I would go in the opposite direction: the development of Jabber removed the need for the various proprietory silos, but people still insist on locking themselves in those so what do I know...

Well, I recently had troubles with icq gateway on nimbuzz jabber server.

My contacts on icq were messaging me, but I didn't recieve anything. And when I wrote them they recieved it, I could see their status and everything.
So the gateway didn't crashed really. It just didn't work well. What can you do in such a situation?
(and nimbuzz is using ejabberd which is as far as I know a good server)

It's one problem amongst others that I had with jabber gateways. The idea is good, but the reliability is, from my humble experience, bad.

Point me to good jabber servers with reliable icq and I'll be very happy.

a little problem i see: if the messenger (AOL,skype,Gtalk, or what ever) are deeply integrated, how are the contacts managed? say you have 50 skype contacts and 35 gtalkers but 15 of them are have both (70 unique people) only 40 people of those 85 messenger(70 unique) contacts you have in youre phones contactlist (80 people in phones list and 40 of them have no messenger.

so you have :

50 skype
35 gtalk
80 contacts with phone numbers

15 are in bothe messenger lists so there has to be a way to merge/sort

of those messenger contacts you have only 40 peoples numbers so you cant merge them in a phone list or what ever.

50-15= solely use skype
35-15 solely use gtalk
80-40 doesent have a messenger
its a bit complicated.

so how are those messengers managed?! if you add more IM protocols it gets more complicated if you use a unified contactlist (here merged).

There is a menu for merging contacts together as seen in Diablo as far as I know. No, it's really not that much of an issue really.

I can only speak for Diablo, but I am sure something similar will be in Maemo 5's version of the Contacts app.

Basically there are smart lists of people that are generated, one for each protocol as well as phone numbers... and you can create your own.

If you're looking for someone with MSN, you just click on the MSN smart list. If you want to see everyone online on all protocols, select online. Those that have phone will have their own list.

It's really very simple, not complex at all and has been working well for me and my 300+ contacts without an issue.

In Diablo's contact manager at least you are able to merge contacts coming from the various different sources. And those different sources are available as groups if you want to browse only Google Talk contacts.

When you click a contact it shows buttons for the various ways to contact that person: IM, phone call, ...

I'd imagine the contact manager in Fremantle works in a similar way, but we'll see.

Well without turning this into a bragging competition...

@thisandthathereandthere
I have (currently) 577 contacts listed in my contact list. This is after I ahve merged them (didn't take long at all) and this manages fine. Lots of my work contacts have multiple emails, Skype (some multiple ones), GTalk and several emails. Lots and lots of them have multiple phone numbers (cell and landline) and even a fair few with SIP as well.

I have Skype, GTalk, SIP, OVI and the others too registered and it all seems to work fine for me. (I am SO glad contact lists for the phone works in portrait though! LOL).

Basically a Little bit of attention and merge things properly and it all works well. You can always edit the nickname of IM contacts if they don't match to make the merging easier to handle (sort in abc order afterwards.).

you can download account plugin haze, you will have gg talk yahoo, ovi aim, google talk,group wise, icq, jabber, msn,qq, sip, sametime