neos

Some years ago, working environments were completely different: smaller, more familiar, with a kind of charming air surrounding desks, water coolers and meeting rooms. Internal communication was just a question of leaving your place and joining the quick chat beside the water cooler for just five minutes, before going back to your daily tasks.

However, things have changed quickly over the last few years. Companies have grown really fast, not only in financial terms, but also in number of workers. New people join the staff everyday and it's harder to make new friends. Those five-minute breaks begin to be scarcer, until one day there's not a single one during a whole working day.

When communication reaches a non-existence level, you know it's time for a change. Most office managers reject the idea of using traditional instant messaging tools such as MSN or Yahoo, mostly because workers end up chatting with friends outside the office instead of answering the dud from accounting. This is why local network based IM applications like Neos have become a more popular solution: they allow workers to exchange messages, files, even media streams... without the temptations of the outer world.

If you're not sure what all this jibber-jabber is about Jabber then let me explain. In software terms, Jabber is known as the "Linux of instant messaging" due to its open and secure nature. It's a highly effective and useful alternative to all those ad-bloated IM networks such as AIM, ICQ and MSN. Now for the science. At its heart, Jabber is basically a set of streaming XML protocols and technologies that allow two clients to communicate with each other. The advantages of Jabber are numerous including greater security, it's completely open, it can be extended easily and it's completely decentralised. After reading all this, you may be thinking "Sign me up! Where do I get started?". Well, for starters, you can use any one of these excellent clients that support the Jabber protocol.

Pidgin - Previously known as Gaim and supports multiple protocols at the same time

Universal Messenger Plus - Very simple and lightweight IM client

Neos - Simple client offering voice and video over IP

Pandion - Highly secure and customisable client with plugins

Miranda - Requires no installation and very light on your CPU

After choosing one of the above you're ready to go by just following the instructions on the Jabber Foundation homepage.