Well after years using multi-protocol chat programs like Adium to access my Hotmail, Yahoo!, .Mac and Jabber accounts I’ve made the switch to a ‘pure’ XMPP (Jabber) chat client. At the moment that’s Psi as it’s multi-platform running on Mac, Windows and Linux. I’ll be recommending it to clients when they sign up to our new hosted XMPP service ClearIM.
So you’re wondering if I’ve ditched my buddies on networks like MSN and Yahoo!, well no I haven’t. That’s because I’m using the Cleartext ClearIM service public IM gateways to connect to the ‘legacy’ networks that the big brands are still running. This means all my chat, whatever network it’s coming from or going to, is being routed via ClearIM, it’s being archived as well, online, isn’t that neat 
With multi-protocol desktop clients you don’t get the benefit of single ‘pipe’ for IM that can add processes like archiving or content filtering, you’re tied to a desktop solution. This also means that I can run XMPP software like ProcessOne’s OneTeam on my iPhone, no need for a multi-protocol app or multiple apps to handle all my buddies when I’m mobile.
If you’re interested in how all this works or how you can get a similar setup contact me via the Cleartext web site or leave a comment here.
It’s always a sad day when you see something like this…
I’m convinced, but that doesn’t mean I’m right, that if Jabber/XMPP had strong gateways to other networks early on it would have got bigger sooner, here’s why. Read more…
Huge news in the IM space today with Cisco announcing it’s acquisition of Jabber Inc the main vendor of XMPP IM and presence technology. Cisco now have and email and EIM platform, with IronPort they have email security so I suppose the next stop is FaceTime. Read more…
Following on from my earlier post about reviewing technologies I’ve been having another look at the Jabber/XMPP community and there are some interesting things going on.
OpenFire from Jive Software now includes public IM gateways in the open source version, this used to be in their Enterprise version, so everyone can run a sensible company IM platform now. OpenFire runs under Java so it’s OS independant.
Jabber Inc have a new web site and have opened an online store. Big news for Jabber Inc is that the US Marines selected Jabber XCP. Jabber XCP runs under Linux, ‘nix and Windows.
A newer commercial player in the XMPP server market is Process One who maintain the ejabberd open source server. Here is a server that is open source, supports virtual domains and most other key RFC’s. ejabberd is written in Erlang, which looks ideal for an xmpp server and even a web server which looks like it massivley out performs Apache.
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