"I can’t think of anything that demonstrates the sovereign nature of the self better than a blog.” - Doc Searls
About the Author
Stowe Boyd is a well-known media subversive,
and an internationally recognized authority on real-time, collaborative
and social technologies. His new blog is Message.
In the Pipeline: Don't miss Derek Lowe's excellent commentary on drug discovery and the pharma industry in general at In the Pipeline
Last week, I blogged about an Online Status Indicator service, but I couldn't get the Jabber indicator to work. Wes Carr at 2Entwine did some research, and it turns out that the only one of the participating sites that support Jabber is the http://www.the-server.net:8000/ server.
Hey gang. I've been using the OPI for a couple of years now on my personal Web site. The problems with it include:
- Many of the hosted presence services provide spotty service, there being no real incentive for uptime
- Compatibility with Trillian is, as others have noted, just as iffy. (This includes the Jabber plugin.)
- Loading times vary greatly among the hosts, and throughout the day. I recommend hosting your own presence-indicating images locally.
Here's some more tips: I made some custom icons that I host myself, locally. That improves image loading times, and they're less ugly than most of the ones offered by the OPI hosts. Also, you know the default HTML you're given to embed presence in your site? There's a portion of the code that specifies image links for "unknown" presence states (the images have names like "aimunknown.gif").
I found that the OPI works better if you simply change that link to point to your "offline" image. It's less frustrating for visitors to be unsure about whether you're available (in part because most of the "unknown" icons are, at first glance, unintuitive) and to send you an IM, only to have it bounce.
THE NEW VISIONARIES: REBOOTING THE WEB
[Starting in January!]
BEHIND THE SCENES sponsored by GoToMeeting
› 24 Dec 2005: Behind The Scenes [next episode - postponed for Transit strike]
› 30 Nov 2005: Behind The Scenes at Behind The Scenes
› Many 2 Many -- Liz Lawley, Ross Mayfield, David Weinberger, danah boyd, Seb Pacquet
› Blogspotting -- Stephen Baker and Heather Green
› TechCrunch -- TechCrunch
1. Marc Eisenstadt on September 21, 2004 05:14 AM writes...
There's also a similar Jabber online status indicator available from here: http://mrinal.net/webber/
Permalink to Comment2. Zbigniew Lukasiak on September 21, 2004 05:49 AM writes...
Here is some Open Source php code for creating a jabber presence indicator:
http://wiki.crao.net/index.php/JabberPr%E9sence/Source
Permalink to Comment3. Christopher Saunders on September 24, 2004 02:49 PM writes...
Hey gang. I've been using the OPI for a couple of years now on my personal Web site. The problems with it include:
- Many of the hosted presence services provide spotty service, there being no real incentive for uptime
- Compatibility with Trillian is, as others have noted, just as iffy. (This includes the Jabber plugin.)
- Loading times vary greatly among the hosts, and throughout the day. I recommend hosting your own presence-indicating images locally.
Here's some more tips: I made some custom icons that I host myself, locally. That improves image loading times, and they're less ugly than most of the ones offered by the OPI hosts. Also, you know the default HTML you're given to embed presence in your site? There's a portion of the code that specifies image links for "unknown" presence states (the images have names like "aimunknown.gif").
I found that the OPI works better if you simply change that link to point to your "offline" image. It's less frustrating for visitors to be unsure about whether you're available (in part because most of the "unknown" icons are, at first glance, unintuitive) and to send you an IM, only to have it bounce.
Permalink to Comment4. Stowe Boyd on September 24, 2004 04:58 PM writes...
Chris -
I created my own image for being "OFF" and am using that. Thanks for the advice.
- Stowe
Permalink to Comment