This page describes a proposal to integrate Jabber protocol into James. In many ways, Jabber support would be a very nice fit with James. Amongst the functional and social benefits for James to support Jabber:
Instant Messaging is a killer application. Integrating it gets a lot more people interested in, using and supporting James.
Jabber instant messaging makes use of a server oriented service model (client-server-client), so the fit is there.
James could incorporate store and forward, allowing disconnected Jabber traffic.
James could integrate Jabber and e-mail in several ways
Combined mail / Jabber account management
Jabber notification of events (e-mail, NNTP, other)
Integrate Jabber digests onto mailing lists
Integrate Jabber and e-mail address spaces for short messages
Jabber pipeline (per-user?) which would provide IM-automation
James could provide IM and other messaging metrics
Links: [http://www.jabber.org Jabber Home page] [http://www.jabber.org/about/techover.html Technical overview, discussing similarity between Jabber and SMTP/POP e-mail.] Java [http://www.javajabber.net/ implementation of Jabber] using ApacheAvalon [http://yaja.sourceforge.net/ Yaja] "Yet Another Jabber API" in Java [http://www.jivesoftware.com/xmpp/smack/ Smack] a nice Java client library to a Jabber server (Apache license)