About Jabber
Jabber is an Open Source Instant Messenger Service. It's a lot like AIM, MSN Messenger, or Yahoo! Messenger, but rather than being shrouded in mystery protocols, it's an Open Standard and there are many Open Source implementations. Anyone can run a Jabber server and communicate with users on any other server, rather than being forced to use the server(s) provided by a single company, as with the other IM networks mentioned above.
Grab a Jabber client (and/or server) from http://www.jabber.org/ and try it out!
Wide-spread adoption
Jabber is slowly starting to gain popularity, primarily thanks to a few large adaptations of it.
Google uses Jabber for it's Google Talk service. More information
Apple is using Jabber for their iChat server. More information
The Gizmo Project offers integration with google talk, which in reality means that any Gizmo user can communicate with any Jabber user, regardless of which server they are on, simply because of how the protocol is designed (as mentioned above). More information.
The SeattleWireless Jabber Server
SeattleWireless runs a SSL (old-style) Jabber Server on port 5222. There are no AIM/MSN/Yahoo transports, but Server2Server and conference servers are enabled. and you can chat with anyone on the SeattleWireless Jabber server, the Jabber.org server, GTalk, or any other Jabber server on the Internet or SWN network.
Join the public group chat: chat @ conference.seattlewireless.net
