, Inc. All rights reserved." as it says on the site, but I dont really want to take that chance.

Re:So it looks like

[Insightfill]

Also out there for AIM - "AIM Express"

Re:So it looks like

[aembleton]

Or Meebo: http://www18.meebo.com/

Now can we add AIM?

[fyonn]

I think virtually every user wants all the IM networks to interconnect and from 4 big IM networks, we've had two mergers. First AIM and ICQ interconnected and now MSN and yahoo. lets get these two big networks to talk to each other and settle all the messing about!

dave

Re:Now can we add AIM?

[tapo]

AIM is federating with Google Talk. This can mean one of two things.

1. Google is building some sort of stupid AIM functionality into their client.

2. AOL will realize that staying a closed network will cause them to go the way of the dodo, and the best way to keep their users is open up an XMPP (Jabber) gateway. Not a transport mind you, a full-blown gateway that makes it transparent, allowing AOL to use their existing OSCAR protocol in-house while talking to the Jabber network.

If this occurs, and Microsoft stops being so damn obsessed with SIP/SIMPLE (which I bet is how they're communicating with Yahoo), we can finally have interoperable instant messaging.

Re:Now can we add AIM?

[alexhs]

lets get these two big networks to talk to each other and settle all the messing about!

Great! More cross-IM malware to come ! Spammers and others won't have to spam multiple IM networks. They would only need to infect one, probably the weakest link... :D

Re:Now can we add AIM?

[fyonn]

They would only need to infect one, probably the weakest link...

isn't the weakest link typically the users?

dave

Re:Now can we add AIM?

[fyonn]

yeah, but how many people (even on slashdot where geeks are common) actually *use* google talk? I've got an account, and even set up ichat to use it but I never log into it now as I don't know anyone else who uses it.

so yeah, it's nice that googletalk and AIM might interoperate, but I think the real action will be when msn and aim interoperate.

dave

Re:Now can we add AIM?

[ChiPHeaD23]

No.

YOU are the weakest link. Goodbye.

Re:Now can we add AIM?

[Xymor]

Well, everytime I login to get my emails, I exchange a few words with whomever is online. That google talk inside the gmail is great. Plus using google desktop or even gmail in trillian, i can get my email delivered straight to my desktop(without the pop/smtp/imap hassle).

Re:Now can we add AIM?

[Niten]

That's more or less how I used to feel about my Jabber account. But since Google Talk has come along, I've been finding it easier to convince my friends to make the switch.

To begin with, I had been urging my AIM-using friends to switch to the GAIM/Adium clients for a couple of years now, which was easy because the official AIM client is such a kludge. Since many of my friends use GMail anyway, once they were using a multi-protocol IM client it was easy to get them to take the extra step of signing onto their Google Talk accounts. Some of them even started using Google Talk of their own accord.

In the last few months, I've actually spent more time talking with my friends over Jabber than using AIM or any other protocol. The use of Jabber (especially Google Talk) within my circle of friends seems to have reached a critical mass now - even my non-technical friends are starting to use it. I can only imagine that this trend will continue.

You're right, though: The really big news would be if AIM and MSN were to interoperate.

Re:Now can we add AIM?

[Kadin2048]

I thought the same thing -- "neato, but why bother when I'll never have anyone to talk to" -- until I started to see people pop up as Available on my GTalk contact list.

Since they've built the chat features into GMail, I know a lot of people who use it, particularly from work. Quite a few people I know just leave their GMail open at work in the background in a browser window, and this means that they're signed on to GTalk.

I guess this may not apply if your friends all don't use GMail for their personal email, but a lot of mine do. The person that uses Hotmail or Yahoo Mail is the exception rather than the rule, and I think this is only going to grow since I've seen a lot of recent college grads signing up for GMail (even non-techie ones), while previously they might have gone for Hotmail or Yahoo. (I think the major selling point of Gmail is actually that the namespace for email addresses isn't as exhausted as Hotmail's or Yahoo's are, meaning you have a shot of getting your real name, plus it doesn't have quite the "Internet ghetto" reputation that a Hotmail address does. Even my mother knows that a Hotmail address is the shitty basement apartment of the virtual world.)

Re:Now can we add AIM?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aha ha ha. Oh, gosh that's funny. That's really funny. Do you write your own material? Do you? Because that is so fresh. You are the weakest link goodbye. You know, I've never heard anyone make that joke before. Mmm. You're the first. I've never heard anyone reference, reference that outside the program before. Because that's what she says on the show right? Isn't it? You are the weakest link goodbye. And yet, you have taken that and used it out of context, to insult me in this everyday situation. God what a clever, smart girl you must be, to come up with a joke like that all by yourself. Mmm, that's so fresh too. Any titanic jokes you want to throw at me while we're hitting these at the height of their popularity? Hmm? Cause... I'm here. God you're SO funny.

Re:Now can we add AIM?

[ArchAbaddon]

Ha ha ha! Oh gosh that's funny! That's really funny! Do you write your own material? Do you? Because that is so fresh. You are the weakest link goodbye. You know, I've, I've never heard anyone make that joke before. Hmm. You're the first. I've never heard anyone reference, reference that outside the program before. Because that's what she says on the show right? Isn't it? You are the weakest link goodbye. And, and yet you've taken that and used it out of context to insult me in this everyday situation. God what a clever, smart girl you must be, to come up with a joke like that all by yourself. That's so fresh too. Any, any Titanic jokes you want to throw at me too as long as we're hitting these phenomena at the height of their popularity. God you're so funny!

Sorry, couldn't resist. Carry on...

Re:Now can we add AIM?

[ejp1082]

Gah - I wish I could have that kind of luck... so far I haven't gotten much of anyone to switch to Google Talk, even amongst those with Gmail accounts. Most still message me over AIM, perhaps out of habit more than anything else.

I've considered simply quitting AIM myself and forcing them to contact me over Jabber/GTalk... but I have a feeling I'd wind up losing friends rather than converting them to a new network.

Here's to hoping that the Google/AOL relationship means they'll be doing their own link up sometime soon, then I can viably just use one jabber account. (The number of people I know who exclusively use Yahoo or MSN is pretty marginal).

I guess the best case scenario would be for Google to simply jabber gateways on their own network... but I suppose such a move would be insta-lawsuit for them, whether such a suit has merits or not.

Re:Now can we add AIM?

[Black.Shuck]

Aha ha ha. Oh, gosh that's so f...

Oh to Hell with it.

Re:Now can we add AIM?

[One_6453]

Come on, mods! This is at least funny. Its probably one of the funniest oof Stewie's comebacks.

Re:Now can we add AIM?

[One_6453]

C'mon people! This is probably one of Stewie's funniest comebacks ever. At least mod it funny.

Re:Now can we add AIM?

[makomk]

Hmmm... now that LiveJournal is developing a Jabber server, I wonder if that will affect things? Should be interesting...

Re:Now can we add AIM?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah......

Unfortunately, as it turns out, "Stewie's funniest comeback ever" is less funny than lame gameshow lines used out of context.

Re:Now can we add AIM?

[Baloo Ursidae]

Umm, Jabber already did this years ago, and Jabber is also the only open IM network. Really, though, compatability with the now-obsolete closed networks is mostly to help aid transition until your contacts also use Jabber.

Re:Now can we add AIM?

[complete loony]

Tell me about it. Why just this week I signed my 6yo daughter up with a GMail account...

Re:Now can we add AIM?

[darco]

No, there is a third (and more likely, IMHO) option, which is that AOL/Google creates a jabber gateway that only works for google talk users. At least at first.

Even if it doesn't open up AIM completely, it will allow people to more easily migrate to an open IM platform via google talk (jabber/xmpp).

Wow, I would have never expected that to happen

[ben there...]

I wonder what it means for Gaim and Trillian.

Or Google's Jabber client. I have a Jabber server, but I never use it. Does anyone use Jabber?

Re:Wow, I would have never expected that to happen

[fishdan]

Open protocols are good for open source. Gaim and Adium are my prefered clients on linux and mac respectively, but I use yahoo messenger on windows, and I like *some* of the bells and whistles. I certainly enjoy the integration with Yahoo music.

It would be nice to see there be some official standards of a chat protocol. The thing that is in the way of us achieving of truly open chat is the fact that the account providers think they "own" the users -- which is why they are possesive about them. Not sure how to get around that either.

Re:Wow, I would have never expected that to happen

[eipgam]

I can't see if affecting Gaim much. I use it because I dislike all the other clients and I suspect the same is true for a lot of other people. Oh, and I use Jabber (google talk).

Re:Wow, I would have never expected that to happen

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Many are using Jabber today. Although until the Jabber community gets video and voice, it won't become mainstream. Simple as that.

Re:Wow, I would have never expected that to happen

[TheRaven64]

Or Google's Jabber client. I have a Jabber server, but I never use it. Does anyone use Jabber?

Yes. About 70% of the people on my contact list have a Jabber account, 30% use ICQ/AIM and 60% use MSN. Note: Some people have more than one, which is why the numbers do not add up to 100%.

Re:Wow, I would have never expected that to happen

[smallpaul]

It would be nice to see there be some official standards of a chat protocol.

There is: http://www.jabber.org/

The thing that is in the way of us achieving of truly open chat is the fact that the account providers think they "own" the users -- which is why they are possesive about them.

Yes, that is the problem. It has nothing to do with technology or standards availability.

Re:Wow, I would have never expected that to happen

[slack-fu]

I do believe that IRC is the official chat protocal...

Re:Wow, I would have never expected that to happen

[Rob T Firefly]

Just a theory, but could Jabber finally take off in the mainstream if the commercial IM services keep absorbing one another? Open-source IM may catch on more if it's just one out of three big protocols instead of the one among many it once was. Additionally, once commercial IM is in a big duopoly (or even eventually monopoly) they may well feel they have the opportunity to leverage their market share into more money (by dumping more ads or spam on users, for instance) which will piss just that many more people off enough to go FOSS.

Re:Wow, I would have never expected that to happen

[Anonymous Coward]

Many millions of people use XMPP/Jabber across many thousands of servers.

A lot of people don't see it though as the majority of those users are using it as a secure I.M. system within large enterprise companies.

XMPP is the big hope for I.M. though. Google are popularising it with their Google Talk service (and embedding it into Gmail, which was a brilliant idea) and it is picking up momentum now.

Last week LiveJournal launched their own I.M. service, which was based on XMPP, and the Google Talk-AIM interoperability initiative should bear fruit sometime soon.

No one outside Google and AOL know exactly how the interoperation will work, but it's to be hoped that all XMPP servers will be able to easily I.M. with AIM users without having to have an AIM account. If AIM switched to an XMPP backend we could possibly see an announcement that XMPP has more than the 350 million users that Yahoo!/MSN are touting.

If XMPP does become the de-facto standard (it's already the official I.M. standard) hopefully both Yahoo! and MSN will switch to it too and we can finally use the client and service we want and be able to I.M. anyone else in the world no matter who they're with and what client they're using.

