I’m sick of Yahoo! instant messenger — frequent connection drops, spurious presence notification, lost messages, and the general unfriendlyness towards free clients — everything sucks. I’m not a big fan of those “IMvironments” nor the “buzz”, so they are just minor attractions. I’ve heard AIM/ICQ are better, but the protocols have become defunct, and hardly any of my friends use AOL.

Meanwhile, Jabber is amazing. Its open, its free, its distributed, its rich in features. I was surprised to see that Jabber is more popular in enterprises than among the public. Here’s a call to all my friends to please, //please// give Jabber a shot. If you use Gaim or Trillian or Kopete, you don’t even need an additional client — all of them can handle Jabber very well.

To know more about Jabber, here are some useful links:
* [[http://www.jabber.org/about/overview.shtml|Jabber overview]]
* [[http://www.jabber.org/network/|List of public Jabber servers]]
* [[http://www.jabber.org/software/clients.shtml|List of Jabber clients]]
* [[http://www.jabber.org/user/userguide/|Jabber user guide]]

And if you //really// can’t live without MSN or Yahoo or AIM, you’ll be happy to know that Jabber has these things called “gateways” that allow you to use Yahoo, MSN, AIM, ICQ through your Jabber ID and client — no multiple IDs, no multiple clients needed. And there are plenty of public servers out there that support gateways. So give it a shot!

I should point out that Jabber is meant for (and **only for**) //instant messaging//. This means that there is protocol bloat for supporting webcams or voice chats. Use video conferencing or VoIP if you want those. Lets keep IM simple.

Oh yes, if you do try Jabber, don’t forget to add me on your buddylist. I’m at diwakergupta **at** jabber **dot** org