Just a quick note about everyone’s current Ruby on Rails darling, Twitter. I didn’t really get it until I hooked it up with my IM client. The value in Twitter is, after all, getting your friends to use it and then using it somewhat consistently. Well, when you hook it up to your IM client, all you need are one or two friends who are consistently updating their Twitter account. The moment you reach that low but critical threshold, peer pressure begins to force you to update it. Think of it as the network effects of Tweets.

Yes, I should go to bed.

(though, honestly, I doubt I’m the first to come up with that idea)

It’s official, Google has released an IM service to the masses. The official client is only for windows but the server seems to only be using the Jabber protocol and numerous clients exist (including my favorite Mac one!)

Give it a whirl. I’m online right now and will be at work. I may use iChat because it apparently lets you do audio. Very cool, and especially cool that Google chose to use an open protocol.

Between this, GMail and my favorite portal site (google IG), maybe it’s time to put some money into Google, too (I currently have a little cash in Yahoo). I just cancelled my premium Yahoo email account (well, converted it to a normal web-based, free account).

Update: Google has a list of other clients on their site. Also, since it’s Jabber, I wonder if someone could convince them to peer servers? Or, say, allow specialized, bot-like IM programs? For example, you could IM espn@espn.com and ask for scores or news about your favorite player. Oh, the fun you could have… Looks like that Jabber book I bought a month ago (Programming Jabber) might come in handy.