Re:Wow, I would have never expected that to happen

[GreatBunzinni]

I use Jabber exclusively, almost all my friends use it (to talk with the ones that don't, some Jabber servers offers transport services) and my ISP is even kind enough to offer it's own jabber servers with transport services to MSN, AIM and IRC.

I really believe that Jabber is the best thing that happened to the IM world ever. It's only a shame that inertia alone keeps people holding on to services like AIM, MSN or even ICQ. I mean, the protocol is extremelly well thought out and the developing community is vibrant and coming up with excellent ideas like jingle, which offers voice chat.

So why doesn't Microsoft (and other companies too) follow the example given by google and instead of rolling their own protocols (MSN keeps on altering them God knows why) contribute to the jabber standards?

Re:Wow, I would have never expected that to happen

[Yvan256]

>So why doesn't Microsoft (and other companies too) follow the example given by google and instead of rolling their own protocols (MSN keeps on altering them God knows why) contribute to the jabber standards?

So let me get this straight: you're wondering why Microsoft is pushing their own protocol, you're wondering why they keep altering it AND you're wondering why they're not pushing an open standard instead?

You REALLY must be new here.

Re:Wow, I would have never expected that to happen

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I have a Jabber server, but I never use it. Does anyone use Jabber?

Yes. I've seen quite a few more people using it because of Google's efforts. What I''d like to see is AOL move completely to Jabber and partner with IBM, Apple, and other players to make it the built in protocol in all their offerings.

Re:Wow, I would have never expected that to happen

[N7DR]

Or Google's Jabber client. I have a Jabber server, but I never use it. Does anyone use Jabber?

Well of course the silly answer is, Yes. The slightly less silly answer is that I too have a jabber server, and have been happily running it for several years, and using it essentially every day. Right now, I'm using it to read the commentary on a cricket match.

Sure I have accounts on a couple of the commercial IM networks, and it's true that sometimes one does have to resort to using them, but only for the same reason that people seem to put up with Windows: they'll put up with the commercial IM networks because no amount of arguing will convince them that there could be anything better. (At least, no amount of arguing from me ever seems to have any effect.) If someone asks for my IM handle, I never volunteer one of my commercial names unless I really want to talk to them, and even then I make a point of telling them that I'm on jabber but going through a gateway to get to their commercial network. Even if it doesn't make them change, I figure that if they want to talk to me, they might want to talk to other geeks, and if they hear the same thing from a few people they might eventually want to consider switching, even if it's only as far as google.

Re:Wow, I would have never expected that to happen

[bluejeff31]

My last 2 companies have used Jabber as an internal chat server, other than cases like that most people are using AIM or MSN it seems.

Re:Wow, I would have never expected that to happen

[Lord of Ironhand]

I've tried jabber in the past, in fact I tried quite hard... but I ran into several little problems that annoyed me, one of the major ones being that when someone's connection to their jabber server times out I do not get notified of this, instead it appears as though the user is still online as normal.

Another problem I encountered is that when I set up my own server, it had trouble communicating with some of the main open jabber servers (jabber.com or jabber.org, I forgot which); with the problem appearing to be either simple unwillingness on the side of the remote server, or a slight difference in the implementation of the protocol.

I'm still willing to try again though... can anyone tell me whether the problems above are either resolved, or maybe a result of incompetence on my part? And also, can someone point me to a simple & solid opensource Jabber server that runs on Debian? I do definitely like the thought behind Jabber.

Re:Wow, I would have never expected that to happen

[nine-times]

I wonder what it means for Gaim and Trillian.

GAIM will still have an audience with Linux users, Mac users (via Adium), and any Windows users who have multiple IM accounts, like OSS, or just IMing without ads. Sounds like the same audience they had two days ago.

Or Google's Jabber client. I have a Jabber server, but I never use it. Does anyone use Jabber?

Lots of people have gmail, and each of them basically have a Jabber account already. Even if you don't use Google's client, they have it built into Gmail via a web interface. This means that there are probably lots of people using Jabber right now who've never heard of "Jabber". My mother is one (and she's no computer geek).

Re:Wow, I would have never expected that to happen

[Sangbin]

We do at work. They're great as an internal chat system.

Re:Wow, I would have never expected that to happen

[SuperQ]

check out wildfire server (jivesoftware.com). Yes, it's java.. but it works really well, and I have yet to see it crash. I communicate with many people with gmail accounts and a few other servers. I allow all the users of my machine to use it via their LDAP accounts, so they don't even have to setup stuff.. just put the config into Gaim/TrillianPro. ugh.. why can't Trillan make jabber part free :(

Re:Wow, I would have never expected that to happen

[Blakey Rat]

Why would it mean anything to GAIM and Trillian? When AIM and ICQ became interoperable, did it mean anything for GAIM and Trillian?

Re:Wow, I would have never expected that to happen

[ben there...]

It could mean that Gaim will have to redo portions of their code for those protocols. It could mean that the friends list would work differently somehow. I don't know, that's why I asked.

Re:Wow, I would have never expected that to happen

[ben there...]

Right now, I'm using it to read the commentary on a cricket match.

Whoa! Where do you get cricket commentary for Jabber? Are there feeds for other things?

If someone asks for my IM handle, I never volunteer one of my commercial names unless I really want to talk to them, and even then I make a point of telling them that I'm on jabber but going through a gateway to get to their commercial network.

If I tried to give any of my real life friends a screen name that wasn't on one of the major networks, they'd look at me like I was crazy, then proceed to laugh at me. I don't know how to overcome that. Even if I tell them about it, they still won't use it.

I gave out Jabber accounts on my server to a few online friends. I don't think any of them use it after giving it a trial run though. Nothing tangible to gain from it, I think.

Encryption

[Henry V .009]

Wow -- encrypting traffic "between the two companies' computers" according to the article. Would it really kill them to encrypt all messages between users?

Re:Encryption

[plumby]

How often do you need encryption on your IM conversations? Personally, I'm rarely bothered about anyone eavesdropping on me asking my sister how she is.

It may occasionally be useful as an option, but it seems like overkill for the other 99.9% of conversations.

Re:Encryption

[Henry V .009]

Overkill? Oh no, my computer is working harder than it should! Look, for 99.9% of conversations, I don't care that there are legal protections keeping the government from tapping my phone without a court order. But I, and everybody else, is still damn glad that protection exists.

Re:Encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

Your "sister"? Does your wife know about this "sister"?

And do you see the point here? Not everything legal is moral, not everything illegal is immoral. E.g., trade secrets are usually neither illegal nor immoral. Do you want your mom's secret cookie recipe to fall into the wrong hands?

And AFIAC absolutely none of it is the government's or anyone else's business. I'd like to see encryption built into every IM and email client, even if I didn't need to use it myself. Your processor cycles and memory are being wasted on useless eye candy, bells, and whistles, I think encryption is a lot more important than "transparent windows" or such nonsense.

Re:Encryption

[codemaster2b]

Even IF they did encrypt all traffic between users, I wouldn't trust them. I want ONLY me and the person I'm talking to able to decrypt the message. This is why I use Trillian and encrypt the messages myself.

If we got lulled into thinking that everything is safe because its encrypted, then the government or any "Microsoft Business Partners", etc. etc, can spy on us. I vote for mandatory encryption at the user level with a technology that cannot be translated by the Servers.

Re:Encryption

[AnyoneEB]

You mean the Trillian SecureIM with absolutely no verification on the key exchange (and therefore no attempt to stop a man in the middle attack)? The one that it would be trival to implement a server which kept a plain-text copy of every message invisible to both sides? If you really care about protecting your messages, use something like OTR, which is actually secure. According to this topic, if you have Trillian Pro, there is a plug-in you can use like the gaim-otr plugin, otherwise you can use otr-proxy with any AIM client. Personally, I use gaim-encryption more, but that, of course, is gaim-only.

Re:Encryption

[GreatBunzinni]

Everyone can do that if they choose to go with Jabber and adopt the right IM client.

The first client that comes to mind is Psi, which has a great support for OpenPGP encryption. The jabber standards require SSL/TSL encryption to start a XML stream and the client itself is capable of encrypting your messages without a problem. So, as it is easy to see, there is absolutely no need for a new protocol. I guess the only barrier here is the phobia of open-ness, which makes all those companies cringe at open standards and protocols.

Re:Encryption

[nottestuser]

Yes, well, that's nice and all but you know the NSA has a direct tap on the plain text communications before they get encrypted and sent to the other service so it's worthless. (Two years ago that would have sounded really paranoid. Not so much now, huh?)

End point encryption is the only thing useful these days. And even that isn't as useful as we all thought because NSA is proving that they don't really need to know what you're saying. They have enough information on everyone that if they know who you're talking to, they can guess what you're saying to them.

Re:Encryption

[plumby]

She didn't say the same about you.

Re:Encryption

[plumby]

Overkill, as in development effort spent delivering functionality that virtually no-one needs. And as for 'my computer working harder than it should' - if the message needs to be passed between MSN and Yahoo's networks, it's going to need to be decrypted in the middle to be converted between message formats. The processor cost of managing that many SSL connections at MS or Yahoo would be huge.

Re:Encryption

[bitt3n]

Personally, I'm rarely bothered about anyone eavesdropping on me asking my sister how she is.

That's a relief.

PS. I hope she's feeling better -- summer colds are the worst.

Re:Encryption

[Just Some Guy]

How often do you need encryption on your IM conversations?

Always.

Personally, I'm rarely bothered about anyone eavesdropping on me asking my sister how she is.

Here's the thing: if you pass plaintext traffic 99.9% of the time, it's going to look awfully suspicious when you encrypt that remaining 0.1%. Maybe you're only asking your coworker what kind of beer to buy for that party you're having and don't want the nosy network admin reading about it (or insert other innocent use here), but suddenly your messages stick out like a sore thumb.

Encrypt your traffic whenever possible even if you don't need it. If and when you actually do need it, you'll be glad you did.

Re:Encryption

[nine-times]

Instant messages shouldn't need to go through MS or Yahoo. Central servers should be able to resolve names and maybe negotiate the initial connection somehow, but the messages should be able to be sent P2P.

Re:Encryption

[nine-times]

Well, it's not necessary most of the time, but for every medium of communication I use, there are times I wish it were encrypted. How much processing power does it take to encrypt "Hello"? What's the harm in encrypting? I've never understood why all communications over the internet don't have some level of encryption by default. Well, maybe web/ftp servers sending what they intend to be public information-- maybe that doesn't require encryption. But e-mail? Why don't we encrypt e-mail?

Re:Encryption

[ModernGeek]

Kind of like using a paper shredder to shred one or two pages of documents, when all your credit card offers are just sitting there unshredded in your trash. Whoever sees those few shredded papers is going to be very curious as to what they may reveal, but if you shred everything from old christmas cards to random magazine pages, it would just be impractical to try and find those one or two sensitive documents.

