i3Connect: looks cool

Not to say anything about personal interest but I did have some interesting conversations in the last couple of days with senior staff at i3Connect (“Connecting People, Communities and Applications”). This company has a couple of products just coming out, one is actually still in beta, but a very strong vision. Free for personal use, Vista is an instant messaging client with lots of zoomy features of which the most important are the ability to communicate over many of the major IM networks including MSN, ICQ, Jabber, and Yahoo!, support for custom realtime information channels, and use of the Blogger API (means that Vista can be an authoring surface). i3Connect is also in beta with Merlin, a sophisticated server that integrates IM and Web Services support. If you IM, check them out.