Thanks to Gabe I now have a Jabber account that matches my email address… george at hotelling.net. For those not in the know, Jabber is an open instant messaging network, instead of the existing closed systems. What that means is that anyone can run a Jabber server and different Jabber servers can talk to each other.
Think of it as the difference between pre-Internet email and post-Internet email on AOL. Before, people on AOL could only email people on AOL but now they can email anyone on the Internet. It’s sort of absurd to think that people put up with AOL-only email, so why do people put up with AOL only IM?
[Update: The reason I’m using Jabber is the same reason I vote.]
3 responses to “Jabber”
So, jabber can’t hook-up to any the currently available IM networks then, right? If that’s the case, I’m not really seeing what benefits the user is getting.
My main pet-peeve with IM is that all the different services aren’t inter-operable.
Actually servers can host transports to AIM, ICQ, Yahoo! and MSN so that you can have a single-sign on. Unfortunately the services can’t interoperate yet, just like in the bad old days of email, so you’ll need to have an account on each service you want to sign on to.
Heya. Thought i would contribute a nice article link on the current state of XMPP (Jabber) adoption as a standard. I hope this will incite a new round of active developement in the community.
IETF OKs XMPP-Core