http://allforces.com/2005/05/06/icha...hrough-jabber/

I followed these instructions and finally am able to log into MSN via ichat through a jabber account. It's actually pretty cool.
Anyways was wondering if anyone with an iSight is able to check it out and report back on whether or not you can video chat with it.

Would be pretty cool if msn users were able to videochat (finally!)

i was impressed when apple announced jabber support with ichat. i started using it, but found ichat's interface annoying and the contact/buddy list was too big. went back to adium, much smaller contact list and better message style, IMHO.

Nope you cant

It is very limited, eg no file transfers or nuffin

thx man

I just did this and it works a treat... normally msn crashes on me every few minutes

no probs here

Adium or Proteus are the best bets. I am not sure if Fire is still kept upgraded but it is another candidate.

iChat is pretty sucky. I don't like the way it works. Haven't tried jabber yet but anyway MSN works fine with file transfers and all, in Proteus or Adium.
Not sure I really care for videochat thouugh I daresay it could have its uses.

how does Proteus compare with Adium? i'm just in loveee with Adium...

Kuma, ditch msn messenger...it's total crap...get Adium...u can do heaps.

adium looks great and is custumisable but it doesn't have any features like mercury messenger, but mercury messenger is hard to navigate round and to opertate, but it has all the MSN 7 features pretty much...

I set up MSN access through iChat using Jabber, and it appears to work pretty well. MSN Messenger features on the Mac were pretty limited anyway, and now I can just run iChat instead of iChat and MSN Messenger.

Wasn't real keen on giving my MSN name and password to a Czech server, so I registered with www.jabber.org.au, which also has an MSN gateway. Still not real happy about having to give my password over to do this though. I hope that jabber.org.au are a trusworthy organisation?

In any event, as using a gateway only provides limited functionality it is not a great cross-platform solution. The best solution seems to be to get Windows users to get an AIM or Jabber account and then use Trillian Pro (US$25). Trillian Pro seems to provide really good iChat compatablity (text chat, audio chat, video chat, file transfer, etc). The free alternative is to get Windows users to use AIM (5.5 or above), but doing that you lose audio chat capabilities, or to use Trillian Basic, which incurs losing video chat capabilities.

I have to confess that I help run this server and I'm at least partially responsible for it's existance. Yes the passwords for MSN/ICQ transports are stored on the server in plain text. Not much that we can do about that since the server needs to login to MSN/ICQ on your behalf. Though you can rest assured that we have no interest in your passwords, what so ever. Heck, we treat the areas where passwords are stored as sacred ground that no one can walk on. But to give you an idea, there are four of us with access to the server. There's myself, I'm too busy with study, helping various causes and not to mention keeping the server itself running, to bother messing with passwords. Then there's Rob, he wrote jabberd 2.0 and is too busy with work/family to write code for that anymore. Then there is also Sam, he's so busy studying that he's hardly even on the net anymore. Finally there's James, who is busy with developing PyMSNt. So none of us even has time to look at passwords.

Btw you can also save the Psi download by registering with our MSN transport here:
http://www.jabber.org.au/transports/

It needs some work with prettifying that webpage though it should work fine.

P.S. Netlab has been around for quite some time and I've heard no issues so I see no reason to distrust that server either. Though jabber.org.au is closer to home so you'll probably get greater responsiveness and reliability from it.

ouch...i just tried Mercury...really wouldn't recommend them to anyone (the latest version). it's darned ugly to begin with, and you're right, it's hard to navigate. and it's buggy. hanged on me a few times. back to Adium.

i hope iChat would really support MSN and video conferencing.
but than again, Windows Media Player for Mac sucks too.

Thanks for the info on jabber.org.au Jeremy. Nice to know that there are some Mac-using AppleTalk members involved there .