Re:Encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

How often do you need encryption on your IM conversations?

sup... hey.... we're encrypted now -- no parents logging now, LOL ... buh byez

Re:Encryption

[geekoid]

yes, but if you only encrypt some of them, that is 'Suspicious Activity'.

Seriously.

Re:Encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

until they find out that someone in your family isn't "doing too well, cancer" uh oh. emloyee 631018 has a family history of cancer - mark that down in their file, it may come in handy as senior mgt. has asked us to lower our health premiums.

Re:Encryption

[Kaenneth]

Microsoft's Messengers have been using SSL or greater level of encryption from since the very first build. (it also used to be 100kb.)

Re:Encryption

[plumby]

At least partly because, as I've mentioned, decent encryption is not free. For you, decrypting your single "Hello" message it's not an issue, but for the mail server encrypting all of the messages that it's sending is a different matter (in particular the negotiation of certificates for each different connection). Our mainframes and web servers have separate encryption cards for this reason.

Re:Encryption

[gbjbaanb]

From an end-user POV, nothing to do with open-ness, I use Messenger as all the people at work use it, and I've grown accustomed to it. That's it. If it used Jabber protocol, I'd use it, but I'd still be using the Messenger application.

MS might possibly switch to using Jabber, but that'd cost them a lot to change things over, and then they'd want to enhance the protocol to handle some things that the MSN protocol allowed but Jabber doesn't, and then the open source community would start to shout how MS is embracing and extending and is trying to break existing apps and would still refuse to use it, and so really there'd be no point in changing the protocol over.

Nice idea though :-)

(oh, and I use Simplite to encrypt my MSN IMs at work, it works nicely).

Re:Encryption

[nine-times]

I was thinking you'd do it in the mail client. You're right, it's one of those things where, my computer encrypting/decrypting my messages probably won't be that much, but doing thousands of transactions an hour will take its toll.

At least for personal e-mail, client-side encryption shouldn't really be a problem. The problem is, what if you're a company who wants to be able to scan your employees e-mails? Well, yes, that's a problem, but I don't think it's an unsurmountable problem. When you consider the sort of sensitive material that circulates in e-mail these days, it seems like it's worth someone figuring out. Computers keep getting faster, but the e-mail server's job isn't getting much more complicated (at least yet). Sooner or later, maybe we'll just have the CPU cycles to spare.

Re:Encryption

[StikyPad]

The problem is that if things aren't regularly encrypted, then the mere act of using encryption becomes suspicious.

Re:Encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

Before you listen to any more drivel by 'AntDude', take a look at who you're dealing with: http://pbx.mine.nu/antdude.jpg. The abortion in the center is 'AntDude'. I won't even get into discussion about him listing his 'sex' as 'female' on his SHITTY 'blog' (aqfl.net). This faggot has nothing better to do than sit on the internet and spew worthless garbage. He's the new LostCluster when it comes to posting utterly worthless tripe. Not to mention his submitted stories! Every single one of his last 10 or so submissions have been tagged as 'lame' or 'slownewsday'. Why does taco even bother posting his shit. Maybe he gets some tiny deformed chinese cock up his taco ass in exchange for some linkspam with google ads? Do the world a favor and never reply to comments from ANTDUDE and mark him as a FOE.

Re:Encryption

[sandn]

Before you listen to any more drivel by 'AntDude', take a look at who you're dealing with: http://pbx.mine.nu/antdude.jpg. The abortion in the center is 'AntDude'. I won't even get into discussion about him listing his 'sex' as 'female' on his SHITTY 'blog' (aqfl.net). This faggot has nothing better to do than sit on the internet and spew worthless garbage. He's the new LostCluster when it comes to posting utterly worthless tripe. Not to mention his submitted stories! Every single one of his last 10 or so submissions have been tagged as 'lame' or 'slownewsday'. Why does taco even bother posting his shit. Maybe he gets some tiny deformed chinese cock up his taco ass in exchange for some linkspam with google ads? Do the world a favor and never reply to comments from ANTDUDE and mark him as a FOE.

Re:Encryption

[plumby]

The problem with doing it client side is that you need the certificate of anyone that's going to send you an email before you can read it. Once you have exchanged certificates, it is perfectly possible to encrypt every message. We use Entrust at work to do precisely that.

Re:Encryption

[plumby]

The problem is that to encrypt the 99.9% (and if you're talking about all internet traffic, it's going to be much higher than that) of traffic that's not important, you are using up vast amounts of processor power at every server to support this.

If you're just talking about your own traffic, all you are doing is making an even bigger red light flash that you might be doing something suspicious. If I send one message encrypted, the chances are that it'll go unnoticed by anyone. If I have encryption on everything, then anyone who ever looks at any of my traffic will notice and flag me as someone who looks like they might have something to hide.

Re:Encryption

[nine-times]

It's not as though you'd necessarily have to fetch that certificate manually, though. You can have the client fetch them automatically upon receipt of a message from a new sender.

Re:Encryption

[plumby]

And where would it get it from? If the information about where to get the certificate from is in the message, then anyone intercepting the message can also request it.

Re:Encryption

[nine-times]

When I connet to an SSL server, do I need to go to a third-party site and download a certificate, manually install it, etc? If I use PGP, the PGP software fetches keys automatically from a key server.

Further, a lot less is needed if you just want to encrypt data, without necessarily verifying the identity of the sender. In my mind, even a very simple encryption without identity verification would be a step in the right direction.

Re:Encryption

[Serpent Mage]

You mean like what gmail does? The point of jabber is that there is a standard base of interoperability among any clients. However it is in the protocol specifically designed to allow custom extensions so that only applications which support the custom extensions will work. Gmail uses this to handle their voice over ip and video stuff. MTV uses this to handle their online gaming stuff. There is another company about to release a product (i'm under NDA to not give out the details) which uses this to handle a lot of their underlying synchronizations and safety checks.

Fact is though that will all of these, you can still use any jabber client to do everything except the application proprietary functionality and basic chatting is all that 99% of the users even care about. Let MS embrace and extend all they like. It is fine. It is the lockout and breaking of existing applications that everyone has a problem with.

Re:Encryption

[plumby]

When I connet to an SSL server, do I need to go to a third-party site and download a certificate, manually install it, etc?

That involves both a real-time two way conversation between the browser and the server (with the browser passing down some random data and the server using that random data in its encryption) - without this, the encryption is pretty pointless (anyone requesting the key to decrypt the message would be given exactly the same one). This is not practical in email (certainly client to client encryption), which is asynchronous by nature - what happens if your email client and their email client aren't online at the same time?

It also requires that, as your browser has no way of knowing whether the site is trustworthy, the token has been signed by an signing authority that it does already trust, such as Verisign. If you want to set up an SSL connection to a server that has its own generated keys, then you do need to manually load the certificate.

Re:Encryption

[nine-times]

You don't need to manually install the certificate. Your browser will probably warn you that the cert might not be trustworthy, and ask you whether you want to trust it.

There really are two different problems here. The first is encryption, and the second, as you say, is that, "your browser has no way of knowing whether the site is trustworthy". Yes, in either case, there's a requirement that you trade some data with someone at some point. However, it's entirely possible to derive an encyption scheme that would make it difficult for a 3rd party to snoop on your e-mail, but without any ability to verify that the recipient, who you've presumably traded keys with, was the person you meant to trade keys with.

In order to have "trust", just as you said, you need a 3rd party signing authority which you already trust, in order to make sure that the keys in question are valid for the recipient in question. But a lack of that trust doesn't prevent you from running some sort of encryption.

Of course, none of this is without problems. Still, I think I'd rather have something than nothing.

Re:Encryption

[plumby]

But none of that addresses the key problem that for mail client-mail client encryption, you need to have either exchanged keys in advance (through some route that a hacker is unlikely to have intercepted) or you need both clients to be online, and communicating, simultaneously.

If you want to go down the former route, that's perfectly possible with current technology.

Re:Encryption

[nine-times]

...or you need a 3rd party server to handle the exchange of keys. Yes, some data will need to be exchanged at some point in order to encrypt transmission. However, it would still be possible to make an encryption scheme that:

1. encrypted mail on the client end.
2. didn't require manual transmission of keys directly to a client in advance.
3. didn't require a live client-to-client connection at any point.
4. and was therefore fairly seamless to the user.

The key here (no pun intended) is that it's possible to have enough information to encrypt a message without having enough information to decrypt that same message. PGP has been operating this way for years, with public keys shared on key servers.

But I thought...

[PrescriptionWarning]

that bastard children had incubation periods of at least a year

YAY! That means less engineering...

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

for the Trillian engineers! Seriously Instant Messaging needs to be opened up into SOME standard. I think MSFT/YHOO just got tired of being AOL's bitch. It isn't like they care about you you know.

Re:YAY! That means less engineering...

[Drencrom]

How about this standard?

Re:YAY! That means less engineering...

[AndrewNeo]

Why does that mean less engineering for them? It's not like they're going to say, "Okay, MSN and Yahoo merged, so we're going to pick one, stop working on the other, and force you to use it." I'll probably never use the cross-client messaging, because I have accounts on both services. Why would the IM clients be any different?

Re:YAY! That means less engineering...

[heatdeath]

for the Trillian engineers! Seriously Instant Messaging needs to be opened up into SOME standard. I think MSFT/YHOO just got tired of being AOL's bitch. It isn't like they care about you you know.

Tired of being AOL's bitch? Microsoft already had the bigger network worldwide. AOL is only in the US.

MS Messanger actully works?

[OctoberSky]

I thought it was just there to temp you to (unsuccessfully) delete it from your computer. I didn't know it was an actual messanger.

Re:MS Messanger actully works?

[eric_brissette]

You might be thinking of Windows Messenger.. the icon on the system tray looks about the same as MSN Messneger's.. but it has about 1/3 of the retarded features.

Re:MS Messanger actully works?

[jizziknight]

If you're having problems removing Windows Messenger, try this. Works for me every time. You'll probably also want to remove the /Program Files/Messenger directory afterwards as well.

aMSN in Linux?

[MMC Monster]

Anyone know how does this effects aMSN? The reason I ask is that aMSN supposedly supports video chat, which GAIM doesn't support yet (and likely won't support in 2.0.0).

Can aMSN be used for video chat between 2 yahoo users now?

Re:aMSN in Linux?

[RagingFuryBlack]

No, I'd assume not. However, i've also found aMSN to be very unreliable. Kopete is the better choice for video chats.

Re:aMSN in Linux?

[MMC Monster]

I am implying that Gaim-vv is in the process of being merged into Gaim, but that the merger will not happen until 2.0 is released. The Gaim-vv website says that gaim-vv is dead. I don't think we should be using (unsupported) "dead" software, in case a security issue were to develop.

Re:aMSN in Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think Gaim will include gaim-vv code in 2.0, I have a bridge to sell you. You shouldn't talk about things like that unless, at the very least, you read the dev lists.

Re:aMSN in Linux?

