Per yesterday's post, over the next few months I'll be piloting the policies, technology and governance of flexible work arrangements. I live by Blackberry email, cell phone, web, and remote data access via SSLVPN. To expand my communications horizons, I'll be testing Instant Messaging, various forms of video teleconferencing, blogs, wikis, collaboration tools and group authoring tools.
Here's my summary of the Instant Messaging experience to date. As an email guy, it has taken some getting used to. I've done IM via AOL's Instant Messaging (AIM), MSN Messanger, Yahoo, Google Talk, a local Jabber server at BIDMC, and Skype's chat features.
To me, effective chat needs to work across all platforms, so I tested all of these platforms with my Ubunu Feisty Fawn Linux laptop, my Macbook, and my Dell Optiplex 745 desktop running Windows XP. For Linux, I used Pidgin and Gajim open source instant messaging programs. For the Mac I used iChat (AIM and Jabber) plus downloaded clients from MSN, Yahooa and Skype and for the Windows machine I downloaded clients from AOL, MSN, Yahoo, and Skype. For Google Talk, I also tried the Google web client that's part of Gmail by using a Firefox browser on all three computers.
My first impression is that IM can be an effective communication tool for realtime emergent situations, for quick questions (when is the meeting?), and for brainstorming as a group. One frustration is that my collaborators have accounts on different IM platforms. With email, I simply send to the address of each server used by my collaborators. With IM, I must login to the same service each is using. My Linux clients enable me to login to multiple IM services simultaneously, but I still need to create and remember the credentials to accounts on all these services.
Some of these services support video and voice chat. Here's what I found
AIM - Windows AIM client supports chat/voice/video, Mac iChat supports chat/voice/video, Linux Pigdin/Gaim supports chat only. All use the proprietary OSCAR protocol.
MSN - Windows Messaging client supports chat/voice/video, Mac aMSN open source application supports chat/video, Linux aMSN open source applications supports chat/video. All use the proprietary MSNP protocol
Google talk - Hosted implementation of the industry standard Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) protocol and the extended Jingle protocol. Works with any standards-based chat client such as Trillian for windows, iChat for Mac, Pidgin/Gajim for Linux. Supports audio via a downloadable Google talk client for windows, iChat for the Mac. No audio support for Linux.
Yahoo - Windows Yahoo client supports chat/voice/video, Mac Yahoo client supports chat/video, Linux Pidgin/Gaim supports chat only. All use the proprietary Yahoo! Messenger Protocol
Skype - Windows Skype client supports chat/voice/video, Mac Skype client supports chat/voice/video. Linux client supports chat and voice only. All use the proprietary Skype protocol.
Bottom line - All provide text chat on Linux, Macs and Windows. Skype provides voice on all these platforms. None of these services provide video and voice on all platforms.
My conclusion is that text works very well as long as your collaborators are on the same IM service. Voice is problematic across platforms and has very uneven quality that's a function of many bandwidth bottlenecks from desktop to desktop via the internet and the IM service provider. Combined Voice and Video across platforms is not yet possible with IM.
Has anyone had a different experience?
More to follow as the exploration continues.
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