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I am quite familiar with IRC (in fact, I use efnet on a regular basis at home), but IRC is just not a good way to send small communications back and forth, unless the person is there, actively chatting. If I want to send a message to my boss, he would have to login to the IRC server (assuming he was in the same IRC server), and would have to have the client open (my experience is with ircii and mIRC) to facilitate the communication of that message. Most messages will be facilitated via chat rooms, which often scroll, and like email, messages can quickly be lost. My comment on the IRC server was pretty much because it really isn't published outside the ACNS world (with the exception of this NAG list). It isn't listed on the ACNS or AIS menu of services, nor is it on David Gift's list of business services on campus. It is hard to know if it is a service that is actually supported (for example, if I spent the effort of training the 30 office staff here on how to use it, will the server remain online 24/7 should we need to use it). For business communications, we need something that is centralized, and supported. With a campus-wide Jabber server, or centralized AIM / MSN server, we would be able to have a very client-agnostic system that would be able to do federation of access (between schools or organizations), or centralization, depending on how it is setup. Jabber has a few open-source or community projects out there that even support Kerebos authentication, and support features such as help-desk, or screen sharing. There is even one I have been looking at that has hooks into the Avaya Campus PBX that would allow messages and presence (away messages) to be set right from the physical phone on people's desks (without requiring a user to be logged into a pc). Jabber/AIM/MSN/ICQ are also well supported on many mobile devices, such as BlackBerry and Windows Mobile. -Nick Kwiatkowski MSU Telecom Systems -----Original Message----- From: MSU Network Administrators Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Brian Martinez Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2007 4:45 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [MSUNAG] Collaboration Option "D" - Other Kwiatkowski, Nicholas writes: > (b) Instant Messaging - This would be useful if we were ALL on a > common platform. I realize that IRC has been setup for some people in > ACNS, but that is a form of active communication. IM is a form of > passive communication, where I don't have to be watching the screen to > get a message. This is akin to having a phone on the desk (which is the > most useful for me). > Nicholas, I just wanted to clear a few things regarding IRC as it is my little "thing" for lack of something better to say. We have IRC setup for anyone on campus to use, it is not exclusive to ACNS. Hence the reason we are always parading it around on NAG from time to time. In fact, we've had a few stray joins from several members of the NAG community, and frankly I was happy to see that. It has led to us meeting at least one person, in real life, whom we only knew via name on this list. Another person a few of my colleagues already knew from taking classes with years ago. IRC can be and IS used for passive communication all the time by us. In exactly the same way an instant message is. You simply send someone a /msg "hey when you get back to your keyboard, let me know whats up..." Which is the same as double clicking someone's screen name in AIM/Jabber/etc. and saying the same thing. What I like about IRC better is how it brings groups together. I know you can do group type stuff in other IM environments, but call me old school (I guess). I sort of see what you are getting at by saying its active, because yeah, if you are sitting in a channel and there's lots of discussion going on, you don't want to sort through lines and lines of people talking to see the one line addressed to you. But that's also why modern day IRC clients (Pidgin, Xchat, MIRC, Chatzilla, whatever else) have a highlighting feature for when you are addressed, and/or certain keywords are said. And again, also why the /msg nickname exists. Alright, I think I've said enough about IRC. The long and the short of it people is, USE IRC!! (irc.acns.msu.edu) Also, did I mention that SWAP was dope?! ./brm