Something that I've noticed a lot of people having trouble with or just not knowing about is that you don't need to have Pidgin installed on your tablet to use AIM/MSN and other IM services. You can have all of that on your tablet by using the Jabber/Google Talk client.

What are the advantages of using Jabber for your IM needs?

* Lower memory requirements.
* Integration into tablet address book.
* Integration with tablet's notification system.
* No need to have Pidgin and all its packages installed.
* No need to remember to start up Pidgin - tablet will connect you as you come online for you.
* One less thing in the task list.
* ...other things I'm probably forgetting at the moment.

To do this, you'll need to find a Jabber server that supports the IM services you need. There are thousands of Jabber servers out there, all with various services and in various states of stability.

This was a personal annoyance, so Texrat and I set up a Jabber server specifically for the tablet community to use. No need to guess where to go to find IM services you'll need (almost all are supported) and we're pretty solid and stable.

The service is called Jablet and it is 100% free for all to use.

Those of you who are interested in getting an account can find a tutorial here for getting an account and setting it up on your tablet.

Once you've got an account, you'll need to set up the IM transports/gateways. This is generally easy if you use the PSI Jabber client on your PC. You can use the Service Discovery menu item in the PSI menu.

Those of you that are having difficulty with doing that or don't understand it at all can send me an IM here on ITT, on the Jablet forums, or send me an IM over Jabber at jay@jablet.org. I'll set up your IM accounts for you manually.

Let me know what you think, or if you need help setting it up and I'll be happy to do it for you.

(In the near future, we will have an automated sign up that will create your accounts and add all your IM accounts automatically to the tablet.)

You can then use the Address book on your tablet to consolidate your contacts if some of the people you know use several IM services. Open your address book/contacts and open the application menu. Choose Tools -> Merge contacts. You'll then be able to choose which users to consolidate together as a single contact.

Once you've done that, when you choose to start a chat with that person, you'll then be asked which service you want to use to talk to that person.

It feels like a much easier solution to me and much more integrated into the tablet's functions. I hope you like it as much as I do.

We've also got more tablet services coming in the future through Jablet. Take a look at the Jablet news site and the forums to get an idea of what we're working on.

Have fun and I hope you enjoy the server as much as I do.

Jablet signup tutorial: http://www.jablet.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9
Jabber server address: jablet.org
Jablet homepage: http://www.jablet.net/
Jablet forums: http://www.jablet.net/forum/

EDIT: I forgot to mention one thing. Some people have told me they stay away from Jabber servers because they have to readd all their contacts. This is because the server you used was really old and just didn't handle that. No such problems happen on Jablet. All your AIM/MSN/Yahoo/etc contacts are pulled down to your tablet without having to manually readd each of them.

I gotta demur a bit. The ratio has been 90% zerojay 10% texrat. I complained about the difficulty in getting MSN/AIM/etc over jabber and next thing I knew Jay was fired up and roaring. So when he says "Texrat and I" keep in mind he's doing the lion's share of the work.

Also kudos to r2d2rogers, tabrez and pixelseventy2 for contributions so far.

Anyway, nice tutorials jay!

Very Cool I won't have a chance to try this tonight but should have time tomorrow night, either before or after Heroes, as long as my daughter goes to sleep on time.

A nice little write-up about Jablet by atmasphere can be found at http://www.maemoapps.com/2007/11/18/jablet-tablet-services/

I just messed with this a bit, your tutorial needs a little bit of work but I figured everything out. I'm using a 770 and on 2006 at least the built in client is vastly inferior in function and ability to Pidgin. While Pidgin is a fully functioned IM client correctly displaying content from all of my messengers (and IRC if I choose) Jabber has some issues with correctly displaying who is online and such as well as my Buddy list aliases. It works I suppose but the lack of tabbed IM's is a real let down as well. With Pidgin I will routinely have 4-6 IM's going, which would not fit with this client as it would take up my entire sidebar.

Great stuff guys - haven't set this up yet but kudos to you!

I like pidgin, but the whole integration with contacts thing is a biggie for me.

Question - do Jabber clients support things like file transfers and the like?

zerojay thanks a lot, I`ve been very down cos i cant setup my built in client to work for me with yahoo messenger through jabber .. so I will for sure give this a try

It's quite possible that the client in 2006 doesn't support things like aliases and status messages. (Ironically, I find that Pidgin still hasn't been able to show status messages in the contact list... and not just the tablet ports.) There shouldn't be a problem showing who is online (bug in client?)

Maybe it's something in 2006, but usually all IM windows are grouped under ONE icon which will have a number on it to show how many windows you have open. I routinely have three or four open and it just uses one icon on the sidebar.

Thanks for letting me know.

Yes, most do support it (and I have set up a file transfer proxy on the Jablet server as well). I'm unsure if it will work over the IM gateway protocols, but I know it works Jabber to Jabber.

The tablet Jabber client does not appear to support file transfers at all (at least, I wasn't able to find a way to send a file).

I'm trying to get this setup. I've created a jablet account and can connect to the server via the tablet but I'm trying to add my msn/icq contacts now and I can't figure out how to do it from Linux. Could anyone recommend a good jabber client for Linux I could do this with. I just tried Kopete and could figure out how to do it from there and Gajim wouldn't even let me connect to the Jablet.org server.

*Edit* Nevermind. Got it all working with Gajim