Bridging

I tried a new IM client that has the unique capability to do what is called ‘BRIDGING’. It allows a user to host conversations with other users on the various IM networks. The company that makes this client calls this technology “Cross Conferencing”.

My experience with it so far is that it does NOT work well behind my corporate firewall (even though there is a built in proxy utility that you can configure), and the bridging so far works reliably with Yahoo, MSN and Jabber clients in the same session (I couldn’t get other clients to work). They plan on moving forward with this so all the clients will work seemlessly, and it’s a very cool idea. What this reminds me of is an IRC-like session where the host allows everyone in the conversation to see the typed messages of everyone else.

Example – Jeff on MSN sends me a msg (I’m the host). Everyone in that session (yahoo, ICQ, MSN, etc…) sees the text Jeff just typed. Setup was a breeze, and the interface is surprisingly simple. There are lots of little & big bugs, but thus far, this is the only client that I’ve seen that has successfully implemented this type of technology. It’s just in it’s infancy. There’s a bunch of other cool features/toys with this client, but the Bridging or “Cross Conferencing” is by far the best feature.

I’m really hoping to see this feature added to the Trillian client before version 1.0. A little birdy told me that that is a very strong possibility.

They explain it like this: “A Vista user can invite buddies from different Messaging services and hold a chat conference with them. Each buddy in this conference will receive all the messages that are sent by other buddies.”

You can find “VISTA” here: http://www.i3connect.com/