Bantu

February 20, 2000 7:37 PM

Bantu is the holy grail of instant messaging apps. The people behind it have been working on this for a while, and they're now offering a web-based, java client that can talk to ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo instant message clients. If it were a client side application, I'd probably use it, I'm not a big fan of leaving a browser window open all the time. Another drawback is that it can't reach AIM users.
posted by mathowie (3 comments total)

It would be nice to see a (non web-based) client that could span all the messaging groups. I wonder if AIM is harder to talk to, for technical or non-technical reasons. It seems like AOL doesn't like having its kids play with other instant messagers.
posted by kcchip at 3:05 AM on February 21, 2000

The think your last sentence is the explanation, based on what we've seen from the MSN vs. AOL messengers last summer.
posted by mathowie at 4:14 AM on February 21, 2000

Jabber is something
in development that seems to have great potential. The
documentation is a bit sketchy, though. :-\
posted by hobbes at 12:04 PM on February 21, 2000