My daughter has reached an age where all her friends are on MSN. While the school is concerned about it, I think that (occassionally monitored) online chat is actually a useful skill. Most of the chat is what you’d expect of tweens, misunderstandings and hurt feelings can happen very easily. That’s just like email.
I refuse to run MSN Messenger though. I just think it’s sufficiently insecure and closed source to be avoided. Most kids don’t know how MSN works, so they just do what their chat partner tells them to do. I’d rather my kids not install things just so they can get a neat smiley.
I also want to use protocols other than MSN. Jabber is used by a couple of my clients. I also want to experiment with VOIP. So I’ve selected GAIM as the multiprotocol instant messanger client around here. My kids can chat with friends and also with me when I’m travelling. GAIM supports AIM, Yahoo Messenger, Jabber, Google Talk, ICQ, Gadu-Gadu, and even IRC protocols in one client. That means I don’t need to run multiple clients just to chat for business or pleasure.
A friend of ours has a laptop that is so locked down by their Fortune 500 IT department that MSN won’t start. Which means she can’t chat to her daughter when she’s travelling. I’ve installed aMSN as an alternative. It’s a near perfect clone of MSN messanger, so the whole family knows how to use it immediately.
Update: My daughter was so impressed by aMSN she’s asked to install it on her desktop. We’ll see how it compares to the multiprotocol GAIM. Given all her friends are on MSN I’m worried that I may be forced to stick to MSN protocol when chatting to her.
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I really think this is a great idea because you can talk to all your friends without someone tring to track you down and everything, so I really think this is a great idea
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