In part one I mentioned how I was considering using Google Talk as my main chat ID. As it turns out, I talked myself out of it pretty quickly after I delved into using Google Talk to connect to MSN and other services as I do now with my own Jabber server. While there are a lot of links around for using Jabber transports to hook your Google Talk ID to other services, there’s a tiny catch… well, actually, I think it’s a bloody great huge catch personally.
You see, it wasn’t until I read the how-tos that it became clear how it works. The trick is that Google doesn’t run Jabber transports on their own servers, so you therefore need to take advantage of various “open” Jabber servers that do (“open” in this context refers to a server that lets you use its transports without necessarily being a registered user there).
Seeing there didn’t seem to be any restrictions on the servers that could be used, I figured that I could use my own server. Sure enough, after the right incantations to expose the service on the ‘net, I could connect my Google Talk ID through the Jabber-MSN transport on my server to my MSN account. Yay, right? Well, not really — each little test message I sent in either direction incurred three trips over my Internet connection! Yes, three: one to go from my Google Talk client to Google, one back from Google to the transport on my Jabber server, then a third from the transport to MSN. Obviously the same happens in reverse as well (for incoming messages from MSN).
Seeing this as a less than optimum setup, and also being wary of getting listed as a Google Talk-friendly Jabber transport provider, I lopped the transport’s external visibility and went back to using my own JID for transport access. It’s a bit of a shame too; since fring (mentioned briefly in my last post) doesn’t let me connect to an arbitrary Jabber server, to keep connected to everything I’d need two mobile chat programs running.
It’s not like I do that much IM that I need to keep all this running, but it is at least a little bit interesting… 🙂
Crossed Wires 