I hate myself for asking but...

[Mercutio]

I have an ID on Yahoo, MSN (I think. I have a passport ID, anyway) and AIM. I've never used IM software for anything except showing others how to turn off the most insecure features of the programs.

Now I'm trying to deal with someone whose primary mode of communication appears to be IM.

Is there such a thing as an Email to IM gateway? I've tried communicating with this person through meebo.com - which lets me send YIM messages through a web interface - but I find that I can't express myself properly in an "IM style" of single sentences rather than multiple paragraphs. Mainstream IM software, from my brief checks through VMware (like I'd actually load it on a PC!) is a testament to man's hatred for his fellow man.

Is there such a thing as IM software that doesn't completely and entirely suck balls through a straw?

 

[Groltz]

The one I've found to be the best is the one Doug suggested years ago..

Trillian Pro

It's takes some time to get all the settings dialed-in but after that it works great. I use it to run AOLIM, ICQ, MSN-M, and Yahoo-M all at the same time. It can also run IRC, jabber, and rendevous...none of which I'm familiar with.

 

[Handruin]

Like Groltz, I still use trillian today. I know some regard it as bloated, which to some degree it has grown in size, but I've never had any problems with basic communication between people over the various IM protocols. The application is also rock solid IMHO. I've been logged into AIM/ICQ for several weeks at a time and it's never crashed. Yahoo's IM on the other hand is the biggest piece of turd. That damn thing crashes more than I'd like to share, but alas I have to use it sometimes.

You could also try the linux varients like gaim if you don't want to corrupt windows (but it also works on windows). Gaim is a multi-IM compatible tool. I've only used it infrequently on my SuSe 9.3 box, but it worked relatively well.

I know blake likes miranda-im (at least he used to). I've used it only for a few days and I didn't like how simple it was. That's not to say you might like it so I'd say give it a try on your VM...and if it sucks, revert back to your last snapshot.

 

[timwhit]

I use Gaim. It works well for my needs.

 

[Mercutio]

No such thing as an IM-to-Email gateway, then?

 

[Will Rickards]

<joking>yes it's called a blackberry</joking>

 

[Mercutio]

Is there such a thing as an IM client that supports the concept of a paragraph? Everything I've tried (yes, trillian and gaim inclusive) seems to send whatever I've typed when I hit enter or shift-enter or anything else I can think of that might allow a line break between sentences.

IM software seems to be broken and stupid.

 

[timwhit]

I can hit shift-enter in Gaim and it skips a line without sending. I can do it in regular AIM as well.

 

[Mercutio]

Shift-Enter is not skipping a line in gaim 1.5 for Windows when I do it. gaim also won't let me log in to my yahoo account at all.

 

[Mercutio]

But shift enter does work on AIM Live...
ARGH.

 

[timwhit]

I can't test it right now because I am at work, but did you try ctrl-enter?

I will know for sure when I get home tonight if you can hold out that long.

 

[Handruin]

Control + enter works for new lines in trillian and Yahoo...

 

[Mercutio]

CTRL-Enter seems to be reliable for everything, actually. It's working in gaim, AIMlive and Yahoo web chat.

 

[timwhit]

It doesn't work in Meebo. Oh well, I can deal with it.

 

[ddrueding]

Paragraphs isn't really the way IM communications go. Perhaps you would be more comfortable using a MySpace account? Would she go for it?

 

[Mercutio]

You've been reading my posts here for at least five years. Do you see me as not writing in proper paragraph form?

dd: The sites I'm responsible for block myspace by default. Every time I go there I feel unclean.

Anyway, I *want* to write E-mail, and this person won't read or use an E-mail account. She's about to be the office manager at one of my client sites, and given that she's the owner's daughter, I'm not getting any backing to make her do things my way. She's 19 and I don't think she's ever used Email in her life. If I need to send an invoice or instruct her to do something, I would greatly prefer textual communication to voice, and since she only IMs...

I'm really close to dropping the client over this.

 

[P5-133XL]

God forbid the concept of snail-mail as a communication solution for sending things like invoices ...

 

[Bozo]

I wonder what 'Miss 19' is going to do when she starts losing business because she won't use e-mail???

[sounds like a spoiled rich brat]

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[Handruin]

How about this...send her a gmail invite and use the built-in text chat. It works rather well IMHO. I've used it a bunch lately...and, it keeps track of the conversation in a history if you want it to.

 

[timwhit]

I use IM, but not for anything important. Sounds like a damn fool to me.

 

[ddrueding]

Yup, this is worth dropping a client over. In a letter to the owner, I would point out that you would require that business communications be made using a technology that provides a record of those communications. Trying to track a paper trail through saved IMs sounds like absolute hell.

 

[mubs]

Sound advice from DD.

 

[Mercutio]

What happens to IM-crap if I'm working from three or four different PCs all at once? Can I be logged in on all those different machines? Will they all get all my messages?

 

[Groltz]

In Trillian, if I run the program from two different locations the AOLIM component complains loudly and insists that I log off one of them. It allows logging off of the remote location so you're not stranded.

 

[Mercutio]

That's... sub-optimal.

