Converting non-techies to Jabber?
Jabber for my IM system of choice. In Kopete, I connect to two services; Jabber and IRC (freenode). I used to connect to a MSN server too, but support for MSN is broken in my version of Kopete.
That leaves me with a problem: If I want to exchange IMs with someone who isn’t a geek (I know; it’s amazing, a geek that actually knows someone who isn’t a total computer nut!), I can’t. Yeah, yeah, I know, I could give them the whole “Proprietary IM System is Bad” lecture, but they probably won’t care in the end. Something like “Taj, why don’t you just use AIM (or ICQ, or MSN, or Yahoo, or Google Talk, or whatever) like every one else?” is the reply I’m most likely to get. Damn it! I don’t want to end up with 6 different IM accounts! I want one IM address. Heck, if I wanted to run my own Jabber Server, I could have the same Jabber address as my email address.
Yes, I could tell them to go to Jabber.org, download a Jabber client, create an account, etc etc. But do you think anyone is willing to do that? I’m not willing to download Yahoo messenger to talk to them, so why should they do the same thing for me?
How do you convert non-techies to Jabber? It’s a question I really want an answer too…
(By the way, my JID is tmorton@jabber.org).
September 26th, 2005 at 8:05 am
The ideal way would be for MSN, AIM, and ICQ to just magically support Jabber one day. Failing that, I’m guess you stick to email until one of you breaks down.
I personally only have MSN because it appears to be less popular (ie fewer people trying to chat with me while I’m working) and it comes with every Windows computer. That means my parents and grandparents can even use it without much of a hassle.
September 26th, 2005 at 9:08 am
Some Jabber servers support “transports” which more or less “relay” your Jabber communication to another server (e.g., MSN, AIM, etc). I’m using one from myjabber.net now. It works, but it’s slower and doesn’t support all the features that a “real” MSN client would (e.g., file transfers, etc).
Oh well…I guess I should just learn to accept it.
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Taj