A Solution For Decentralized Instant Messaging

Added: 10/26/2007

Imagine sending a mail from a hotmail account and getting that mail back because the email address you sent it on ended with ‘@yahoo.com’. How uncomfortable and time consuming procedure it can become when two different companies owning an email account cannot send mails. The same way decentralized instant messaging is now becoming an issue as so many instant message providers are available.

The use of internet has grown a lot in the last 10-15 years where everyone from kids to old people is using it. Homes, schools, cafй’s, universities, libraries now provide computers and internet connection. Therefore, people find it more convenient to instant message their friends, family, relatives, colleagues and roommates instead of spending more time and money to give them a call because everyone is aware of the fact that instant messaging is much easier than phone calls or even e-mails.

A new issue that has mounted in the past year is now there are so many instant messengers and depending on each individual they choose a messenger that they like the best. The famous instant messaging service providers are Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, Microsoft (Windows Live Messenger), AIM and AOL. Everybody have their own circle of friends added up in the instant messenger they use but what happens when people want to instant message someone who is not online in lets say your AOL messenger but is online on Yahoo Messenger. To do that you would have to sign in the Yahoo Messenger just to instant message that particular person because let’s face it we are now too lazy to actually give someone a buzz.

The marketplace grew so much in a couple of years that people are a member of atleast two networks. People have a dozen of instant message service providers signed in which fills up their entire taskbar and also makes the computer’s start up slower. Not all the people are on one single network as choices vary from person to person. You might be a huge fan of Windows Live Messenger but some people might not find it easy to use etc.

To try to put an end to this problem software developers thought that instant messaging should be decentralized in such a way that one single software or program enables a user to sign in into multiple instant message service providers rather than signing in different softwares for every network. How these softwares work? It uses GPG over SSL for encryption, and includes a console client, an X client, a server, and a simple Web-based client that enables decentralized instant messaging. Softwares like Trillian and Gaim allowed a user to decentralized instant messages. These software worked by having contrasting protocols inside the IM client application of different instant messengers like Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, AIM, AOL and ICQ. Even if you would use a multi-network messenger a user is unable to sign into more than four network accounts. Somehow these softwares did not catch on a lot of people’s attention as mostly the files available to download from the internet were corrupted or had lots of bugs.

A software that might solve this problem of yours is yeemp. This is a decentralized instant messaging system. The clients include support for Cyrillic, Japanese and Ogham input, as well as direct UTF-8. Yeemp includes a server, a command-line client, an X client and a simple Web-based client. The clients can also use the AIM and ICQ protocols. To get this software you may visit http://directory.fsf.org/project/yeemp/.

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