Google Jabber Based IM!

So the rumours from yesterday about Google releasing a Jabber based IM system are true. You can find out more about it at the Google Talk site. The stuff is standard enough that I had no problem connecting using GAIM under Linux, my preferred setup for IM. They even have instructions describing how to setup GAIM. Very cool. So of course the second step for me is trying out Agile Messenger to see if it connects. I wasn’t able to get it to. Maybe it doesn’t support TLS, or expects a different format for the “name@gmail.com” and then connect to server talk.google.com distinction. Anyone managed to get that working?

I was going to give it a try with Verichat, but my eval ran out on it, and I don’t like it enough to pay $25 to use the software for a year. Still, I have been carrying my Treo 650 with me more and more often. I’ve got some support duties now, and having the full keyboard with an SSH client is just killer. There was this Jabber client for PalmOS I used with my TG50 a while ago. It’s called JabberPalm, and it’s older than dirt. However, it is open source! Little hacking to get TLS support in there (it doesn’t seem to have it) and clean up the UI. We would have a nice little base platform for IM based development on the Palm. Then someone would need to port it to Symbian. Cause until Nokia gets an emulator running natively under Linux I’m just not willing to deal with their shit. A Jabber server like this provides a nice lower layer to the services, assuming Google maintains it well and keeps scaling it. And we have every reason to expect they will, that actually seems to be their core competency. Open clients and libraries that people can pick up and reuse are the other part. I’m a little fuzzy on step 2, but I hear step 3 is profit. So I’m all for that.