1. Technical Field
The invention relates generally to electronic communication, and more particularly, to methods, program products and a system for allowing a message, composed as an instant message or an e-mail, to be transmitted using an e-mail protocol and displayed as an instant message or an e-mail at a recipient.
2. Background Art
Instant messaging (IM), some times referred to as chat, has become a popular method for people to communicate electronic messages to one another quickly. There are a variety of instant messaging (IM) systems available to the public, for example, Yahoo Instant Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, Microsoft Messenger, and Sametime. IM systems allow messages generated on a client to be routed through a centralized server and to one or more recipient IM clients. One challenge faced by the IM industry is that each IM system uses a different network and protocol. Unfortunately, no standardization allowing exchange of instant messages between the different IM systems has been achieved to date.
One current approach to solving this problem is the construction of a number of consolidating applications that allow the different IM systems to interact. Trillium and IBM Community Tools are examples of these consolidating applications. These consolidating applications include code to interface with two or more of the IM systems, and give the appearance of a single user interface. However, no true intercommunication is possible between the different systems.
Another approach is to avoid instant messaging altogether and rely on electronic mail (e-mail). Originally e-mail filled the role of an electronic replacement for paper memos and letters. However, e-mails do not have to be long documents, and may be relatively short. For example, it is not uncommon to see chains of e-mails each containing one (new) line as part of an ongoing dialog. Essentially this sort of e-mail is fulfilling the role of IM systems. However, no interaction between IM systems and e-mail systems currently exists.
Another challenge for the IM industry is that existing IM systems, as noted above, all employ centralized client-server applications. Consequently, they have a single point, the server, which is subject to load, denial of service attacks, and single point of failure problems.
There is a need in the art for a solution to the above problems of the related art.