   IM: the grand unification! (or rather: why not?)
  Here are the available, most widely used technologies/protocols at this time:AIM (OSCAR)MSNICQ (OSCAR)IRCYMSGSkypeetc.See Wikipedia for a full list.I have no gripes against every large corporation developing their own protocol and unsuccessfully trying to dominate the world, but at the heart of it it's all nothing more than a nuisance to the end user (especially if he/she has friends in very different parts of the world).So, what does an IM client need to be able to do? In practice it needs to fulfil a very small number of requirements, which are present in pretty much all of the clients developed by pretty much all of the companies.1) send and receive instant messages2) send and receive files (actually optional)3) that's itIn addition to these a few features make things more fun:4) encryption5) audio support6) webcam support7) email checking and notification8) that's really about itFun stuff adds to this:9) (non-standardized*) emoticons10) paint messages (as in MSN and possibly elsewhere - good for kids and such)11) proprietary crap that I can't probably think of that no one really needs* wth! we can't even agree on something as trivial as this?Most if not all of the clients out there can do most of these things with emphasis on corporate biases (eg which email account they can check, whether they allow you to transfer MP3 files - *cough* MSN bollocks *cough*, being really good at encrypting audio streams), etc. I'm not saying these can be unified on a corporate level, but these can most certainly be blackboxed into dynamic link libraries or equivalents, which provide features based on the user's choice of account preferences. Any perks you get based on which client style you prefer could be determined by which client you prefer to use yourself. Call it a choice between an NV_, ATI_ and ultimately, if you can live with just the common features, an ARB_ extension.Here's my problem: I use Skype. I'm happy with Skype because I have a small number of people in my friends' list whose opinions and IM's matter to me. I also have an MSN account, but it contains many of my friends who I do not really want to talk to unless I can't avoid it. Blocking them would be kind of overkill. So I really don't want to install the client and just say I don't use MSN. Then, a while ago, it turned out I need an AOL account for some work related stuff. I try to run it only when I need. And now it seems I need to make myself available over IRC. That's four clients. To write text in. I don't know about other people, but to me that's three clients too many. Most of the time I just IM, but I also really like Skype's audio features (well I used to more than now, back when everything wasn't so non-working-automagical).I do realize the nature of corporate (illusion of) control, but some things here could really use standardization. IM is big business. I daresay most computer users use it occasionally, many of them daily. Right now trying to connect is like having to use the appropriate mobile phone to send an SMS to each friend. And all the while all of these could be unified just like the SMS with literally nothing more than a central server (or inter-server communication, which is a bad idea because there's always that next big corporation that thinks they can develop a better protocol) and a DLL release from each of the companies that provides updates to their transmission layer conversion code (protocol implementation) to keep everyone up to date. This has a name - it's called a 'standard'. Do whatever the heck you want over the wire, but link to a single type of standardized host controller in a standardized way (just as Steinberg's VST does).Remind me, why couldn't some organization like ISO actually enforce this? Okay, you can't enforce it, but you can "make it available"; and once you make it available it'll first be adopted by third parties and then the companies themselves once they literally start to become marginalized in their own front yards. And no, I don't believe it can be about something as simple as 'ad space' - you can have ad space availablity based on which client you tie your account to.I believe that if we could do this, we'd be one step closer to solving string theory!   
  I admit I had a little bit of a tl;dr reaction to your post, but from what I gathered by skimming it, this may be of interest to you. Not sure on the audio thing, but it's an IETF standard so maybe you could draw up a draft proposal for embedding low-bitrate audio.If I totally misunderstood what you meant, then I apologize that I didn't have the patience to read your entire post :)   ;  Introducing a standard creates one more pointless option and further fragmentation. Nothing more.   ;  That's why there's stuff like this around: Trillian;  people still use IM?   ;Quote:Original post by capn_midnightpeople still use IM?Heh that was my initial thought also. I gave up IM years ago. IRC is where it's at, and even then you would not imagine how many times we've had the "IRC clients suck" conversation. Not to mention the protocol could use some retooling since it's so dated.Let all of the technologies die except IRC. Need to send files, host them. Need to talk to someone pick up a phone.   ;Quote:Original post by capn_midnightpeople still use IM?That's the problem - I wouldn't if it weren't required. I'm perfectly okay with not sitting in front of a chat window, wasting my time waiting for the other person to reply.Many people I know, however, are.And you have to admit - sometimes it's damn handy - especially since I'm out of call credit ATM and rely on other people to take up the initiative :)Quote:That's why there's stuff like this around: TrillianWow - I'm reading about it right now and I might try it out. I'd forgotten about Trillian - I used it along time ago, but back then it was pretty iffy and showed some weird behavior. Thanks for bringing this to my attention!Quote:Introducing a standard creates one more pointless option and further fragmentation. Nothing more.(Especially) generally speaking, I'm pretty sure I don't agree with this. Trying to "extend" the standard with proprietary crap does that. Also your sentence implies all options are already pointless, which they are not.Quote:I admit I had a little bit of a tl;dr reaction to your post, but from what I gathered by skimming it, this may be of interest to you. Not sure on the audio thing, but it's an IETF standard so maybe you could draw up a draft proposal for embedding low-bitrate audio.If I totally misunderstood what you meant, then I apologize that I didn't have the patience to read your entire post :)Naw, I was just sparking some discussion - I'm too lazy to do anything about this so in the end I'll suck it up. It does, however, seem a bit weird that telecom companies can work around their differences and establish standards, video controller companies can work with standards and other software companies can agree on standards, but companies that have their own comparatively trivial and very popular pieces of chat software clients can't even standardize something as simple as emoticons.   ;Quote:Original post by capn_midnightpeople still use IM?I use it at work because everyone in our 3 offices has it running, not everyone has a phone on their desk and it's often easier than email for quick queries... or idle chat.Quote:Original post by irreversibleTrying to "extend" the standard with proprietary crap does that....which is the very first that that would happen if somehow you could convince everyone to adopt a common standard - they'd try to harm the competition by breaking the standard...Quote:can't even standardize something as simple as emoticons.Microsoft actually has a patent on the sending of emoticons through IM clients -- another cold-war patent threat.   ;Quote:Original post by PromitIntroducing a standard creates one more pointless option and further fragmentation. Nothing more.yes just like um say htmlim with you promit, we'll link arms + say down with html5 till the ends of the earth.my new sigQuote:promit + zedfuck standards, theyre useless, whatever did standards do for us;  It's not free to run a chat server, it's got to be paid for somehow and that somehow is almost always ad-based.  This is different from a phone company, which requires paid subscribers. There's no incentive for a company to allow ad-free clients, let alone multiple clients.  That hasn't stopped anyone, with Trillian and Pidgin as the notable examples. That being said, Facebook has pretty much replaced what I used IMs for.