I just had an idea while reading the Jabber Development forum. Crazy, probably: package AOLserver and the jabber client module as a jabber client for regular users. It seems the harder parts of writing a client is the UI. Also, if you want to exchange files, you have to write an Out Of Band method. This would be easy if the client was also a webserver.
Main problem is that to see wide use, the client would have to run on windows.
The client I am working on is coming along very well. A bot is available at weblog@pathfinderschool.com/ws, and provides a menu of echo, time or login to ACS. Unfortunately the login doesn't record the JID of the user. I guess eventually this could be used for a 'whose online' type feature, or for logging messages or running other user applications.
