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  Cartoon artwork created with Stripgenerator; dialogue copy/pasted from #ubuntu-offtopic on Freenode.
  

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My experiment with replacing irssi with Jabber clients is over for now. There are a few reasons for this of course.

• Mobile Jabber clients simply are not there yet. There is no way they can compete with a screened irssi over PuTTY. Notifications are nice, but the cost in RAM usage (for Java apps) and usability (for native clients) is too high.
• 24/7 connectivity is too hard to achieve with Jabber clients.
• I like being available on IRC at all times without people having to find out my Jabber ID or email address. This is for making myself more available, not to keep my contact information  more private (that’s not my cup of tea anyway.)

Bottom line: old school server/client solutions still rule in chat, just as I’ve found with email (IMAP) and PIM data (SyncML servers).

I still love Jabber though, and my Bitlbee session is open. Running Jabber over my irssi session may make my Jabber presence less exciting and featureful, but it also makes it client-independent and more reliable.

Today, I logged off of Google Talk and logged in on jabber.se exclusively. See the updated About page. The reason is simple: real Jabber has better Jabber support (no surprise there!), and I’m cutting down on recreational IRC usage. Jabber transports can easily handle the few channels I need to be on (unlike Google Talk). Proper MUC support is also a plus.

What this means is a change in priorities. I like having all my chat in one place. This means you have to compromise. I’ve enjoyed irssi‘s awesome IRC capabilities but suffered from Bitlbee‘s (and gTalk’s) poor Jabber support. Now I’m trying full Jabber with poor IRC support. Lets’s see how it goes.

Before: All-In-One, Always-On remote irssi session on my server.

On the desktop I’m now using Gajim because it lets me enjoy every feature provided by the server. On the mobile phone I’m trying out BombusMod. It’s very complete, but it’s also Java. Couldn’t find a better option. Tips for a good Jabber client for S60 phones are welcome. Needs to have MUC and transports at least, preferably account editing with full vCard support.

After: All-In-One, On-Demand, local Gajim session. The Gnome Do build on the background has nothing to do with it :)

Which reminds me, while the jabber.fi domain is fortunately secured by a cool Finnish Jabber and Free Software fan, we don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know of any concrete plans about a server. This needs to be fixed.

As of today, I will no longer be logged in on the following proprietary chat networks:

• MSN
• Yahoo!
• AIM

I will be happy to chat with you on the free Jabber and IRC networks. Please see my updated contact information on the About page.

If you don’t have a Jabber account, you can easily get one for free on the jabber.org home page. If you use Gmail, you already have a Jabber account. If your current chat client does not support Jabber, upgrade to the open source multiprotocol Gaim messenger if you use Linux or Windows, or Psi if you use a Mac. Of course, I’ll continue to idle on the Freenode IRC network as well.

I stongly recommend that everybody upgrade to open chat protocols and leave the corporate networks fight their own battles.