Goodbye Legacy IM

Monday, February 27, 2006 by darco
Posted in ,

NoMoreLegacy

As I have mentioned before, I believe Jabber/XMPP will be one of the most influential technologies on human communication since the introduction of standard email1. I've been thinking lately about ways to encourage my friends to make the switch to Jabber, and I've come up with my solution.

As of my birthday this year (May 19th), I'll no longer be using AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, or MSN. The only way you will be able to contact me via IM will be via my jabber id, darco@deepdarc.com2. So if you want to chat with me after this time, you'll need to at least give Jabber a try.

1: As of 2009-07-13, I no longer feel strongly enough about XMPP to use this expression.
2: I will still however be available on IRC.

I'm not asking anyone else to switch entirely to Jabber (although that would be great!), I just want most everyone I know to at least use a jabber account as often as they use their AIM, MSN, or YIM accounts. This is made easy by chat clients such as GAIM and Trillian Pro, which are mentioned below.

Still a bit in the dark about what the hell I'm talking about? Go here. Jabber Australia's website offers the best description about what jabber is and why it is compelling that I've seen yet. Worth a look.

Getting an account

Google Talk

If you have a gMail account, then you have a jabber id via Google Talk! Your jabber id is the same as your email address. You can use either the native google talk client or any other jabber client.

Gizmo Project

Also, if you use the Gizmo Project, you too have a jabber account. Your jabber ID is login-name@chat.gizmoproject.com.

jabber.org

The Jabber Software Foundation is probably the best known Jabber server out there. They just recently switched over to ejabberd for their software, so they should be quite solid now.

deepdarc.com

I run my own jabber server. If you would like an account on it, just ask. I'm no longer offering accounts on deepdarc.com. Please choose one of the servers mentioned above.

Software

Trillian Pro

I know that some of you are rather fond of Trillian, a powerful (and free) chat client for windows that supports AIM, ICQ, YIM, and MSN. Trillian Basic does not support jabber, but Trillian Pro does. As a way to make it easier for you Trillian fans, I am willing to split the cost of Trillian pro with anyone I know personally. If you are interested, drop me a line.

Pandion

Pandion is probably the best jabber client for Windows right now. I highly recommend it. I've also been working on my own additions to Pandion which will eventually be merged into the main development branch, including a whiteboard. If you are feeling adventurous, you can grab my personally modified version of Pandion from my subversion repository here.

PSI

PSI is a cross platform jabber client that is very solid. If neither of the above two will work for you, then give PSI a shot.

Apple iChat

Apple iChat AV supports Jabber as well! I personally use iChat for my jabbering on all my Macs. As an added bonus, you can audio and video chat with other iChat AV users. (Hopefully support for Jingle signaling will be implemented soon, so that iChat AV users can talk to google talk users)

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24 Comments for “Goodbye Legacy IM”

  1. nadreck* Says:
    Tuesday, February 28, 2006

    I've got the gtalk, the jabber.org, AND the gizmo project! Gaspzors!

    Seriously, kudos on making the switch. I hope it works out favorably... (personally, I'm not ready to do a full switch... but I've been logging into all my systems collectively for months).

  2. Jason Says:
    Monday, March 27, 2006

    I've been a Trillian user in the past and the challenge I've seen is the changing rules from MSN and AOL. It seems to break comms with those services. Has this been addressed? As you know, but others may not, iChat supports AOL IM in addition to jabber.

  3. Igor Goryachev Says:
    Wednesday, April 5, 2006

    I suppose some users could be confused and think that if somebody wants to contact person@jabber.tld he should get an account on the same server, i.e. somebody@jabber.tld. I can be wrong, who knows? But some people thought so. :)

  4. mibus Says:
    Wednesday, April 5, 2006

    I tried making the switch a while back; unfortunately for me it didn't work out so well.

    Too many of my friends loved MSN's avatars and refused to use Jabber because no client had avatars at the time. ("Jabber is ugly!").

    I'm now using MSN for work, but I've also set up a Jabber server and am using that for ~50% of in-company contacts.

  5. Ploum Says:
    Thursday, April 6, 2006

    Congratulations !

    Your birthday is now the official Open Discussion Day :-)

  6. ploum.frimouvy.org Says:
    Saturday, April 8, 2006

    [TRACKBACK] May 19th will be the "Open Discussion Day" : goodbye legacy IM. The goal of this day is to promote open protocols and interoperability in everyday life.

    Le 19 mai sera le "Open Discussion Day" dont le but est de promouvoir...

  7. codeschmi.de Says:
    Sunday, April 9, 2006

    [TRACKBACK] edit Mai, 19th / Der neunzehnte Mai Posted by Raphael J. Schmid Thu, 06 Apr 2006 12:16:00 GMT English:It is coming: the Open Discussion Day. From on May 19th, 2006 I will not be available any longer through my...

