Hi Charles,

I think this may be a case of education rather than anything else.

Personally, my time for monitoring IMs is a bit limited at the moment. Having said that, I do think the idea is a really good one. The facility to drop in and have a quick chat on some topic with instant communications would be great.

AIM (GAIM) is the one I'd go for. On the subject of messaging, do have a look at AltMe (www.altme.com). It's a system which is self hosted and allows posts to be viewed over time and they can be split into categories. It is a bit alternative, and the disadvantage is that one needs to advertise and invite people into the "world" (group) - but a guest account can be set up. I'll try and get a good AIM client and give you a shout.

BTW, is Biodiversity Informatics the new term for what we do? Not being mainstream Bioinformatics (i.e. genetics), is this a branch. It makes it easier when people ask "What work do you do"? I'm loath to reply "I work in IT", which is usually qualified by "err.. well not quite..it's more like..you know, species, wildlife..biological recording..databases..biodiversity".

We're not allowed to use any IM clients here, so I use the web-based Meebo instead. It can connect to AIM, ICQ, MSN/Windows Live, Yahoo and GTalk (aka Jabber), plus has it's own chat room facility  which enables one to invite several people to a group chat. It all works through a browser and thus doesn't require a client. It also has a nice Firefox extension, which improves the experience, although it isn't required. Some organisations block the Meebo site, but I understand this can be circumvented using the Meebo Repeater. I've not tried it personally, so I couldn't tell you if it works or not.

There is also Digsby and Pidgin (which is the new name for GAIM), which are desktop client apps and can connect to all of the mainstream IM networks.

If you fancy a bit of Twitter, then Twhirl is a good desktop client.

Regarding "Biodiversity Informatics", it seems that this is rapidly becoming the accepted term for us IT folk working in the fields of biodiversity, ecology and conservation. A snippet from the Wikipedia article:

"Biodiversity Informatics is the application of information technology (IT) tools and approaches to biodiversity information, principally at the organismic level. It thus deals with information capture, storage provision, retrieval, and analysis, focused on individual organisms, populations, and species, and their interactions. It covers information generated by the fields of systematics, evolutionary biology, population biology, and ecology, as well as more applied fields such as conservation biology and ecological management."

Seems to fit the bill quite nicely. I know exactly what you mean about not knowing how to describe what one does, Dave. "Biodiversity informatics" certainly fits better than just "IT". :)

Charles

Exactly!

I've considered that, but not plucked up courage yet.

It was a year before I built my first website. Ah, the good old days of of 14.4K modems and 486's. All very modern and hi-tech at the time, of course. :)

Pah! You were lucky! My first programming work was on a mainframe writing FORTRAN on punch cards. No, seriously! (That was 1977 BTW - eons in Internet time). :)

You had to hand the cards to the operator. I managed to invoke a system reset as one of my calculations caused a loop with no exit and the line printer (yes, that was the program output) churned out loads of paper with rubbish data. How not to impress. :P

You had to resort them using the sequential number index printed on them...a weird form of solitare!

I'm on AIM now (using the Pidgen client) and my screen name is "dave at bis". Umm, not sure I should have used spaces. Have updated my profile and I'll keep the client running whenever I'm at my workstation. Can't guarantee an instant response, but will be my best.