[matts-reign]

In order to use the new MSN-Yahoo interop, the MSN client must be using version 14 of the protocol (MSNP14). This is considerably different from previous versions, and has not yet been implemented by any third party client, although I'm sure there are some people very hard at work getting the new protocol reverse engineered.

gaim-vv

[Anonymous Coward]

Try this out and please stop trolling.

Re:gaim-vv

[Timesprout]

So not yet released, original project is dead, might be in version 2.0 of gaim, no MSN support, no Windows support. Thats a sure fire OS solution to a 350 million user messaging service.

Re:gaim-vv

[_xeno_]

It's not dead, it's been merged back in with GAIM, which as you can clearly see, hasn't had a new release in just a month shy of a year.

Fortunately GAIM doesn't work under Windows with GTK+ 2.8, so I can't use it at all anymore. (All versions, including the 2.0 betas which haven't seen a new release since March.)

Re:gaim-vv

[jrumney]

I'm using WinGaim (2.0beta3) with GTK+ 2.8.18 right now. What exactly doesn't work for you?

Re:gaim-vv

[_xeno_]

Connecting, to anything. It's on the known issues list. You cannot be using WinGaim 2.0beta3 with GTK+ 2.8.18, because it doesn't work - I've tried it. It disconnects almost immediately and fails to stay connected. It's caused by a race condition, so if you're using an exceptionally slow computer, it may be possible to stay connected, but it doesn't work in all but the luckiest cases.

Re:gaim-vv

[jrumney]

The bug report says that specifically the problem is in GLib 2.8. Mine uses GLib 2.10, so maybe it is fixed there?

Re:gaim-vv

[tomstdenis]

gaim-vv may not be ported to windows but gaim is. So long as they don't drastically [or at all] change the protocols you're set for MSN and YM on windows with Gaim.

Besides, the users can CHOOSE to use whatever the fuck they want. the goal of Gaim isn't to control the IM market. It doesn't even have its own protocol!!!

Tom

Re:gaim-vv

[_xeno_]

Like I just said, I've tried it with GTK+ 2.8.18 which includes glib 2.10.3 - and it doesn't work. It gets stuck at connecting, and then immediately disconnects. If you read the bug report GAIM linked to, you'll eventually discover that it's actually a bug in GAIM that causes this, and not in glib. There was a bug in the glib included with GTK+ 2.6 which allowed GAIM to work anyway.

In any case, I can't use GTK+ 2.6 due to bugs in it that prevent other programs from working, so I'm stuck with simply being unable to use GAIM until they fix their connecting bug.

Re:gaim-vv

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh my! Somebody said something against open source software?! They must be a troll! Stop being a divvy retard.

Re:gaim-vv

[gnoshi]

Try using PortableGaim. I believe it has its own GTK DLLs, so it can use a different GTK version to the rest of the software on your system.
In my case, I was using GTK 2.8.something so I could use recent GIMP builds, and running Gaim Beta 2 (portable) quite happily.

Failing that, or if you are in the mood for some pain, install the latest gaim beta normally, install GTK 2.6, copy the GTK 2.6 DLLs into the same directory as gaim, copy the locale and other subfolders into that directory also.
Run gaim and voila! either it will work (which it did for me) or go down in flames (in which case you might need to jiggle DLLs around a bit more to check all are in the correct directories etc).

Basically, this works because (to my knowledge) Windows will use DLLs from an executed program's own directory before using the registered ones. It is worth remembering for when you hit those various DLL incompatibilities (MFC anyone?).

great!

[Anonymous Coward]

...now I can keep all my viruses in one handy box.

Ah Trillian!

[vivin]

Before I knew about Trillian, which I've been using for over four-to-five years now, this might have been big news for me. Sure I've heard a complaints about Trillian's clunky interface (IMHO, I haven't had any problems with it), but it sure does the job for me. It's much better than having three separate IM clients cluttering my machine.

The merging of networks does have its advantages for the developers of consolidated IM clients since they can now use the same protocol for two networks.

Re:Ah Trillian!

[AnyoneEB]

Actually, in its current state, it does not sound like the merger will help Trillian and Gaim because they are just allowing IMs/presence announcements to pass between the networks. That is not the same as the AIM/ICQ merger where they currently use the same protocol (OSCAR). So, for now at least, multi-protocol clients will have to support both, just users will not need to login to both.

Re:Ah Trillian!

[Malc]

Like the fact that you can't Alt-tab to the main window? How basic is that?

Re:Ah Trillian!

[Anonymous Coward]

Jabber server + pymsnt + pyaimt + pyicqt = 4 protocols covered. Without a complex mess of a client like trillian.

Can I evangelize for a minute though and suggest more people push for Jabber/XMPP adoption? I've been using the Wildfire Jabber server at my office for about a year now, and it works really well for intra and inter office communication. Using their built in LDAP support, I can use a centrally managed user list that I build and maintain through Active Directory instead of requiring users to maintain their own list or needing Exchange. There's even SASL and NTLM support for authentication being developed. I can talk with Google Talk users plus any users with a properly set up (read: working and with the proper DNS SRV records) Jabber server on their own network. It avoids walled gardens in the same way SMTP killed the walled gardens of the old Prodigy/AOL/Compuserve days.

Why the hell are we still putting up with those walled gardens in IM almost 10 years after it started growing big anyway? Why should news like this even be news when something like Jabber exists?

Re:Ah Trillian!

[vivin]

Because IM is clicquish. Many people are on AOL/MSN/Yahoo! because their friends are. Most of them don't want to change over to another network. Having something like Trillian enables me to talk to people on any of those networks without having a number of clients installed. Sure, something like Jabber would be nice. But it's not a perfect world we live in, is it?

Re:Ah Trillian!

[Anonymous Coward]

So basic that it's not only covered, but quicker than alt-tabbing.

Ctrl-shift-A.

Re:Ah Trillian!

[Malc]

And why would I even think of that? Is it standard Windows behaviour? No, didn't think so.

You mean there's other IM clients

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought there was only one chat front-end: http://worldofwarcraft.com/

Re:You mean there's other IM clients

[Anonymous Coward]

Barrens chat FTW!

Re:You mean there's other IM clients

[tehgimpness]

3 global LFG chat.

5 Looking for group [Uberkid] LFG Scholo
5 Looking for group [Noobzor] Wre is teh huntar trainr?
5 Looking for group [Randomsixty] OMG noob wrong channel
5 Looking for group [Nppbzor] ne1?
5 Looking for group [Randomsixty] Reroll ally nub. /leave 5.

You Can Have Your Unstable Apps

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, some of us don't care for all the bells and whistles that make your precious chat clients unstable and buggy. Voice & Video support? That's a sure fire way to leave a memory footprint the size of Alaska on 350 million user's computers.

Re:You Can Have Your Unstable Apps

[Enderandrew]

Actually, because of voice and video support, my wife insists on having Yahoo Messenger side-by-side with Gaim. It is an extremely popular feature.

I think the Kopete and Gaim teams should work together on these features personally, but that is just me.

Re:You Can Have Your Unstable Apps

[mjeffers]

You know, some of us don't care for all the bells and whistles that make your precious chat clients unstable and buggy. Voice & Video support? That's a sure fire way to leave a memory footprint the size of Alaska on 350 million user's computers. ...and those grapes were sour anyway so I didn't even want them.

Re:You Can Have Your Unstable Apps

[Kadin2048]

You know, some of us don't care for all the bells and whistles that make your precious chat clients unstable and buggy. Voice & Video support? That's a sure fire way to leave a memory footprint the size of Alaska on 350 million user's computers.

It's unfortunate that you got modded Troll, because I agree with you completely.

If I want to do voice or video chat, I'll open a separate application. I don't want to have my voice/video program running constantly on my PC, at least not given the propensity of those programs to balloon to huge memory/processor footprints.

All I want is text chat, with the possibility of file transfer on demand (just because some of the people I have to talk with are not capable of figuring out SFTP or any of the other myriad ways of transferring files), preferably with strong end-to-end encryption.

I think Gaim and its OS X derivative, Adium, are the best things going. Pretty much every IM network you've ever heard of and then some, customizable interfaces, encryption support (using OTR, which is excellent), and decent file transfer under most circumstances.

If I want to talk to someone, I'll use my cellphone, or if I'm dead-set on using my PC, I'll fire up Skype. I'd much rather have a solid text-chat program than some halfassed, poorly designed, ugly, ad-ridden piece of software that does voice and video but only talks to one IM network.

Re:You Can Have Your Unstable Apps

[everett]

So what you're really trying to say is IRC FTW.

Re:You Can Have Your Unstable Apps

[Kalinda]

But voice chat is FREE, minus the cost of your internet. Using the phone adds another cost to your monthly internet fee. Why use the phone if you can talk to the person on the computer without the extra cost? This becomes even more obvious when you wanna talk to people who are REALLY far away; I love how the internet connects us all for a nice 30-some dollars a month.

Gaim is nice and all, but it doesn't have voice or webcam support. Since I jumped over to Linux, I've found that to be a pain since I voice chat to a few people. And, sadly, no one wants to download Skype.

So maybe, just maybe, since Yahoo is cross-platform, this will eventually work with Unix OSes, too... I know the download page doesn't now.. but perhaps it will later... ... Unless M$ is gonna be a jerk and disallow it.. Though, MSN Messenger is free, so therefore I don't see why it's so terrible having it for Linux.. But heck, they released it for Mac, did they not?!

Yeah.. I might complain, but lack of MSN voice isn't gonna make me run back to Windows; the grass is greener over here.

Re:You Can Have Your Unstable Apps

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you dropped an 'OMG' somewhere. For completeness' sake, an 'ROFL' and an 'BBQ' should be included.

This has been an AC internet speak lesson.

The more you know. *ting!*

Re:You Can Have Your Unstable Apps

[Anonymous Coward]

Your wife needs webcam sex because you can't satisfy her?

Re:You Can Have Your Unstable Apps

[Kadin2048]

Conceptually I like IRC, but it's way overkill for anything that I do. I've used it from time to time, but I'm not a big regular user.

I'd say my major use of IM systems isn't to actually communicate to people via messages but to communicate status: the ability to run my eyes down my buddy list and see exactly who's available and who's not and who's at lunch/in a meeting/whatever has changed how I work. IRC is less about having a fixed list of people and knowing their status all the time, then having a particular "place" (channel) and letting people come and go. Although you could probably emulate an IM buddy list by telling everyone to go sit in the same IRC channel (and IM networks sometimes try to emulate chat rooms), they're fundamentally different approaches to communication.

But anyway, the IRC network model is a pretty neat one (lots of local servers linked together to form networks, very few centralized points of failure, direct connections for file transfer rather than pushing them through the network) and I think it's too bad in some ways that IM arose from centralized models that lend themselves to corporate fiefdoms. I find Jabber pretty neat because of the ways you can link servers, and communicate from one server to another -- perhaps less like IRC than email -- but I think it'll be a long time before we see the demise of the big AIM/MSN/Yahoo/ICQ networks, even if at some point in the far future they're seen as nothing but a quirk of the early development of the Internet.