  8. bigon.be Says:
    Sunday, April 9, 2006

    [TRACKBACK] Ca y est, je vais encore passé pour un intégriste... Comme je l'ai déjà dit à de nombreuses personnes, j'en ai marre d'être obligé d'utiliser MSN (enfin son protocol) pour discuter avec certaines personnes. Le problème est plus philosophique que...

  9. jehan.zemarmot.net Says:
    Sunday, April 9, 2006

    [TRACKBACK] Certains auront peut-être remarqué dans ma page de contact que le seul protocole de messagerie instantanée que j’utilise est Jabber. Si vous ne connaissez pas, sachez qu’il s’agit à l’heure actuelle du seul protocole ouvert ...

  10. Kuyaedz Says:
    Tuesday, April 11, 2006

    I've passed the info on to my three local LUGs. Great idea!

  11. Mikael Hermanson Says:
    Saturday, April 15, 2006

    Darco VERY goood idea will soon do the same :-)

    JID: tielie@jabber.tielie.com

  12. JonathanCarter Says:
    Tuesday, April 18, 2006

    I am doing it too. See this.

    -Jonathan

  13. Miguel Arévalo Says:
    Friday, April 28, 2006

    Already made the switch when Google opened up federation, now I'm a better person ;-)

    http://marevalo.net/?q=node/view/53

  14. www.peewi.org Says:
    Thursday, May 18, 2006

    [TRACKBACK] Le but de l'Open Discussion Day est de promouvoir les protocoles ouverts mais surtout l'interopérabilité entre les différentes messageries instantanées entre elles

    En effet à l'heure actuel, la personne qui utilise Yahoo Messenger ne peut pas parler

  15. qcjn Says:
    Monday, January 29, 2007

    Bonjour, j'ai beaucoup de difficulté à utiliser les gateway (transport) je ne trouve pas de documentation réellement clair. Je trouve que des fois plusieurs termes semble vouloir dire la même chose. J'essai de me connecter avec irc et je n'y arrive jamais. Je met beaucoup de temps à rechercher. J'utilise Exodus 0.9.1.0 sous Windows et je suis avec linux-quebec.org qui selon ce que j'en comprend est mon serveur (ou transport). Ce que je comprend aussi est que pour chaque "gateway" que je veut utiliser je doit avoir un compte. C'est beau ca marche pour moi pour msn et yahoo. Mais est ce la même chose pour irc. De toute facon je crois qu'il serait intéressant que quelqu'un réalise un bon tutoriel sur l'utilisation des gateway (passerelle). Je crois qu'un coup que cela sera fait plusieurs seront intéressé à transférer et un coup que tu as utiliser et maitrisé un peu jabber tu n'as plus le goût d'utiliser autre chose. Il y a des gens qui disent que ce n'est pas la philosophie d'utiliser jabber pour les passerelles, mais je crois que c'est un bon début pour faire le transfert. Ah oui! J'espère qu'à travers mon commentaire vous avez compris que j'ai besoin d'aide pour comprendre clairement la mécanique afin de me bracher sur n'importe quel chat (irc ou jabber) ou est ce la même chose. Merci!

  16. las vegas Says:
    Saturday, September 29, 2007

    Found this through a search for jabber. Sorry to bump an old thread but you still prefer it to other im's out there? I still use MSN because its easy, free and most of my friends use it. Not real thrilled with all of the extra crap they are putting it, because its becoming a memory hog. So I'm looking for something else that I can use. Thanks.

  17. las vegas Says:
    Saturday, September 29, 2007

    Oh, and is it compatible with MSN, etc?

  18. darco* Says:
    Sunday, September 30, 2007

    Found this through a search for jabber. Sorry to bump an old thread but you still prefer it to other im's out there?

    I stopped using AIM, MSN, and YahooIM on May 19th, 2006 and I haven't looked back. I can't really suggest that for everyone though—I only ask that if you already use multiple instant messaging systems that you should also use jabber. I explain it a bit better on this blog post: http://www.deepdarc.com/2006/05/19/full-time-jabber/

    I still use MSN because its easy, free and most of my friends use it. Not real thrilled with all of the extra crap they are putting it, because its becoming a memory hog. So I'm looking for something else that I can use. Thanks.

    Well, you can use MSN thru jabber transports, which is what I use to do before dropping the other IM networks entirely. There should be plenty of info on it out there on the internet. Just google for "Jabber MSN Gateway" or something.

  19. mohamed Says:
    Monday, February 25, 2008

    hi guys it's very good talk i'm using ejabberd server and i'm looking for cleint for it but i need cleint support multvoice,video,text chat and filetransfer and i can accept one without file transfer and ineed it under windows . so i want it to be (like yahoo messanger) so please if any one know program like that please let me know thank

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