Will IM Ever Properly Interop?

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CNet: Yahoo IM update Shuts Out Third Parties

For all the aggravation brought by incumbent telcos, the thought that organizations such as Yahoo or MSN could replace them to provide our basic communication infrastructure is even scarier. Here's a simple action plan to send a clear message that we're not going to let them lock us in their gated communities:

download and use Trillian and create meta contacts for all your contacts (i.e. combine their various IM accounts into a single contact)

create an AIM account

make yourself familiar with IRC in case AIM "upgrades" itself too

download Skype

AIM is interopable with IChat and supported by Trillian. Skype supports voice chat. The only thing that's in Yahoo and MSN's chat clients that isn't supported in the solution outlined above is webcam support, which is fun but not terribly useful to start with, at least in a business context.

Category(s): software ·

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