Re:You Can Have Your Unstable Apps

[acb]

Also, real hackers don't use GUIs. Graphical displays are for lusers too dumb to use a command line.

Re:You Can Have Your Unstable Apps

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet yahoo IM's footprint is still smaller than gaim's. Why is that?

Maybe you should consider that gaim just can't deliver instead of insulting people who tell you why.

Re:You Can Have Your Unstable Apps

[DarkDragonVKQ]

hmm..I haven't used GAIM in forever. I just use Trillian now. But could it be because of extra extensions or whatever installed in GAIM? Haven't used YIM in forever either. I have like 3 people on my contact list that use Yahoo. Though is Yahoo like AIM or MSN that has ads on it?

Re:You Can Have Your Unstable Apps

[geekoid]

"You know, some of us don't care for all the bells and whistles that make your precious chat clients unstable and buggy. "
It's not the bells and whistles that make it buggy, it's the programming.

As it turns out most people want Voice and Video.

Re:You Can Have Your Unstable Apps

[djdavetrouble]

You know, some of us don't care for all the bells and whistles that make your precious chat clients unstable and buggy. Voice & Video support? That's a sure fire way to leave a memory footprint the size of Alaska on 350 million user's computers.

You and the rest of the old schoolers may be happy with IRC and text only chatting (I love it too) but the rest of the world, especially non techies, want voice and video. By my estimation,
it is the old communication networks and the fragmentation of the new ones (aim, yahoo, msn, icq, all separate and incompatible) that had delayed the inevitable. It is 2006, when
did cucme debut, the early 90's? With every mac laptop having a built in camera and mic, and a PC cam available for under $30 (no comment on the $150 outboard isight) it is only
a matter of time. So while you whine about memory footprints and too many bells and whistles, the rest of the world is slowly gearing up toward the inevitable, which is ubiquitous
voice/video communication. I dont think youir post is very insightful at all. There are many open source clients for all networks that have NO voice / video support for the curmudgeons like you.

Re:You Can Have Your Unstable Apps

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to agree with the person who said the video and voice features are bloat, and I say this from the perspective of someone who already uses an IM client with voice and video support. I've never once used these features and they're just sitting there eating virtual memory that will never get swapped in.

Re:You Can Have Your Unstable Apps

[Anonymous Coward]

I installed Live Messenger, and it uses 5.5Mb. Yahoo uses 39Mb. This is without opening them, so really that's not bad considering my mouse driver uses 7Mb.

Oh, and Firefox using 120Mb :(

Re:You Can Have Your Unstable Apps

[petermgreen]

But anyway, the IRC network model is a pretty neat one
not really, its a very old sucky design with far too much server to server replication and trust making it suicidal to run an open irc network (ever heared of eris?).

lots of local servers linked together to form networks
lots of closed networks that don't interoperate with each other.

very few centralized points of failure
every link is a major point of failure splitting the network in two.

direct connections for file transfer rather than pushing them through the network
most im networks only push filetransfers through the network if direct connections fail.

I think it's too bad in some ways that IM arose from centralized models that lend themselves to corporate fiefdoms.
agreed but don't think irc is any better in this regard small networks are often run by people with big egos who love to bully thier users. Large networks are run by people who've given up on caring about thier users (tried to report a troublemaker on undernet or quakenet recently?).

I find Jabber pretty neat because of the ways you can link servers
I find jabber neat because you don't have to explicitly link servers or trust the servers you link to. Links are just made automatically as your users require them.

and communicate from one server to another -- perhaps less like IRC than email
far less like irc and far more like e-mail. IRC is closed networks running on open protocols (at least an open client side protocol, the server to server protocols are often custom and poorly documented). E-mail and jabber are open systems running on open protocols.

but I think it'll be a long time before we see the demise of the big AIM/MSN/Yahoo/ICQ networks, even if at some point in the far future they're seen as nothing but a quirk of the early development of the Internet.
sadly i belive you are right.

Translation to American English

[MarkByers]

I don't care that there are legal protections keeping the government from tapping my phone without a court order.

Americanized:

I don't care that there used to be legal protections keeping the government from tapping my phone without a court order.

Re:Translation to American English

[codemaster2b]

Absolutely. The Patriot Act pretty much allows them to do anything they well please. Though I question your "American English." Your parent post is probably either ignorant or optimistic, or just plain carefree. But to suggest that all Americans are the same is to be rude to both the parent and the rest of us.

Re:Translation to American English

[doublem]

Sooo, You're saying that there are still some Americans who are protected by the rights stripped away by the Patriot Act? Because all the earlier post is saying is that a lot of our rights were stripped away by the Patriot Act.

Oh, right, the wealthy and powerful. THEY'RE still enjoying the Bill of Rights, not because of any laws supporting them anymore, but because they're too powerful for the police to go after them without significant public outcry.

Re:Translation to American English

[codemaster2b]

oppressed and ignorant are two different things, my friend

Re:Translation to American English

[Dasaru]

I'm sorry, but I would just like to say that the American Government is NOT corrupt. Quite a few people that I know say that America's government IS corrupt. One of my friends calls me ignorant for thinking that the government isn't corrupt. But I would just like to say that if I am ignorant for thinking the American government is corrupt, then you're all lazy. If you think the American Government is corrupt, get off your lazy ass and do something about it. (i.e. Patriot Act)

Personally, if I thought the government was corrupt, I'd do something about it or just leave the damn country.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics

[aymanh]

the companies say that the resulting user community will be the world's largest, at around 350 million accounts

Those are the companies' numbers, but according to a survey done by another firm in June (mentioned in this Reuters article), the estimated unduplicated audience of Windows Live and Yahoo messengers was 43.5 million U.S. users. Perhaps Yahoo and MS are counting all Yahoo and Passport accounts? Personally I have several Yahoo accounts and only use one for IM, and I'm sure many other accounts aren't used for IM as well.

Quoting the Reuters article:

U.S. Internet traffic measurement firm Nielsen//NetRatings data shows AIM with 47.2 million users in June, compared with 28.0 million MSN/Windows Live users and 22.5 million Yahoo Messenger users. The unduplicated audience of Microsoft and Yahoo was 43.5 million U.S. users, the survey showed.

Yahoo and Microsoft took issue with these numbers, citing comScore Networks's global figures which showed that Microsoft IM had 204 million users and Yahoo IM had 78 million users world-wide. AIM had 34 million users, the comScore data showed.

Re:Lies, damn lies, and statistics

[bilbravo]

Yahoo! is probably counting all of the bots on their network... although the math still doesn't seem right. Bots would probably put the total over 1 billion...

Re:Lies, damn lies, and statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

U.S. users = world?...

Re:Lies, damn lies, and statistics

[rbarreira]

according to a survey done by another firm in June (mentioned in this Reuters article [reuters.co.uk]), the estimated unduplicated audience of Windows Live and Yahoo messengers was 43.5 million U.S. users. Perhaps Yahoo and MS are counting all Yahoo and Passport accounts?

Or perhaps the world is something more than the U.S.? I know it sounds incredible to some of you, but it may be true!

Re:Lies, damn lies, and statistics

[aymanh]

Ah, thanks for pointing this out, I think you are right. Except for the firm's name, the article doesn't specifically mention that those numbers are US-only, perhaps this is why I missed the US part, this explains it.

And by the way I'm not American, so I do know that other parts of the world exist :p

Re:Lies, damn lies, and statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been a long time since I've used an ICQ client (Trillian user now, cracked, love the plugins but do get some hefty lag when my wireless acts up) but it seems to me that MSN, Yahoo and AIM REALLY hit hard with advertising. Their clients were missing a bunch of key functionality early on which was remedied only after they got all their eye candy in order.

Where ICQ failed was in not providing video and voice early or well enough to pass.

Gtalk is the first service that seems to have the clean no ads model that icq pioneered, it's ties with gmail and jabber just mean that it's going to be very easy to adopt and I imagine most gtalk users DON'T use their client.

As for users suggesting that voice and video support are useless or somehow hurt the client? That's totally bizarre, they don't add significantly to the gui and the video signal is created from your webcam software (Though it passes through light compression before transmission).

Also it's increadibly useful in those rare occassions when you do want to use it (Think GF frisky on vacation[me clicks anonymous button])...

Re:Lies, damn lies, and statistics

[avirrey]

How could you not know? The article you quoted specifically said it. It was the first WORD in the quote you used. "US"

Re:Lies, damn lies, and statistics

[aymanh]

Except for the firm's name, the article doesn't specifically mention that those numbers are US-only, perhaps this is why I missed the US part, this explains it.

Looks like I glanced over the firm's name part and didn't notice it implied the statistics are US-only.

Can we be done with the please? The point of the comment is that statistics can sometimes be manipulated to prove different things.

Re:Lies, damn lies, and statistics

[I'm Don Giovanni]

Good point.
I have one yahoo account that goes unused.
I have three hotmail accounts, two of which go nearly unused.
I have two gmail accounts, one of which goes unused and the other nearly so. :-)

annnnndddddd GAIM

[PWNT]

360 million is nothing. Gaim communicates with yahoo and msn and 10 other protocols, and does it well. Easily surpassing 360 million users. I chose to use it because there is no advertising on it!! A nice simple interface for talking with someone. Although I would like to be able to send time-delay messages to a person. But I cannot do that with anything execpt msn beta anyways!! Keep on rocking the free world gaim. Keep on rocking.

Re:annnnndddddd GAIM

[bilbravo]

Yes... everyone knows about GAIM. However, you cannot talk to an MSN user from a Yahoo! account. That's what this merger means. Nobody is saying GAIM (or Trillian, or others) didn't allow you to connect to multiple networks simultaneously before this announcement.

This is like the 6th post I've seen saying "What about GAIM?". What about it?

Re:annnnndddddd GAIM

[Excelsior]

Exactly true. This changes very little in terms of Gaim, or any other client for that matter. Gaim will continue to need to support both protocols, because some of their users will have an MSN account, and some will have a Yahoo account. This only really affects people who are still using the OEM clients - they won't have to run two if they want a presence on both computers.

I really wonder how well it will help that for many current users. If you stop using your MSN account in favor of Yahoo, how do you notify everyone who has you in their buddy list to add your Yahoo account?

But, for future users in particular, this is a very good thing. And I hope that the momentum this provides will move more users to these two networks and force AOL's hand, compelling AIM and ICQ to join in on the party.

350 million?

[bilbravo]

How many of those are bots? ha!

On a more serious note, I wonder what rules they used to deal with dupes (AFAIK, you can register for MSN with any e-mail... what about yahoo accounts? maybe I'm misinformed)

Re:350 million?

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC, Yahoo wants you to have a Yahoo mail address. At least, that's how it was 5 or 6 years ago.

Re:350 million?

