Jabber is a free, open source Instant Messaging (IM) client. If you don't know what that means, think MSN, AIM, ICQ or whatever, but not controlled by a central entity so no adverts, no central group throwing a new program at you that crashes even more and has even more annoying adverts than the last one. What is even better is that anyone can run a server for it, so rather than with MSN when the server dies and everyone is stuck, only the person that are using the server that goes down with Jabber will be left out in the cold, everyone else will be fine (as they talk to each other using a mesh, it doesn't matter who or what goes down, each server talks to the other servers directly).

So in short Jabber lets you message your friends, colleagues, family, but you can use any of the many programs that connect to the XMPP network rather than just a single ad-infested one. That also means you can normally find programs for it for anything; Windows, Mac, Linux, your phone, your goldfish, etc.

Does XMPP sound familiar? Well if you have a Google Mail (or GMail) account then you already have an account. Google Talk is also part of the Jabber/XMPP network, so if you are already using that then you can chat with anyone else using Jabber or if you sign up a Jabber account anywhere else you can then speak to people using Google Talk. What is even better is for most servers there is no long-winded sign-up process. You just pick a server to connect to, select the option to make a new account, enter a username, pass (and maybe your name and email) and poof. You now have an account you can use. And it doesn't matter which server you sign up with, you can now chat with everyone else, nifty eh?

So I decided to set up my own Jabber server using my spiritfire.eu domain which gives me the Jabber username ben@spiritfire.eu (so feel free to add me). If you are a friend of mine then feel free to use the spiritfire.eu domain to sign up for an account (when you put your details into your Jabber program you put that as the 'realm' or 'domain'). That'll give you a whatever@spiritfire.eu username and after logging in you can then also chat with anyone on the Google Talk or Jabber/XMPP network.