M (Instant Messaging) clients have become invisible. We use them all the time to ‘talk’ with co-workers, chat with friends, and ‘text’ with family members on their phone. That is, I do, anyway because my IM client Pidgin, works with every almost every IM client in creation and it makes chatting with anyone, anywhere mindlessly simple. And, with this newest version, limited voice and video support is built in as well.
Today, the VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and video framework is rudimentary, but the promise is there. Today, you can only use voice and video over XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol), an open IM XML standard on Linux. However, what’s important is that the framework is there. Adding voice and video to other IM protocols won’t be easy, but the big first step had been taken now.
Pidgin already has the IM clients down pat-AIM, Google Talk, IRC. MSN, Sametime, etc. etc. That said, I found that this version has faster overall performance and fewer hiccups.