[Simon (S2)]

On a more serious note, I wonder what rules they used to deal with dupes (AFAIK, you can register for MSN with any e-mail... what about yahoo accounts? maybe I'm misinformed)

Why should they deal with dupes? If you open two accounts with each service you have 4 accounts and you will be counted four times. Nothing to deal with.

Re:350 million?

[mdwh2]

And it's not exactly fair to claim 350 million, if it requires you to download a new client - is everyone going to upgrade overnight?

By that logic, clients like Gaim or Trillian, or using Jabber with transports, already have the largest community, with 350 million plus however many AIM users there are.

Re:350 million?

[bilbravo]

Dupes--meaning 1 account on each service with the same e-mail address.... did they simply merge them, confirm anything. They have to do something with those if that can happen.

Re:350 million?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can sign up for a passport (and as such, MSN Messenger) with any email address.

Back in my high school days, it seemed like everyone used MSN Messenger. But I hated Hotmail, so I signed up for Passport with a Yahoo email address. Now in college, most of the people I talk to use AIM anyways, so the point is moot...

It'd be interesting to see their numbers if they were able to factor in the dupes. Probably be a lot smaller than 350 mil...

Re:350 million?

[sirinek]

Yes but you can use any address to sign up for an msn account, even though they strongly suggest you have a hotmail or msn email. :)

Re:350 million?

[jez9999]

I'm more interested in how they dealt with offline messaging. Yahoo (like most other IM networks) supports the nice feature of sending a message to an offline contact, having it stored on Yahoo's server and delivered to that contact when they come online. Apparently, MSN could never be bothered to do that. How do they merge those two policies?

Re:350 million?

[beuges]

The latest version of MSN, version 8, supports offline messaging.

Ask Slashdot

[Drysh]

So... What will become of Google Talk after this?

Re:Ask Slashdot

[MrCopilot]

It will continue to apdapt and evolve until it becomes sentient, but it will still be beta, and they will call it Google ShutUp.

Re:Ask Slashdot

[GreatBunzinni]

In what way do you believe this threatens google talk, which is nothing more than Jabber with Jingle support?

Re:Ask Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing, people will continue to not use it.

Re:Ask Slashdot

[whargoul]

Does anyone even use Google Talk?

Re:Ask Slashdot

[mlk]

It will be used by people at work, where they can access the GMail website, but not install IM clients.

But not used at all at home.

Re:Ask Slashdot

[mclipsco]

I do and like it a lot. clean and easy. and it archives all my chat sessions which are then searchable in Gmail. that way I can refer to previous chats wherever I check Gmail. real nice feature unlike every other chat program that stores chat sessions locally on each machine installed. *YAWN*

Betcha the Mac client will lag by several years...

[tgeller]

I sure hope they'll do a Mac beta. YIM's Mac client is WAY behind the Windows one, lacking both stability and features. And neither GAIM nor Trillian is available for the Mac. (Fire worked pretty well for me until my copy died in some unrecoverable way.)

universities could offer students Jabber accounts

[zamyatin]

If I were a university network admin, I would want to set up a Jabber server and offer accounts to all students, just as every single university provides them email accounts.

The advantages would be great to have a university-"branded" IM for official use. Of course, the systems would have to be interoperable, and that's why only Jabber makes sense for this purpose.

encrypted traffic and homeland security..

[Tominva1045]

If they don't encrypt the traffic between users then they will have plausible deniability about participating in e-tapping users for things like homeland security or marketing data mining.

On the other hand, if they encrypt the communications they could be asked to actively provide access to the communications of others- opening them up to lawsuits galore.

Lastly, if the communication between clients were open then logs of them could be processed, useful data harvested, and sold to marketers. But if the data were encrypted then the marketees would have a pretty good idea where their data was compromised.

It's not personal, just business.

dude, Adium

[zamyatin]

Need an open source, multi-protocol IM client for Mac?

Adium: http://adiumx.com/

Accounts != Users

[rowama]

"350 million accounts" -- As in Y accounts + M accounts = 350 million total? If so, the number of users involved could be significantly lower, since many users may have both. A more telling measure of the market share would be in terms of users, not accounts.

Re:Accounts != Users

[Anonymous Coward]

If FireFox can tout number of downloads then MSN/Yahoo can tout number of accounts...

Re:Accounts != Users

[Ant P.]

I think in all I had about 5 MSN accounts and 2 YIM ones. Haven't used them in over 2 years, but I bet they're counting those.

Re:Accounts != Users

[bsharitt]

They are probably counting "potential" IM users, those who have an account but don't necesarily use it for IM.

Re:Accounts != Users

[Opportunist]

If they're using the same formula the RIAA uses when calculating "losses", I'd guess they'd count the computers sold within the last decade or so.

Re:miranda

[Anonymous Coward]

oops - of course it's free, or else it wouldn't be on sourceforge.

Offline Messages?

[johnhoward666]

Does it support offline messages? Anyone know why MSN doesn't provide this?

Re:Offline Messages?

[ntfoster]

The latest version, Windows Live Messenger (Beta) does. It can be a bit unreliable however.

Re:Offline Messages?

[Anonymous Coward]

They provide offline messages (try live messenger)

Re:Offline Messages?

[Hanners1979]

Live Messenger is out of Beta now, with its offline messaging functionality still intact.

Not that I've ever used it though - If they're offline, why not send an e-mail?

Re:Offline Messages?

[GreatBunzinni]

People who love offline messages should really move to Jabber. If they do so and adopt a client like Psi, they can send offline IRC/MSN-like messages and even ICQ-like messages.

Really. Everyone who never tried Jabber+Psi doesn't know what they are missing and trust me, they are missing a lot.

Re:Offline Messages?

[Jane_Dozey]

Unfortunatly many IM jumkies don't check their email nearly as often as they log onto their favourite IM network. I would love to see more IM clients/networks/whatever allowing for offline messages so I can get a message to those people I know who spend time everyday on IM but only check their email once every few days.

Re:Offline Messages?

[crabpeople]

Because all instant messenging (i hate that term) clients are n00bs compared to ICQ. Seriously, why the hell were they even developed? to steal marketshare thats all.. All you need is icq. Icq 2001b is the best client ever produced for instant messenging. No one needs any more features or anything better than this. Infact, there is no better client than icq 2001b and its been downhill ever since then. I remember icqing (the proper term) from my packard bell on a 14.4 back when most of the people who use "instant messenging" now, were not even sperm. All other clients will die and icq will remain.

Re:Betcha the Mac client will lag by several years

[Name Anonymous]

For the Mac, try http://www.adiumx.com/.

Re:Betcha the Mac client will lag by several years

[Anonymous Coward]

There's actually a new Mac beta out. Very nice, even includes Growl and Windows Live support.

Re:universities could offer students Jabber accoun

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.oit.duke.edu/helpdesk/jabber/

Duke University, at least, does this; as far as I know no one uses it.

Meebo.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Meebo is a web bassed IM client. If I remember it is running GAIM as a back end (thus Y!, MSN, AIM, GTalk, etc etc all work).

I use it at work, at home, anywhere and everywhere as it provides one key thing that I always wanted in an IM client. the ability to store all of my chat windows in one super window.

If Only

[nephillim]

... If only somebody would write a messenger program that could talk to any of the main ones that would solve all the problems... They could call it GAIM or even Trillian.

Re:Betcha the Mac client will lag by several years

[hattig]

Adium beats out all other IM clients I've ever used. It's for Mac OS X, it's free & it's got a stupid icon. http://www.adiumx.com/

Now if you're talking features like VOIP and Video, then you have a point, at least for people who actually use these features. There certainly needs to be some work done on libraries that can also handle these features. Adium uses libgaim, so some concerted effort on getting the required protocols, codecs, etc, in place would be great. Actually, getting gaim's direct connect to work correctly when using NAT would be a good (and probably required) start.

This explains my Gaim login errors this morning.

[Jerk City Troll]

Not to mention weird connectivity issues last night with the horribly archaic Y!M for OS X.

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

When you have Miranda, who needs anything else?

Yeah right.

[imsabbel]

Nobody want voice. I mean, voice communication with somebody you dont see face to face?
What an absurd concept.
Nobody will every put that kind of stupid technology in use...

(besides 2 billion mobile phones sold worldwide and much more landlines than there are internet connected computers. Think again moron)

Re:Yeah right.

[kurzweilfreak]

Actually, wouldn't those 2 billion mobile phones be one of the reasons against that feature in an IM client? If I want to talk to someone voice-to-voice, why not just use my mobile phone that I can take with me everywhere and don't have to be rooted into my computer chair for?

International calling and airtime charges are some thing that you don't have to deal with using an IM client, but I would imagine (though I may be wrong) that if you're making a lot of international calls, you're probably someone who can afford both the international charges and aren't keeping track of how many minutes you use up.

Re:Betcha the Mac client will lag by several years

[mjjw]

GAIM for Mac OS X http://pdb.finkproject.org/pdb/package.php/gaim

Re:Betcha the Mac client will lag by several years

[King_TJ]

I was shocked to see Yahoo very recently releasing a new OS X beta verison of their IM client! Until about 2 weeks ago, all they had for Mac users was that horrible, 3 year old client full of bugs and growing incompatibility with their own network!

It makes me wonder if that's tied in to this whole MSN/Yahoo intercompatibility thing - because MSN *does* have a very nice, current Mac OS X client.

Re:Betcha the Mac client will lag by several years

[bsharitt]

Well the current Messenger 3.0 beta 1 for Mac which was released very recently is much better than to old one and it was just updated today to support talking to MSN contacts. If the not on the first run of YIM for Mac 3.0 is to be belived, later betas and the final 3.0 should be much closer to the Windows version feature wise, at least as far as actual messaging goes, especially with voice and video.

Amerikkkaaa.

[imsabbel]

Isnt the whole world, you see.
In fact, it only a very small part. less than 5% of the world population.

And even there they have 45 million users.
So those numbers _might_ not be as inflated as they seem at first.

How's it work?

[dschuetz]

I know this is probably asking a lot, but has anyone actually tried these betas and watched the traffic to see what they're doing?

Is it as simple as adding "@yahoo" or "msn:" to your buddy names, and from there all traffic is magically routed at the server side? That is, you'd use a Yahoo protocol with your yahoo client to send a message to the yahoo server, where it'll see that the destination buddy's name starts with "msn:" and so routes it to the MSN server, where it's then sent to yoru buddy?

'cause if it's *that* simple, then it'd be no time at all before this works its way into the other clients.

Re:How's it work?

[Kadin2048]

Yeah I'd like to know this as well.

How do they deal with the issue of duplicate names on the MSN and Yahoo networks, as well? There must be some commonly-used names that exist on both systems, and if you have one in your buddy list and want to add the other one (on the other network), you'll have to add something that identifies it as being foreign.

What's interesting to me is that this could lead to people who have abandoning one or the other, in favor of whichever client is perceived as best. Right now if you were using MSN because all your friends were on it, and you for whatever reason didn't want to use a multiprotocol client, then you were SOL.

