Microsoft announced that its Live Messenger instant messaging client has now achieved over 300 million users. Be that as it may, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) said those clients are spread out among 76 countries and 48 languages around the world. The declaration came using a post on Microsoft’s Inside Windows Live blog on Tuesday.

Jeff Kunins who is the group program manager for interpersonal interaction in Windows Live stated in the blog entry that individuals utilize Messenger for 163 billion minutes consistently, which is around 9.4 percent of the time users spend on the Internet around the world.

He also included that over 40% of the clients sign in every day (more than 130 million day by day users) and consistently, those clients share more than 1.5 billion discussions and send more than 9 billion messages.
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If you’ve ever had conversations with people in online chat rooms, used instant message apps, had a conversation via text message, or engaged in a discussion with a teenager, you must have at least come across some of the instant message abbreviations out there. In spite of the fact that they have a tendency to be grammatically incorrect, they are commonly used in the cyber space these days making sending text messages snappy and less demanding on your fingers. It’s better to know them and familiarize yourself with them because chances are that you will have to understand them at some point if you haven’t already.

With the increase in the popularity in the use of online text-based communications came the development of an innovative texting language, designed to enhance communication. Today, text and chat abbreviations are used on Facebook. These chat abbreviations are common on Facebook, Twitter, instant messaging, email, Internet and online gaming services, chat rooms, discussion boards and mobile phone text messaging (SMS).
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When Apple announced iChat in 2003, Mac AIM users were enthusiastic: AOL’s own Mac client hadn’t really made the adjustment to OS X, and there was little indication Mac users would be full citizens on AIM any time soon.

Though iChat did a lot to bring feature parity to Mac users, it was a little behind the curve in terms of the interface features people were coming to expect from third party IM clients. Independent developers went to work modifying iChat to include features they’d hoped to see.

Chax, written by Kent Sutherland, is one of the more comprehensive iChat add-ons available, and it has been under steady update since 2005. At first, it offered some interface polish Apple itself hadn’t bothered with: It tweaked the display of buddy names, fixed annoying window placement bugs, made it easier to get at chat logs, and added unread message notification to the iChat dock icon.
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AOL today announced that it has launched Open AIM 2.0, an update to the API and SDK the company provides to third-party instant messaging developers who write clients and services for use with AOL’s AIM network. AOL announced the first version of Open AIM one day shy of two years ago.

In its first release, Open AIM was largely characterized by the technical advantages it conferred on third-party developers by providing a flexible SDK that worked with a number of popular programming languages in the Windows environment. At the same time, its license was somewhat protective of AIM, prohibiting developers from using it with multi-network IM clients such as Trillian or Pidgin.

Though some developers are still uncertain of how (or if) they can take advantage of the new release, AOL has lifted some of the restrictions it placed two years ago, and it has provided more access and documentation to OSCAR, AIM’s key protocol. With Open AIM 2.0, a number of OSCAR features are now exposed through the new APIs. Spokespersons for AOL confirmed that SSL encryption, for instance, is now available to third-party developers.
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In this era of constant innovations, service providers have to stay diligent and provide better features to their users as and when required. It is for this reason that most proactive companies are coming forward with some of the latest updates every day. If you are a gadget lover and are keen to know what the latest in the tech world is, then you will find this article quite resourceful.

Updated Google talk features

Yes, your voices have been heard! Google talk users had requested some features, and now, they would soon be able to access those. These include a new music feature and an update to send and receive free voicemails by the users in the U.S.

Good news for entrepreneurs

If you are looking for new ways to digitally market your product, then the latest extension of meebo.com can be your best pal. Now, it will be possible to integrate Meebo to any website and view the traffic on your page. You can even talk to the visitors and market your products better.
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Sun Microsystems announced its position in the instant messaging (IM) protocol debate with its inclusion of the Jabber protocol in the latest version of the Java System Instant Messaging application.

Officials at the Santa Clara, Calif., software company said version 7 of the IM platform now supports the extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) (define) , often called the Jabber protocol because of its association with the open source instant messaging client.

Some heavyweight software developers, notably IBM and Microsoft , have come down in support for a competing specification called the Session Initiation Protocol for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions (SIMPLE) (define) .

Marcel Nienhuis, market analyst at the Radicati Group, said Sun’s backing of the XMPP specification makes sense and evens out the playing field between the two competing protocols, where SIMPLE is seen to have more corporate backing. Sun’s decision to support XMPP, he said, also falls in line with the company’s position as stewards of the Java platform.
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After years of mutually beneficial barriers between their respective networks, instant messaging’s “Big Three” will finally interoperate, at least between enterprise users. An agreement between Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft is aimed at IM customers looking for a way to provide chat between employees on different networks.

Microsoft announced early today that users of Microsoft’s Office Live Communications Server (LCS) 2005 will be able to connect with AOL, MSN and Yahoo networks, providing the capability to share presence and, eventually, directory information between the three for enterprise users. The announcement comes less than a month after both AOL and Yahoo announced significant scale backs in their business presences and largely explains the value Yahoo saw in changing its IM protocols to block third-party clients. The deal is driven, according to some published reports, by Microsoft sharing revenue from the additional licensing fees it will collect for the capability to interoperate with the other two companies.
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The IETF, accepted Jabber Software Foundation’s new proposed instant messaging framework on Thursday, known as “XMPP-Core” Protocol. Officially a proposed standard, the XMMP will allow both users and applications to transmit and receive XML documents with “added security and internalization features.” This is considered a great success for Jabber Software Foundation, or JSF, who utilized a peer-review system similar to that of the IETF itself to quicken their approval process.

While the XMPP-Core does lay a new foundation for XML data transmission, the protocol is still long ways away from becoming the standard. However, there is a second protocol, known as XMPP-IM, which is under review and could add functionality to standard messaging for XMPP. Peter Saint Andre, the executive director of the JSF, stated “The document defines some extensions to the core streaming protocols … that’s expected of a basic instant messaging and presence system.”
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The IETF, or the Internet Engineering Task Force, has recently made a breakthrough in their research on geographic linking. Now, the first question that you may ask is, “How will ‘geographic linking’ apply to my everyday life?”. However, let’s start with what exactly geographic linking is, and the research being done about it to keep you, and the people in your life safe.

What is geographic linking?
Geographic linking is a process in which a geographic location is linked, or paired with information that is available for that particular area. The primary concern with visually improving images of the area and the information that is available through geographic linking is if the people who reside in these areas are having their privacy maintained. Which is exactly what the IETF is being wary of while they are improving the optic representations of the geographic areas. To be more specific, the group who is doing the research, and is making sure that the security of everyone is maintained is known as, GEOPRIV.
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Pundits will probably look back on 2003 — at best — as a year of very conservative growth for the instant messaging industry.

But those in the trenches this year deserve a good deal of congratulations. Despite long sales cycles and continued strain on IT budgets, the space experienced some of its largest product launches to date, a number of important alliances among stakeholders, and several key venture capital investments.

A number of key deployments also debuted, in industries ranging from financial services to entertainment, reflecting customers’ response to the gospel long preached by vendors of enterprise IM solutions — describing the benefits of real-time communications and presence awareness associated with the technology.

As 2003 draws to a close, then, InstantMessagingPlanet.com looks back at some of the major trends that dominated the headlines during the year — and which will be sure to pave the way for developments in 2004.
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