Unified Instant Messaging Clients?

Hynman writes "It's getting silly - I have 4 different types of messaging accounts: ICQ, AOL IM, MS Messenger, Hotmail and regular email clients all run on my computer at the same time, and they all have overlapping capabilities. Is there any effort out there to produce a unified messaging client, that supports all types of accounts, and will respond through the correct medium (i.e. the medium that the message is delivered in). Just plug in the account information for each medium, and it performs messaging functions of all services frome one program and one interface." This is why standards for instant messengers should be created. Something like this would be extremely useful. Comments?

Comments

Everybuddy...

[rongen]

This is a quote from the "Everybuddy" homepage: As of right now, Everybuddy has support for AIM, ICQ, and Yahoo! chat programs. It also has file transfer between other Everybuddy users, and planned support for file transfer to other users. You can find this at http://www.everybuddy.com/ I've tried the ICQ aspect but I suspect it's still in beat (current stable release is 0.0.6).

Tricky issue

[JamesKPolk]

As a person of libertarian bent; real-time messaging poses a difficult problem.

The natural solution, for a grand public good such as this, is to let the government set the protocol, and run the server. For the US, this wouldn't even be a wild stretch of the constitution; for it's just a natural extension of the Post Office. Except for the inevitable DOS attacks, and the manpower and hardware needed to overcome them, I don't see it as being too expensive, compared to the trillions the government spends every year anyway.

But, the major powers fighting over this (AT&T, AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc) are never going to propose that. They stand to make too much money off of advertising, to settle for something like that. And your average Republican member of Congress isn't going to know enough about computers to see how easy it would be; they're more likely to do nothing than to approve $25 million or whatever to set up the system. And, in turn, this will lead to a push by your average Democratic members of Congress, who on average know just as little about the internet, to force somebody to open up their servers. And, unlike the Cable TV connectivity, it'd be impossible to set up a way for Company A to reimburse Company B; so the Company running the servers would have to either A) incur a loss or B) shut down the system.

If it can be made to work, Jabber would make an excellent compromise. If ISPs ran Jabber servers, interconnecting in the same way an IRC network or SMTP servers work, everyone would benefit, but nobody could get a free ride (as MS, AOL, AT&T are all trying to get on each other).

I got a bunch of immature, hostile replys (fortunately no emails) for taking a strong, but unpopular, position yesterday. Should this posting be just as unpopular, I hope the discussion is a bit more mature, than just calling me a w4r3z d00d or something.

Oh yeah, and this is a US-centric post. International issues make it even trickier...

Re:Tricky issue

[Surak]

As a person of libertarian bent; real-time messaging poses a difficult problem.

The natural solution, for a grand public good such as this, is to let the government set the protocol, and run the server.

Somehow I suspect you're using the term "libertarian" in some sense that I am unfamiliar with. You espouse yourself as being "libertarian bent" out of one side of your mouth and out of the other you are asking the government to set a standard and run a server! Sounds like good ol' fashioned socialism to me...

If it can be made to work, Jabber would make an excellent compromise. If ISPs ran Jabber servers, interconnecting in the same way an IRC network or SMTP servers work, everyone would benefit, but nobody could get a free ride (as MS, AOL, AT&T are all trying to get on each other).

This actually sounds more plausible. An independent, third-party solution is definitely needed. Unfortunately, instant messaging is all about creating proprietary advantage in a world where there originally were none. If Jabber had been defined before the commercialization of the Internet, then everyone would adopt it. I think eventually, a standard will have to be adopted because people are just getting sick of having to have 4 or more clients running all the time.

OTOH, look at streaming video and audio. We have a standard for that (MPEG) but it isn't being used. RealNetworks' and Microsoft's proprietary RealPlayer and NetShow clients currently rule the roost despite the fact that a viable standard exists. Again, the idea is to have a proprietary advantage in an environment where none should exist at all.

IETF is developing IMPP

[magnus.ihse]

The Internet Engineering Task Force (http://www.ietf.org) is working on an instant messaging standard, known as IMPP (Instant Messaging and Presence Protocol). The Working Group has a few Internet-Drafts available at http://www.ietf.org/html.charte rs/impp-charter.html, but no RFCs yet.

My impression is that the design of this protocol (in opposite to e.g. ICQ) is good, and I think this will be _the_ IM protocol to use, when IETF's work is finished. AFAIK, at least Microsoft is going to use IMPP (this is the "open standard" referred to during the IM war with AOL).

NP/IM as ISP service is the right thing

[SurfsUp]

The current Instant Messaging model suffers from several glaring problems stemming mostly from the reliance on centrally controlled messaging servers (that double as ad servers). Major issues with the current IM model include:

• Reliability: Does the whole world want to count on one company's servers to stay up 24/7?
• Security: What if someone breaks into the server that has your passwords? What if (hypothetically of course) an employee of AOL doesn't like you?
• Privacy: Isn't it a warm feeling knowing that all your text goes through some other company's messaging servers?
• Authentication: How the hell do you know who's on the other end of the line?

Would it suprise you if I said you aren't the first to notice these problems. It's pretty much accepted that Network Presence/Instant messaging has to be a service provided by ISP's, preferably *your* ISP. Obviously, authentification and privacy issues are solveable and they don't really have to involve the ISP much. Where the ISP comes is mainly in two places: (1) making your presence/absence known to selected others via the as-yet-to-be-built Internet Presence network. (2) Providing store and forward for messages that can't be delivered due to the (temporary) absense of the recipient.

The real question is, once we manage to produce a good solid NP/IP server/client system, how are we going to get the ISP's to adopt it? Keep this in mind: Neither AOL nor Microsoft has the slightest interest in ISPs support our NP/IP system! (Because they both want us to use their proprietary servers.) So we are going to have a big fight on our hands, and we're going to have to use some very powerful weapons indeed to get what we want.

For starters, we're going to have to reward the ISPs in some way. One idea just off the top of my head is to provide, in the clients, a clickable link for the recipient (and sender for that matter) back to a web page of the ISP's choice. This could be disabled by the user of course, but if the user clicks it the ISP gets some sort of benefit: as ad revenue, or the ability to promote it's own services to the recipient of an IM, or whatever. Another idea is to just include the winning NP/IM protocl in all new versions of the software that ISPs use. I.E, making it part of sendmail or the other mail clients, etc. (the force-feeding method) Another way is to organize some sort of email campaign to get the ISP's on board. We're going to have to have a good plan in place. Don't make any mistake about it: it's going to be an uphill battle.