BuddySpace vis-a-vis 'Jabber', 'Clients', & 'Servers'

• BuddySpace is one of a large number of Jabber clients: these are the tools you use for sending instant 'chat'-style messages and monitoring 'presence' of your colleagues. These clients exist for almost every known platform, and are available from http://www.jabber.org/user/clientlist.php.
• Jabber itself is the name of an important open source protocol that allows the interchange of arbitrary XML (Extensible Markup Language) messages, and contains extensions that enable interoperability with other popular messaging platforms such as Yahoo! Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger, and ICQ ('I Seek You'... get it?). For the Jabber philosophy, see www.jabber.org
• You must connect to one of numerous Jabber Servers to link to other users. The BuddySpace project uses its own enhanced server at The UK's Open University, and this forms the basis of the guidelines presented below (though of course you can use BuddySpace to connect to any Jabber server). For general notes and FAQs regarding our own server, see http://jabber.open.ac.uk/
• BuddySpace project notes, including an overview of our research agenda, are available at http://kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/buddyspace