No phone AND IM troubles!

[ciphergoth]

I still haven't got my phone.

I'm hoping that I'll get it back on Tuesday; if not it's lost forever.

In the mean time, you can often get me on IM (though somewhat erratically when I'm in Hatfield). I'm going to start using my LJ account as my sole "personal" IM account, and stop using my jabber.org.uk account altogether. This is because jabber.org.uk is incredibly unreliable - it's down right now for example - while LJ seems very reliable. So please update your clients: my Jabber address is now

ciphergoth@livejournal.com

and all the others can be deleted. I also have a work IM address, but I'm planning on using that only for work from hereon in.

If you're on my friends list and you use your LJ account for Jabber, you're automatically on my contacts list.

If you're still stuck in the past with some proprietary nonsense for IM, please join us here in the open standards future.

Comments

[adjectivegail]

This jabber of which you speak. I mostly use googlechat for IMing (on the rare occasions when I do that), ISTR something about googlechat being wonderful because of something jabber-y, but really I don't know what I'm (or you are) talking about.

1) I thought Jabber was just another way of IMing, why/how's it different from MSN, ICQ, etc?

2) I think probably because I've not looked into Jabber, but I've pretty much ignored LJ's chat feature. Would I have to download something else? Is it really that much better?

3) Do most people really IM all that much?

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I like these questions :-) but I'm going to answer them out of order.

3) I use IM all the time, mostly to chat to Jess during the day but also Katy - we IM'd lots in particular during Polyday setup. It's somewhere inbetween texts and conversation in immediacy, and free, which is very handy.

1) Imagine if you and I couldn't email each other because you were on Microsoft email but I was on Yahoo email. That's the state of IM standards like MSN and YIM, which don't talk to each other. Email doesn't have that problem because there's a single uniting set of standards through which Yahoo's email system talks seamlessly to Microsoft's. Anyone can become part of the email network by setting up their own server, as I have - you don't hav to ask anyone's permission.

Jabber is the "email-like" IM system. And the benefits are right there in the answer to your question 2.

2) Your googlechat account will IM quite happily to my LJ account, and not because Google and LiveJournal have some sort of deal but because they are both part of the wider Jabber network. You don't have to download anything new - if you have Google Talk, you can talk to me on IM.

[barakta]

3) I IM quite a lot, in fact I see it and use it as synonymous to the phone. My dad has been using ICQ (closed standard) since about 1998 before I went to university, which is great cos I can't hear him on a phone. Lorna is being trained (slowly). I only really use the phone for voice with my mum, because she's dyslexic and dappy...

I find the other advantage of IM is that it helps me with people I struggle to hear IRL and in many cases makes all communication easier as they have a better context for me. Some friends who now talk to me online, are able to improve their audibility IRL because they realise how much less I understand otherwise.

I like the scrollback and logging features, I can check what was said by whom, and if I'm tired I don't have to rely on my shady auditory memory.

[hughe.livejournal.com]

so far every jabber client i have tried doesnt work with livejournal.

but thats only the jabber clients i have tried.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Psi and Gossip seem to work with no problems for me.

[barakta]

I use GAIM happily enough and I think I got Kopete to work too.

My Gain config:
Protocol: Jabber
Screen name: barakta
Server: livejournal.com
Resource: Home
Password : *****
Alias: barakta

Advanced options
'Use TLS if available' - TICKED
'Require TLS' - TICKED

Connect port: 5222