Now, you can switch to Yahoo (admittedly, probably having to get a new name in the process -- I doubt they'll let you login to MSN with your Yahoo ID) and still talk to all the same people that you used to. Basically it lets you pick which client you'd like to use: MSN's or Yahoo's. The "advantage" that either of them held over the other within particular groups of people (namely, whichever one your friends were all using) is gone.

Hopefully, this will lead to better clients...

Re:How's it work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows Live Messenger supports the concept of an EASI passport, or a non hotmail address when logging into the system. It has always been possible to use an @yahoo.com address to do this. It is still possible. The two clients handle adding buddies who exist on both networks in different ways. The Yahoo client provides a drop down where you select if you want to add the Yahoo or WL version of this client before you add. The WL client will query both networks to see if the user exist on both networks, if it does then it pops up an information dialog and adds both users to your buddy list.

So yes, it is still possible to have an @yahoo.com address on the WL network, and the same account name can exist on both WL & Yahoo without problem.

Re:How's it work?

[Touvan]

This is similar to how the open standard Jabber/XMPP protocol and google talk (based on said protocol) works.

In Jabber clients, your IM name looks a lot like an email address, so that the server knows what server to send a particular message to. So for example, if you have a jabber.org IM account, and you want to talk to someone on a Google Talk account, you can just add username@gmail.com to your buddy list (or in reverse, you can add username@jabber.org to your GTalk buddy list).

My business runs a Jabber server (wildfire), which is quite happily able to send and receive messages from Google Talk and other Jabber/XMPP servers. I find this convenient, because my email address looks exactly the same as my IM name.

It should actually be possible for the big players (Yahoo, AOL, MS) to create a backend that uses this open standard to communicate with all the other Jabber servers and Google Talk - even if they still want to use their own proprietary front end (which I would be ok with, since I would just use my personal jabber account to communicate with friends and family on those other networks). They would just need to add the ability to use email style IM names, and then assign special meaning to them (e.g. use the jabber server to server protocol when one of those IM names is encountered). From the other side, if I wanted to add an AIM account to my Jabber account, I would just need to add @aim.com (or aol.com or whatever they choose) or a hotmail.com email address, or a yahoo.com email address to my buddy list.

With all the complaining they do about people using unofficial IM clients on their networks (lost ad revenue, with added overhead to support all those users), you'd think they would welcome this kind of opportunity.

Re:How's it work?

[Serpent Mage]

It should actually be possible for the big players (Yahoo, AOL, MS) to create a backend that uses this open standard to communicate with all the other Jabber servers and Google Talk

Actually AOL already has one that they sell to other enterprises that wish to use it. It is quite expensive but it does work. Yahoo I am told is working on one and it is unknown whether it will be free or cost something. MS I have no clue about if they will even try until all the others move over to it.

Re:Betcha the Mac client will lag by several years

[Yvan256]

When I switched, I used Fire too... (previous Trillian user). But I found Fire to be unstable, etc... The IM client of choice on OS X seems to be Adium X.

jerry yang u *(%##@

[the_masked_mallard]

jerry yang came to my school in may this year and I asked him about the proposed merger. he literally told me to get lost and said it was baseless rumours and no way would yahoo! tie up with microsoft.

Re:This explains my Gaim login errors this morning

[bsharitt]

You really shouldn't be using the horrible arcahic Mac verison any more. While still in beta, version 3 is much better.

anyone know how to actually use this?

[petermgreen]

and does it work with third party clients or just the official ones?

ObFirefly

[WilliamSChips]

It's the Pax.

Here's my "what about GAIM"

[norminator]

I prefer to use GAIM, but I have the latest MSN client installed, also. I want to IM my friend on his Yahoo account, but as far as I can tell, it will only work from the MSN client, not from GAIM, unless I want to setup a Yahoo account, which I don't.

So... what about GAIM? In other words, when will GAIM be able to use the MSN protocol to talk to Yahoo users?

Re:This explains my Gaim login errors this morning

[Jerk City Troll]

I had no idea there was a beta. Of course it is not available from their web site (or at least, I could not find it), but VersionTracker seems to know about it. Is that correct?

Gaim File Transfer

[Kadin2048]

Since you didn't say when you were playing with Gaim last, I can't tell you how much improvement has gone on since then.

Last summer they had a Summer of Code person working on improving file transfer. I'm not sure if that was just for AIM or for MSN as well.

I use Adium daily, which is a Gaim derivative for OS X, and I don't have any problems when using MSN file transfer with people using the stock client on the other end. AIM file transfer seems to be hit or miss; I think there is an issue with firewalls -- if both people are sitting on publicly routable IPs then it works no problem, but it's not as good at punching through layers of NAT as the stock client. (I've heard that there are multiple ways that AIM uses for file transfer, ranging from direct-connect to using the AOL server to pass packets if the recipient can't accept the incoming connection. Some work with Gaim, some don't.) It wouldn't surprise me if MSN transfer worked similarly.

I would give it a shot, and make sure that you've opened the required ports on your firewall if you can (and gotten the other person to do it if possible), since the more direct the connection path, the higher probability you'll be able to do it.

Re:Gaim File Transfer

[Valthan]

thanks, just one other question, does it support the whole "custom emoticons" thing. Just because those can be fun to play around with, not that it is a deal breaker or anything.

Re:Gaim File Transfer

[Kadin2048]

To be honest that's never a feature I've played with at all, but you might find this Adium bug thread an interesting read, since it discusses it.

Short answer: apparently libgaim has support for receiving/viewing custom emoticons, but not sending them. Adium (being based on libgaim) does the same thing -- receive but not send -- although the receiving seems to be broken in some releases. When it's broken they just appear as questionmarks.

That bug (#506) is for sending, and it's on hold pending support in libgaim.

I think this is the SourceForge bug tracking page for the feature in Gaim. This is for "support" generally, which assumedly includes send and receive, and the status is open.

Re:Gaim File Transfer

[ArcticFlood]

I'm using Gaim 2 Beta 2 (too lazy to get Beta 3), and I've recieved some from a MSN user. So they are supported somewhat.

Re:Gaim File Transfer

[Blakey Rat]

The new version of Adium doesn't use libgaim anymore, as libgaim doesn't support Direct Connect or file transfers (using AOL's proxy) correctly. I think when 2.0 of Adium comes out, it officially is no longer a "derivative of GAIM."

Wrong discussion

[mrjb]

I see a lot of discussion going on here about whether gaim should support voice/video chat or not. I think it's the wrong discussion. If it has voice chat, at your option you can decide not to use it. The real question is if it *can* have a compatible voice/video chat. Since MS released the initial MSN messenger RFC, they've gone back to their old habits of not releasing specs to the public. I'm pretty sure the Gaim people have better things to do than reverse engineering some undocumented proprietary audio/video codec - such as making sure that other IM networks and documented protocols are fully supported.

Re:This explains my Gaim login errors this morning

[denjin]

http://messenger.yahoo.com/mac.php

Re:Betcha the Mac client will lag by several years

[denjin]

Try the beta of 3, unless you think it also sucks...
http://messenger.yahoo.com/mac.php

Re:universities could offer students Jabber accoun

[Kadin2048]

I think by the time people arrive at college most of them already have accounts on one IM system or another; people aren't going to switch to the school's one if it means it becomes harder to talk to other people from home.

When I was in school most recently, the de facto standard was AIM. I think there were some people around who used MSN, but they were thought to be fairly odd. ("What's that? It looks funny...")

Although I really like the concept of Jabber and of lots of servers networked together and interoperating, I'm not sure I would have used such a service if any school I went to had offered it, unless it came with a guarantee that I'd be able to use the account forever; it's too much of a pain in the ass to tell everyone you talk to that you're changing to a new address every 2, 3 or 4 years. It was obnoxious enough with email, and in retrospect if GMail had existed when I was in school, I would have just set up an auto-forward from my assigned email to GMail and never used the school's for anything serious. Even non-geeks realize that changing a major piece of your contact information is a pain in the ass (if anything, they find it to be more of a pain than most geeks do, since most geeks know how to update their addressbook and send out new contact info, and/or have friends that do).

I don't think there's any fundamental reason to have more than one personal instant messaging name, and there's really no benefit in tying your name to your presence at a university unless it's business-related (where it does make sense to tie it to your job role at the organization and make it go away when you're done).

The fact that you have to change your email address when you enter and leave school is a crappy leftover from the early days of the Internet, and it's unfortunate that there isn't some DNS-like way to "re-point" email addresses at different destination mailboxes, so that your personal email address could follow you throughout your life. (Like you can now do with cell-phone numbers.) The rise of decent free email services have started to effectively provide that, and making IM names organization-specific would be a step backwards for that medium.

Re:universities could offer students Jabber accoun

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget that Jabber has access to transports, and banning the other protocols by default isn't too hard to do... In fact, it might even be beneficial to dictate that the only IM inside school go through jabber. A whole lot less headaches for the sysadmin, and you can also set up internal groups and whatnot.

To make is useful occasionally, you gotta use it

[Opportunist]

To actually make encryption meaningful (and to put the data hoarding craze some governmental agencies are into these days) you have to drown them in data. If you only encrypt "sensitive" data, you're actually marking this information as "worth being snooped on", and the encryption actually serves the wrong purpose.

For better security, just encrypt everything. From your flight plans for next week to the grocery list of last week. As soon as there is more to be searched than can be searched in reasonable time, snooping becomes as informative as not snooping.

You can't keep your government out of your conversation. They can muscle in, invade into your privacy and should someone cry out against it he's gonna be a commu... I mean terrorist (sorry, I'm still living in the past). So instead of withholding information, which you can't do, flood them with it.

Better for MultiChat clients

[danielDamage]

I think this will be better for Trillian, GAIM, Adium and the like. Right now, MSN periodically changes their protocol... just to be contrary or for whatever reason.

Trillian is up to patch "g" or something, mostly because of MSN messenger or Y! compatibility changes. Now, since they have to share a protocol, I'm willing to bet they'll be more stable.

Re:universities could offer students Jabber accoun

[Anonymous Coward]

One benefit that universities could offer is pre-populated rosters.

So you sign up for your courses at uni and get your uni JID. When you log in your roster contains groups for each of the classes you attend filled with all your classmates. This could provide for simple and easy communication between members of the same class.

GoogleTalk, Jabber, Gizmo and others

[gnoshi]

As has been (loosely) pointed out, despite the AOL/ICQ and YIM/MSN network linking, Google Talk/Jabber/Gizmo do it in a much more socially acceptable way.

Google Talk, Gizmo, and Jabber all communicate using the conveniently open XMPP protocol (yes, like ATM machine, I know).
This means new networks can connect to Google Talk (and the others I believe) without having to go through the absurd process of forging inter-company relationships and the like. It also means that new networks that appear using XMPP can easily join the existing networks.

