Integrated IM (YM and MSN contacts in your Gtalk)
Monday, December 17th, 2007Inspired by Khurt’s weblog at
http://islandinthenet.com/2006/10/10/get-google-talk-msn-yahoo-and-aol-all-talking/
I did some simple experiments with my own jabber server because I am curious about how the “transport” thing is working between jabber protocol and any other IMs.
For the experiments, I was using several jabber servers and clients:
- my own jabber server which is using jabberd as the jabber daemon
- jabbim.com as jabber server
- jaim.at as jabber server
- PyMSN as MSN transport from my jabber server
- XMPPY as Yahoo transport from my jabber server
- gtalk client
- PSI 0.11
- Pidgin
- Yahoo messenger 8.1
- MSN messenger 7.0
And here are the results:
- message from YM/MSN unlisted contact to gtalk –> failed
- add request from YM/MSN unlisted contact to gtalk –> success
- add request from gtalk to YM or MSN using special address format –> success
- message from deleted/removed contact to gtalk –> success
- Availability status of Yahoo and MSN contact list are not stable in Gtalk/Jabber client. Sometimes, the contacts are shown as offline.
- YM avatar in gtalk is changed. There are two default avatars in Yahoo transport, one for male and one for female.
- MSN avatar in gtalk is the original MSN avatar.
Analysys:
- gtalk is only receiving message from known contact
- Add request to gtalk consist of two things: authorize new friend and add the new friend in the contact list
- your friend needs to be authorized first before he/she can send a message to your gtalk
- once your friend is authorized, he/she is still able to send a message to you although you have delete him/her id from your gtalk.
- If you don’t want to receive any message from someone, you need to block him at your gtalk
- The results are same for any jabber clients and jabber servers.
- About the unstable contact list status, I think that the transport is not retrieving the status from Yahoo and MSN server often enough or maybe the transport protocol is not reliable.
- The traffic flow if you send a message from gtalk to yahoo contact: you–> gtalk client –> gtalk server –> jabber server –> jabber transport –> yahoo/msn server –> your friend
So, the conclusion is, please re-consider the test result above if you want to integrate all your IM contact into your Gtalk. For me, I think i will not use this method at least until I can get stable contact list and maybe until I get a very reliable jabber server. I will not using my own jabber server because I still use it as my other experiments, and I prefer to use any open/public jabber server which is very reliable and fast.
-rendo-
