If you've got any kind of interest in instant messaging, you owe it to yourself to read the many interesting articles in ACM Queue. Here are a few highlights:
- A Conversation with Peter Ford talks to the man behind MSN Messenger and a SIP advocate.
- On Helicopters and Submarines does a good job of making the case for Jabber as the common protocol.
- Beyond Instant Messaging discusses three projects that extend presence in ways that make it more useful.
One of the projects discussed in the last article talks about a system called Awarenex which puts activity indicators in the buddy list such as indicating when the person has a meeting scheduled on their calendar or even when they're on the phone. You can get some of this right now on the Mac using iChatStatus, a scriptable application that let's you automatically change your iChat status from a script. Mine let's people know what song I'm listening to in iTunes, but I don't see why it couldn't be programmed to tell people when I'm on a trip or have a meeting scheduled.
