Team Messaging

My team needs real time messaging capabilities. Sending a link or sharing a file should not require 7 clicks and several seconds as is the case with using Outlook for this purpose.

More Specifically, what we need is:

• Chat /Conference room for my team to collaborate
• Desktop application as opposed to running in the browser
• Visual and audio notification of new messages

Seems so simple yet I am having trouble finding a tool to suit these needs. I have looked at the big 3 messangers: AOL, Windows, and Yahoo!

Aol seems geared towards children of myspace generation and Windows requires that we change our firewall settings so both of these are out of the question. That leaves us with Yahoo which is fine but far from perfect.

The Yahoo! Messenger sign up process does not include an instant screen name availability check which wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for having to do a captcha for every taken screen name. A very interesting feature is the ability for the messenger to run in a strictly http request mode which allows it to bypass our corporate firewall.

Unfortunately, messages are taking around 7 seconds to get to my coworker sitting right next to me. Also, when in conference mode there is no new message notification.

Looks like I'm back to the drawing board. Maybe I'll just write an app myself. I mean this is simple messaging we are talking about; the most basic of internet functionality.