 

[Sol]

I think they're all pretty similar in that you can only be logged in on one PC at a time. MSN and ICQ will just log out your current session if you start a new one with the same ID... I'm not sure about any others since I havn't used them. Essentially the only way to really deal with this would be to have the IM client running on one machine and have it make a sound to alert you when you get a message... This is the default in most IM clients but it can get annoying very rapidly.

Further to ddruedings point tracking a paper trail through IM is even more dificult than you would expect because the message log is stored only locally (which I guess is preferable for security reasons) meaning that you not only have to look through a long list of messages to find the one your looking for but you have to look through a couple of different long lists of messages depending on how many computers you may have logged in on.

Several IM systems are able to send and recieve messages using SMS. You would have to do some research to make sure it wasn't going to be too expensive but SMS might be easier for your end of the conversation. If you can make your client understand that every message they send costs money (i.e. add it to thier bills) then the message volume may even be tolerable...

 

[Mercutio]

At this point I'm convinced that the right answer is "I quit". I don't see any advantage or compelling reason to use IM software, to load it on all my PCs, just so I can have a lobotomized program that combines the worst aspects of E-mail and telephone communication. I'm not going to tolerate the extra authentication issues nor the aggravating quasi-requirement of having the other party present.
From the chat I had with Handy this afternoon, I don't really see how much useful information can be exchanged without a realtime chat (something better done on a phone), or how I could manage such a chat while continuing to work in other ways, as I can while writing an E-mail message.

 

[Adcadet]

How about this...send her a gmail invite and use the built-in text chat. It works rather well IMHO. I've used it a bunch lately...and, it keeps track of the conversation in a history if you want it to.

I gotta agree. I haven't used a chat client since I left college 4+ years ago, despite IMing being huge in college. Now that Gmail has a client built-in, I use it on occasion. Not extra software to install, simple interface, and the conversations are saved and google-able. Suits me well.

 

[MaxBurn]

Trillian pro user for a long time. You can set it up so that the enter doesn't send the message and merely adds a line and you have to click send to send. There is a way to trick it out to do a mobile install on a memory key and use that anywhere, only windows that I am aware of though. Mine logs everything, but tracking a conversation from a month ago is a real pain and way harder than email.

I would not consider it for business though, generally unprofessional and they already have many ways to get in touch. I think there are some laws now that you have to keep records of correspondence via email for years or something? Don't know if that pertains to IM.

 

[Mercutio]

How about this...send her a gmail invite and use the built-in text chat.

I gotta agree.

The problem is... I really don't care for the Gmail interface, either. Even as a webmail app it's a distant second to what Yahoo Mail suscribers enjoy.
The only thing I use my Gmail account for is gmailfs.

 

[Adcadet]

You really like the Yahoo mail interface better than Gmail? Are you referring to the paid version of Yahoo mail or something?

I did notice that yahoo just opened up "dot addresses" so I can now get firstname.lastname@yahoo.com.

 

[Mercutio]

Yes. It looks like this:

The neat stuff I have there - I *do* use Thunderbird (or elm) most of the time - but I have a tabbed interface that allows access to my mail spool even while I'm reading or replying to another message and, through the magic of AJAX, I can even do local client-ish things like right click to reply to a message. Very handy when I'm sitting at just whatever random computer.

 

[Adcadet]

ah, their Beta. I just signed up. Hopefully they add people quickly to the beta program. Thoughts and comments on the beta?

 

[Mercutio]

It can be slow to load but I've had it for quite a long time now - six or nine months - and I've found it to be an excellent fill-in for a real mail client.

 

[Adcadet]

Email first, and now word processing. What next?

 

[timwhit]

What is likefunbutnot.org? Start-up porn site? :wink:

 

[timwhit]

Personally, I really like gmail. I have started to use it for most of my mail.

I used to use an address on my personal domain, but gmail's interface is just so much better than anything else that I have switched over to it for almost everything. Thread view is a killer-app for me. It's not even a complicated idea.

 

[Mercutio]

What is likefunbutnot.org? Start-up porn site? :wink:

I was talking about something in a class and I used the phrase "This will be like fun, but, you know, not."

It struck me that that phrase is a pretty good description for a lot of things in life, and I decided to register it as a domain.

 

[sechs]

Anyway, I *want* to write E-mail, and this person won't read or use an E-mail account. She's about to be the office manager at one of my client sites, and given that she's the owner's daughter, I'm not getting any backing to make her do things my way. She's 19 and I don't think she's ever used Email in her life. If I need to send an invoice or instruct her to do something, I would greatly prefer textual communication to voice, and since she only IMs...

There was a person with whom I worked once that was just like this. Insisted that communications come via IM (despite saidsame IM client being banned by the IT folks). I suggest that you do what I did: send the e-mail as you otherwise would and then message them that you sent an e-mail. By necessity I used a web client, and therefore was never "live" for chat; if a message was sent to me, I feigned ignorance ("There must have been an error when you sent it. You should have e-mailed me to make sure I got it.").

 

[mubs]

Yahoo Discontinuing Yahoo! Plus Service