The Jabber juggernaut (jabbernaut?) rolls on. For example, there are now at least three Java libraries for Jabber: the venerable JabberBeans (now located at JabberStudio), the more recent JSO, and the new YaJa. Also it seems that Iain Shigeoka is working on a commercial Jabber server written in Java. And the old JabberApplet has undergone some work lately, too, and just moved to JabberStudio.
One of the impressive trends of late is that established projects, organizations, and companies are more and more adding Jabber support of their own accord. A good example is GForge, a fork of the SourceForge codebase that is now using Jabber for CVS notifications (built on the Class.Jabber.PHP). The same goes for the centericq client for Linux, which has been around for ages but recently began supporting the Jabber protocol. And Jabber is even showing up in unlikely places, such as the annual Nokia Game (see the article in Instant Messaging Planet).
Speaking of ICQ, version 1.0.8 of JIT (Jabber ICQ Transport) was released the other day, so work continues on gateways between Jabber and other IM systems. And of course there is that crazy gateway to GaduGadu, an IM system that seems to be used only in Poland -- there is a working gateway at the new jabberpl.org server. See also the new email list for Jabberites in Poland. And don't miss that regularly scheduled Jabber meeting in Munich.
In the wonderful world of JEPs, the feature negotiation proposal advanced to a status of Draft. It seems that jabber:x:data and Jabber RPC will advance to Final as soon as Council member Julian Missig surfaces here during the end of the semester. There's plenty of controversy on the Standards-JIG mailing list about the Service Discovery proposal, too. Controversy is good: it's great to see people get so passionate about Jabber. We should have more controversy soon when Peter Millard's publish-subscribe JEP is released (I'll probably help him write the text of it over the weekend so that there is some context behind the protocol). And there was much heat about file transfer protocols in today's meeting of the Jabber Council; read the log for details. Finally, Jer is writing a little JEP for multi-user stickie notes -- that one should be fun. :)
One high-profile project that has picked up on Jabber is Chandler, the open-source replacement for MS Outlook under development by Mitch Kapor, Andy Hertzfeld, and other industry luminaries. The Chandler mailing lists are abuzz with discussion about ways to manage personal information such as email and IM in an integrated fashion. Andy Hertzfeld published some thoughts for an agent framework in Chandler that morphed into a discussion of the relative merits of BEEP and Jabber -- check out the thread starting here, and feel free to weigh in if you've got an opinion.
Oh, and I just sent new XMPP Internet-Drafts to the IETF. Until they're officially posted at ietf.org, you can find them at http://www.jabber.org/ietf/.
Jabber on!
--stpeter