To those who claim that Google Talk is little used - I agree to some extent. MSN and remarkably enough YIM have, since the near-demise of AIM and ICQ, enjoyed significant market dominance. Since the appearance of Google Talk, I have observed many users (including my own father; hardly a technical fiend) transitioning to Gmail and Google Talk, in part because of the simple web interface. I doubt (with no evidence at all) that the actual Google Talk client is seeing wild success, but I think that many users of Gmail and probably an even greater proportion of GAIM users are connecting to the Google Talk network. Of course, these days you don't have to - you can connect to Gizmo or Jabber and communicate with Google Talk users.

Ahh, the sweet flexibility.

Re:GoogleTalk, Jabber, Gizmo and others

[AlgorithMan]

well, but with this tool you can connect to their servers LEGALLY - iirc both of them changed their EULA so that it is illegal to use third party software (trillian/miranda etc)

Re:GoogleTalk, Jabber, Gizmo and others

[assassinator42]

Near demise of AIM and ICQ? When did this happen?

Re:GoogleTalk, Jabber, Gizmo and others

[gral]

The nice thing about XMPP is that there are several Open Source servers that can be setup VERY easily. (I have one on my server.)

I didn't have to have a partnership with google, I can just talk with them and they talk with me. I can also talk to anyone on any other XMPP protocol based IM.

If someone is not on my network, that's their lose.... ;-)

Jabber

[samael]

A whole bunch of people I know just started using Jabber because LiveJournal launched its own Jabber server. Still in beta, but it works pretty well most of the time.

Also, Google Chat is Jabber based.

the best

[John Nowak]

Adium is the nicest AIM client to use by far. Really a great piece of software. GAIM is nice as well, but the Adium interface is much cleaner and more advanced. Kudos to the developers.

"AIM and ICQ interconnected"

[lordandrei]

I wouldn't call it interconnecting so much as I'd call it a hostile buy-out with intent to kill.

ICQ's popularity was ramping up at such a speed its IM implementation looked like it might overshadow AOL's which was losing customers due to dis-satisfaction with the AIM client environment.

ICQ still exists and was rolled into AIM. However, shortly after the buyout the dev teams were slashed (Mac team eliminated) and updates seem to have slowed to a snails pace. Most ICQ users I interacted with have all used the merger as a prompt to migrate to AIM (AOL's assumed intent)

Re:"AIM and ICQ interconnected"

[Blakey Rat]

You live in a fantasy world. ICQ's software sucked ass (the Mac version triply-so), and from my experience almost everyone using it switched to either AIM or MSN Messenger as soon as they became available. I hear ICQ was bigger in Europe, but here in the US it was on its way downhill long before AOL bought them.

Re:"AIM and ICQ interconnected"

[kchrist]

It all depends on the circles you travel in. For me, most people I know use AIM, but back when ICQ was around, that was the only thing anyone used. Even after it started sucking, most people I knew kept using the older clients rather than "upgrading" the slow, bloated, crappy versions.

I understand lots of people use MSN and Yahoo messengers, but I don't see it. I know exactly one person who uses the latter (presumably, he knows other people who do) and none that use the former.

Me, I'm trying to get everyone to use Jabber. Talk about your uphill battles. *sigh*

Re:"AIM and ICQ interconnected"

[Baloo Ursidae]

Me, I'm trying to get everyone to use Jabber. Talk about your uphill battles. *sigh*

I just switched, after announcing about two weeks in advance that I would no longer be using the obsolete networks. Most people made the transition, a few dozen took a few weeks before they realized I was serious and made the switch themselves.

Making the switch requires some commitment out front.

Re:"AIM and ICQ interconnected"

[Scurra UK]

You must not know many Europeans (or at least British) - since the demise of ICQ into bloatware I've never met a single person who's not used MSN (a couple of them also had AIM accounts, and now skype is also becoming more popular)

Re:"AIM and ICQ interconnected"

[fyonn]

well, it's all down to the circles you move in, as someone else said. I only use AIM and while I know a number of people with MSN accounts, I know several people who are only on AIM, as I am.

well, I do have an ICQ number somewhere, but I don't have a reason to use it really.

dave

Damn Encryption

[jfroot]

homer:~$ ngrep MSG -d eth1 port 1863
interface: eth1 (10.10.10.0/255.255.255.0)
filter: ip and ( port 1863 )
match: MSG
###############
T 207.46.26.138:1863 -> 10.20.20.176:1319 [AP]
    MSG strathcona@hotmail.com FunFun 141..MIME-Version: 1.0..Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8..X-MMS-IM-Format: FN=Arial; EF=; CO=0....I sure hope they don't start encrypting MSN traffic... what would I do at work during the down times ;)

Re:Betcha the Mac client will lag by several years

[OmniVector]

YM for mac recently got updated, and supports MSN.

Another solution: Meebo

[fritzk3]

One solution that I have found which works nicely to integrate the major IM players is Meebo (www.meebo.com). It's web-based (AJAX), so there are no voice or video options, but it does track offline messages, and can optionally keep chat histories. Also, it's a nice option for people who don't want to install an IM client (or are prohibited from doing so by corporate IT departments).

(For what it's worth, the back-end of Meebo is made up of Gaim guts.)

Encryption - Vendor lock-in

[eMbry00s]

Oh great, it'll be encrypted! Praise the lord, finally they found a way to get rid of all of those "freedom fanboys" who want to use their own applications to interface with our networks. Pfft, good riddance.

Seriously, though, this is bad, bad, news.

Argh... blocked too...

[Optic7]

Thanks for the link, but too bad the site is also blocked on my corporate network. :(

Re:Argh... blocked too...

[witherstaff]

The other ajax IM client I'm familier with is http://www.mabber.com/. If that's firewalled also, convince all your friends to use Gtalk and use the gmail/gtalk interface. Corporations trying to get us to do actual work, bah!

Re:Betcha the Mac client will lag by several years

[NocturnDragon]

There IS a mac beta! http://messenger.yahoo.com/mac.php And it already supports chatting with MSN accounts.

350M Yahoo accounts

[smeckert]

The problem is that they count accounts that nobody should count.

When ICQ was new, I jumped in. I lost the account, and the only
choice was to get a new number.
Yahoo (Kinda) bought Mirabilis, so I got a Yahoo messenger account.

Yahoo messenger started IM spamming me so I uninstalled it.

Through the whole thing I had one AIM account.
I finally had to get another because my ISP folded and
the new name owner wouldn't give me the time of day let alone
the email for the AIM account Sigh.

The Score? 3 unused yahoo accounts, 2 AIM accounts.

This is great!

[MobyDisk]

This is almost as good as if they had just thrown out their proprietary protocols for a W3C standard one!

Jabber U

[ben there...]

It's a cool idea if it helps them put IM to good use in their organization. But personally, I wouldn't trust them not to read everthing I sent through their network.

but...

[Thuktun]

Microsoft's documentation, as I'm accustomed, is incomplete:

Once you sign up, you can add Yahoo! Messenger contacts to your contact list in the usual way. Under "Contacts," click "Add a contact" and enter your friend's Yahoo! e-mail address.

What about those with Yahoo! IM signins but no Yahoo! email account?

Re:but...

[sacbhale]

Even if you dont use the email address. Your IM address is still xxxx@yahoo.com (yyyy@yahoo.co.zz if you signup with yahoo in your local country)

Re:but...

[assassinator42]

name@yahoo.com, of course. I'm wondering about people who have a MSN messenger account and a yahoo account on the same email, though. Which one does it add? Both of them? MSN does seem to be able to add my @sbcglobal.net address. (I don't have the beta version of Yahoo messenger, but it pops up a message asking me to upgrade if I want to talk to the MSN person.)

Re:but...

[Thuktun]

Visiting the Mail link says I would need to sign up for it. Do they accept mail at that email address prior to signup? Why insist on signup, then? Is it really an email address if no mail can be delivered and received there?

Doesnt mean much really

[nurb432]

Just means some re-coding to support the new stuff.. Like has been done many times.

I use jabber, with both transports. All it means for us is we use one transport intead of 2 ( for these networks anyway ) once its developed.

Yahoo IM in Slackware

[Mihai Cartoaje]

I have slackware 7.1, and I wanted to try Yahoo IM, but they only have Debian and Red Hat versions. I think they could have provided a tar archive which could be decompressed relative to the root folder.

IRC is a chatroom system not an IM system

[petermgreen]

its great for chatting with a room full of people and occasionally private messaging those same people but support for contact lists on irc is abysmal:

1: there is no widely supported way to watch a user for changes other than polling and poll frequency is very limited by ircs built in abuse limits especailly if you wan't to monitor the hostnames and away status.
2: I don't know of any major irc network that really enforces nick ownership properly (read: nick passwords checked at login time with no way to use a nick (even briefly) without the password. Some major networks don't even have nickserv at all.
3: IRC is based on relatively small closed networks, no network has either the size of MSN/AIM/ICQ/YIM or the open nature of jabber.

What is really important: EMOTICONS

[VGfort]

I prefer the yahoo ones over MSN's ugly emotes :p so if any do overlap YIM better get the good deal on smilies. I dont like MSN's nudge feature or those Flash based Winks either, although I use Trillian and Gaim so I wont get those anyway ;)

both!

[matts-reign]

It adds both of them. I just talked to one of the messenger team members and what they do is that the messages will get sent to both, so if you have MSN and yahoo signed in, you'll recieve dupe messages on both clients.

GAIM is OK but not a solution.

[Ilgaz]

Instead of supporting open and standard protocols, GAIM people live in a pseudo "all in one" World suggesting everyone to use a third party client.

I have no problem with GAIM developers, I just say packet sniffing and trying to figure what is happening with commercial,closed source client to closed network won't produce a 100% compatible thing. People should admit it. I am not even going into stuff like EULAs broken.

The problem here is the Microsoft. They have no API of any kind. If you go deeper you will figure GAIM and other libs can't support the latest MSN protocol.

There is a open standard which will be the default IM (presence in fact) protocol in Internet 2: Jabber.

Of course Jabber community and developers are making mistakes as experimenting CVS in jabber.org server which everyone recommends, not supporting companies like Tipic Inc who managed to make fortune 500 companies/ US Govt. use Jabber because they are "closed source" and not coming up with a package to be easily installed on Windows/OS X allowing people to setup their OWN jabber server. I speak about point and click install using the native OS methods like .pkg for OS X and .msi for Windows.

As I can't deal with complexity of running 3 separate IM products (would lose my mind), I use something open source and native in OS X even donating it for "morale" but it doesn't change my mind. We should PUSH these companies to open their API completely or support Jabber.

Look, Apple supports Jabber with a little feedback from community and added jabber functionality to their iChat. Google uses Jabber too (with extensions). I think we should find a way to convince ordinary end users to use Jabber but how? There should be something offered as bonus or a very good reason and it should be Joe Sixpack understandable...

Cornering AOL?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems with the whole rumors about AOL thinking about offering free internet, they're becoming more and more desperate. AIM is a huge factor of AOL's success, and it seems they're being cornered in yet another area.

My money's still on google becoming The Great Internet Singularity in time, though, not Microsoft or Yahoo!.