Simplifying Instant Messaging

Aug. 24 -- Millions have found "instant messaging" a great way to communicate with friends, relatives and others who are online at the same time.

The problem, however, is that none of the popular instant messaging or IM services — AOL's Instant Messenger or AIM, ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger, and Microsoft's MSN Messenger Service — can communicate with each other. That means short, text-based messages, or IMs, created on one service can only go to other members of that same service. And for chatters with friends on different IM networks, it means establishing many IM accounts running all the different IM software to access those services.

But maintaining multiple IM accounts may soon be unnecessary.

At the heart of the pending freedom is a protocol still in development by the Internet Engineering Task Force, or IETF, a consortium of computer scientists and programmers that creates and establishes universal standards for the Net.

Make It SIMPLE

Called "SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions," or more succinctly, SIMPLE, the forthcoming IM standard will establish a uniform means for short text-messages sent over the Net. With a common standard in place, IMs could easily travel between different SIMPLE networks — just like calls can be carried between Sprint and AT&T phone networks.

Moreover, SIMPLE uses another IETF standard called Session Initiation Protocol, or SIP, which was designed to handle much more complex Net traffic such as digital video and voice. Next generation IMs that use SIMPLE would then be able to handle digital movie files or even telephone-like conversations over a single simple interface.

Make Them Fast

So far, both AOL and Microsoft have expressed support for the emerging standard.

AOL recently announced that it has begun testing a SIMPLE-compliant AIM with Lotus' Sametime messenger, an IM service geared toward corporate networks. And Microsoft plans to add a SIMPLE version of its MSN Messenger service as an integral part of its new Windows XP operating system due out in October.